Power Up

We were back for another round of video game fun with our series "Level Up" today, although it's starting to wind down some.  We have a pretty big cast of video game characters here, and the kids had fun laughing at some of their antics on stage.  Look at Mario and Luigi here:

They were coming along to tell Ralph how to "Power Up," which was the theme of the day.  Daddy was there in a separate portion of the service, getting the kids excited about our video game races.

And of course, Madison was out there too, although a smaller part, helping Link and the others pummel Ralph with giant jaw breakers whenever he said anything that didn't have enough self confidence.  He was speaking out negativity about himself, and had to be reprogrammed in a way.  Here they are, walloping Ralph until he gets the point!

Madison is great, going out with the other characters afterwards.  You can see her with the others laughing and posing over and over again, really having a great time here.

It's been a fun series!  The costumes have been a great hit, with all these kids wanting to pose for pictures with the different characters, almost as big of a deal as the last series, actually!

We got home and had a nice lunch, and we also got some piano practice done.  We were looking at the weather today, and can you believe there might be another hurricane coming?  It's in the Atlantic and it is named Patty, and it will be quite a surprise.  The hurricane season officially ends at the end of this month, so it's not so far-fetched as you would think, and besides, there was a hurricane before the season started this year, from what I remember.  

Almost as unbelievable, we still don't have a governor elect in Georgia yet.  One candidate has something like 59,000 more votes than the other now.  The margin of victory has shrunk, but it's still more than enough.  The winning candidate says it is mathematically impossible for the losing candidate to even get to a run-off, let alone win.  The current governor agrees, although their of the same political party.  

Meanwhile, the losing candidate is desperately scrounging up votes from counties that said they had all their votes tallied, but now have found more votes.  This is happening in a few states simultaneously, votes suddenly turning up seemingly out of nowhere, unbalanced, and all in favor of one candidate instead of both.  If that sounds suspicious, then you must be a conspiracy theorist!  Because votes showing up in a county that says it already has all its votes and there suddenly being thousands of them days after the election and all in favor of one candidate... that can't possibly be suspicious at all. That might have been a bit sarcastic.

And as a bonus, the losing candidate is filing lawsuits.  Yay, more lawsuits!  And the losing candidate is suggesting vote suppression and fixing the whole system and fraud and "stealing the election" too.  That's always a good one.  Basically it's the Presidential Election in the year 2000 all over again, just on a state level.  Eventually, there'll be courts deciding this or that.  But even with all the modifications, the difference as of today is 59,000 votes with 100 percent reporting, and is still above fifty percent of the votes, and therefore the one with more votes should be governor elect.  We read there's about 21,000 provisional ballots left, and even if they were all in favor of the losing candidate, that losing candidate would still not have enough to get the run-off.

So why does this keep dragging on?  Surely the losing candidate knows that 1,975,806 voters that voted against her this time will remember this sort of thing if she decides to run again.

Mommy and Daddy voted early.  We didn't have any trouble voting early, and actually thought about it all ahead of time.  Many people did.  There were certainly enough annoying commercials, emails, web pages and phone calls to remind us.  The library is just down the road.  We had a little bit of a wait, but it was an easy process. 

Hopefully this will all be over by Thanksgiving.  It's more annoying than anything, because like the election of 2000, this one seems a bit inevitable.  It's just a matter of time, hopefully, before the harsh reality of math sets in, and there comes a realization that perhaps the more noble act of conceding should have been done a long time ago, rather than bring all the people of this state through all this.

ANYWAY, we had a pleasant afternoon today, after some piano.  Firstly, we watched a new Christmas movie, "The Star."

This was a fun movie that tells the Nativity Story from the vantage point of a few animals, such as the camels, dogs, mice, sheep and a donkey too.  Of course, none of that is in the Bible.  But you sort of put that aside, and enjoy the movie for what it is, and there was a nice little illustration about grace in there at the end.  The three of us enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we played a game, "Lanterns," which was fun.  The game lasted a little longer, but we had a great time playing it.  Mommy won, by the way.  The game is a lot more fun with three players than two, and I imagine the game is even better with four.  But we had a great time playing that, building up strategies and trying it out.

We watched the tree lighting ceremony at Dollywood after that, and then it was time for bed for Madison.  We read "Peter and the Starcatchers" some more, and the devotional too, and then it was time for prayers and zerberts.  It was a good day today - a chilly one, but a good one!