Last week we had the opportunity to go to a Barack Obama campaign rally here in Des Moines. We debated whether or not we wanted to go because we knew it would be very crowded and there would be a lot of waiting. Both of those things turned out to be true, but it was well worth the trip.
We ended up getting a great spot, about 15 feet from the podium. I couldn’t believe how close we were! The kids did a great job waiting and it was a lot of fun to hear the president speak. It was amazing to be so close.
Afterwards he was shaking some hands in the crowd not far from where we were. I was holding Mari and thought maybe I could get her in the mix for a high-five. We made our way over and accomplished our goal. He continued down the rail not far from where we were so I picked up Andrew and took him over for a high-five as well. When I turned around Susan was standing right behind me with Elliot so I grabbed him and called out ‘Barack, do you have another high-five?” “I got another high-five,” he replied, as he gave Elliot a high-five. That was pretty exciting!
As we were headed out the door a reporter stopped us to ask a few questions and take our picture. We answered a few questions and headed home to try to get the kids to calm down and get into bed.
After the getting the kids to bed some more things started to come our way. I was checking the Des Moines Register website for pictures when I saw this article – http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2012/05/24/obama-in-des-moines-high-fiving-the-president/ . I also have the PDF version.
I couple minutes later we got an email from our friend the AP who sent me previews of a couple of pictures of Mari and Andrew. They appeared in various locations the next day.
We were bummed to not have a picture of Elliot, but the next day I saw that Barack Obama’s facebook page had a few pictures posted from the event, including one of Elliot.
A couple of hours later, it was the main photo at the top of his facebook page.
I thought we were done, but this past week we got a video from a friend who said that Elliot’s high-five was in the intro to a weekly political talkshow:
6/19/2012 – Still not done. We just got a link to this video from a friend:
8/6/12 – Elliot’s Picture Appears in a Campaign Email
How cool! I especially like that Elliot’s was the cover photo on his FB page.