The President

Rhett and I saw the President yesterday. No joking... We went to a Republican fundraiser at our Congressman Mike Conaway's home. Also Congressman Randy Neugebauer, Senator John Cornyn and State Rep. Tom Craddick were there.

All traffic had to enter from one way to his house. People came to the car and checked to see if our names were on the list and checked our IDs. Once we parked we had to go through security and show our ID again. We got inside the tent about 10:00am and the doors closed at 10:15am. We then waited until about 1:00 for Bush to get there. He came from Crawford with Laura and Laura's mom, who still lives in Midland, came. He spoke for about 30 minutes. He mostly talked about life in the White House, funny stories, traveling and a lot about his faith and remaining strong in his walk with God. He also talked about John McCain and how he is the right man for the job. He told the story about Jenna's wedding and that he didn't take 3 steps before he started crying. He said that when he went to Laura's parents to ask if he could marry her that his in-laws probably were not thinking that boy is going to be President some day. He talked about throwing the first pitch out at Yankee Stadium for the World Series right after 9-11. He had on bullet proof clothes and Derick Jeter was giving him a hard time about throwing a strike. He also talked about how he was sent to Washington with a set of values and how he always tried to stick to them. He said that he did not make decisions based off a Gallop poll, but what he thought was best. He also told a story that he has a picture of Abe Lincoln up in the Oval office. He said when Lincoln was President he was terribly unpopular. When he gave the Gettysburg Address it only took 3 minutes and people got so mad at him because they thought that was so disrespectful to only talk for 3 minutes when the scholar before him talked for an hour.

I was so impressed by how strong and forceful he spoke, even in a pretty casual environment. He stood just how you see him on tv- with one arm resting on the podium. Once he was done he walked along the front row and shook hands with people. We were in the 5th row and when he got in front of us, he looked straight at us and said, "hi ya'll, thanks for coming." Then when he left we all had to stay in the tent for about 15 minutes until he was gone. There were Secret Service everywhere. They had snipers set up on top of the house and the barn. There were probably 400 people there and we read in the paper this morning that they raised a million dollars. This was truely an unique experience. We were not allowed to take cameras inside so these are some pictures from the paper. He visited his childhood home after the fundraiser.