A patriotic girl!

 Maddie loves her country and really gets into politics! On January 3rd, we had just gotten back from Sunday visits at Grandma and Grandpa Gees house.  Shawn offered to go get Anni to bed, and while he was doing that, Maddie said, for the third time ( that I had heard) that she wished she could go to the Trump rally in Washington DC on the 6th.  I finally said, "why don't you go? It's something that you really want to do and you wouldn't regret it..."  She said her concern was that she would miss two or three days of the first week of college - her first college experience ever.  I mentioned my usual mantra to "never let school get in the way of your education."  Kami and I both reiterated that she wanted to be a high school government teacher and/or a lawyer (she wants to do both) and that this trip would fit right into all of that. She wasn't very hard to convince!  By the time Shawn had come upstairs Maddie was looking for plane tickets and trying to get Caden to come with her.  Caden couldn't go, and with the crazy state of our country, I didn't feel good about sending her off alone, so Shawn went with her.  This was something I knew they would BOTH enjoy!

Maddie had the time of her life seeing all the sights that mean so much to her with her dad.  They sent me lots of videos and I had to get these pictures by screenshooting one they sent:

They were AMAZED by the size of the crowd which was 200,000-300,000 people. 

The day that people got into the capitol, they were surprised because they were so close to the front doors and never saw any sort of disturbance.  The majority of the people were calm and happy and they feel that if the Trump supporters really wanted an "insurrection" they could have easily had one.  So crazy times with crazy things going on.  

Shawn and Maddie stayed in DC Monday-Friday and had a great time even though they shut the city down after the Capitol incident.  Maddie is so glad that she got to go and can't wait to get back!

We love our strong, opinionated, adventuresome girl!

Oh yeah - and this is a picture of her shooting the pistol she bought right after she turned 18:

She bought it and then paid for an hour long lesson from a professional and has now been known to stand in line before stores open early in the morning so that she can buy ammo before it's sold out. Luckily her Uncle Evan has also been keeping his eyes out for the ammo her gun uses and gets her some whenever he sees it!