Guess who we saw Saturday night?

Yep, Sarah Palin.

Guess who didn't take her camera into the speech?

Yep. That would be me. Here is my ONE picture from the night:

Look closely in the middle...that would be a protester wearing a Storm Trooper outfit standing in the middle of the square. (His sign read, "Now I have two dark lords" and had a picture of Darth Vader and Sarah Palin...kind of lame if you ask me...I think it was probably a high schooler who wanted to dress up and get his/her picture in the paper.)

Seriously, other than a few very fuzzy and far away shots of the stage taken from my cell phone, I have no pictures. Greg is probably rolling his eyes as he reads this thinking, "Mary, just let it go!" but I need to say that I WOULD have taken my camera if I weren't such a scaredy pants. I called the someone at the facility where the speech was held to ask about dress code and photography. He told me that flash photography was absolutely forbidden and that if anyone tried it they would be removed from the speech. Now...I'm not one to take chances, and he sounded so serious that I decided not to take my camera in. I'm thinking, are they confiscating cameras or what? I didn't want to do something stupid and get kicked out. It turns out, people had their huge SLR cameras there and the man who gave the 'housekeeping rules' about the speech came right out and said, "We'd appreciate it if you'd take all your pictures in the first couple minutes of the speech." ARRRGGG!!! Next time, I'm bringing the camera.

Anyway. I'm almost over it now. :) We have the newspaper from yesterday covering the speech, and Greg printed out the picture above from some news source. The speech itself was very good, and we both agreed that she comes across much better in person than in some of the sound bites we've seen on the Internet. She started out talking about her little son, Trig, who will be two years old this week. In fact, I think his birthday is only a couple of days before Max's...so it's probably today or tomorrow. Anyway, she said that his new thing when he wakes up is that he stands in his crib, rubs his sleepy eyes, looks around, and then just starts clapping. Cute! Her other story was about Piper. The night of the vice presidential debate against Joe Biden, (then) Governor Palin was saying a prayer with her before going onstage. She told Piper, "Pray that Momma wins the debate, and that God will speak His words through Momma." Just before she went onstage, Piper stopped her and said, "God speaking through you? That's cheating!" :) So, we had a good time and our only regret was not buying tickets for the banquet. Oh, and the camera.

It was definitely worth it to go to the speech, and it was a great way to celebrate THE END OF TAX SEASON!!! Thursday evening we went to supper at Dad and Mom B's. I had dressed Nora for the special day:

Hmmm...can't see the words? We'll try this:

Still nothing...Nora, stop eating grass and cooperate!

We'll try one more time...

There we go! You can stop eating grass, now, baby girl.

Max was enjoying himself, too.

While poor Bella was forced to just watch from the sidelines...

Max's favorite part of the night, though, was surprising to me: Rhubarb pie! He must be his daddy's boy. :)

Yum!

One thing I forgot to say is that on Friday night we went to the IL Barbershop District competition. AfterHours did fabulous! We missed their second night of singing due to the speech, but we did find out that they WON the college competition!!! Whoo hoo! Philadelphia, here they come! (for the International Competition!) Great job, guys!

Hope you all have a great Monday! Max is battling a fever that started yesterday, so if anyone reads this today, you can send up a prayer for me! A sick Max is never a good way to start a week. :S Hopefully when he wakes up he will feel better!