The people have spoken.......

.........and chose Arissa Ronell Howard for Vice President!

It was a grueling, week-long campaign...and the competition was fierce.

BUT, Arissa fought hard & fair, and so in the end she was declared the winner.

I wanted to make some kind of comparison to the Obama/Biden campaign but my mind is blank.

:o)

Seriously though, it was a fun week! She turned in her application awhile ago, and a week later had to give a speech to all 3rd, 4th, & 5th grade classes.

So that was her first public speaking engagement, and she was really nervous. I was so nervous for her. We helped her write the speech, and we practiced over and over.

The day after the speeches, there was a preliminary vote to narrow it down and Arissa made it to the final four candidates for VP.

Three days later, the candidates could start putting up their posters. They could only have 3 large posters, and they couldn't do any hand-outs other than "vote 4 so-and-so" stickers. So we worked our butts off to get the posters done, we did 3 large ones and then several smaller ones. Arissa wrote "vote 4 Arissa" on several packs of cute-shaped post-it notes and stickers.

Then one of the girls left a wet bathing suit laying by the group of posters, and they sucked up all the water like a sponge. The washable crayola marker ink didn't stand a chance. The posters all looked like impressionist paintings, and they were ruined.

So we made them over again, and put them up around the school on Monday. The final vote was Wednesday. The results were to be revealed on Friday, but Arissa called me on her way to the dentist yesterday after school to tell me they had announced the winners over the loudspeaker just before school let out, and she was one of them! She was so excited. She said the whole class had cheered for her. Two other little girls in her class had been campaigning too, and she hugged them & they congratulated her. Mallory & Mariah sang her "happy vice president, to you!", to the tune of "happy birthday". :o)

Here's the hopeful canditate w/ the campaign posters that cinched the election:

I outlined all the words, and Arissa colored it all in. This was the one she did 100% by herself (I think it looks pretty dang good!):

At first I wanted to go all-out using photo-shopped graphics and huge poster-sized professional prints....

But being that we only had a few days, and that the other kids might not have those resources, we decided to go completely hand-made:

I wonder if any of the students understood my pun in this one (Jesse didn't till a day later):

Get it? "Pick"? "Pick" Arissa? And there's a hand "picking" a flower??? I thought it was clever. :o) Better than "don't pick your nose, pick ----- for President!" like some other kid's. Just kidding.

So last night we went out to celebrate!

To celebrate Arissa's democratic victory of course, but also to celebrate the wonderful job that all 3 girls did at their recital the night before. They were stars!

Then Mallory felt bad for me & Jesse, that we weren't celebrating anything we did. So she decided "and we're celebrating your love for us too". :o) Sounds good.

Arissa chose Casa de Pico.

Not sure why....she only eats the free chips. I think she likes the atmosphere more than the food, but she picked it and I LOVE it, so that's where we went.

Jesse had enough Margarita's to not be pinching pennies, so we even ordered dessert!

I wanted Flan, and Jesse wanted Sopapillas, but the girls all wanted Churros w/ Ice Cream so that's what we got:

Mariah & Arissa ate the churros, Mallory ate the ice cream. But whatever, it was a fun night. It's nice to have reasons to celebrate every now and then!