TEA Party Express Rally

The TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party "train" is making it's way across the United States with it's final destination being Washington DC on September 12. They are planning to have a massive protest of the way things are being handled in DC on the 12th. Anyhow, we headed to New Lenox to meet with the "train" on it's only stop in Chicagoland.

It was to start at 10am, and my mom, who was already there, called at 9:15 and said there is a steady stream of cars and she recommended I get there asap. Well, as things have it, we were running about 5 minutes late, and I thought most of the people would be parked and settled in and we could make our way there without any problems. Nope. I-80 had a line about 1 mile long of cars waiting to get off the interstate at the New Lenox exit. After sitting in line for a few minutes (and going nowhere), I decided to either find a different route, or if I had no luck, I was going to go shopping :) I ended up finding a long way around and had to park in an Ace Hardware parking lot. All of the parking lots surrounding the Commons were packed (plus most of the grassy area at the park itself). I couldn't believe how many cars and people there were!! It was a great turn out. There was talk of about 10,000 people!!

I explained to Caleb that we were a part of "history in the making". It is really cool when you think of the overall picture and how important our actions are right now. Congress IS hearing and seeing. I don't know what the future holds for our nation, but I am glad that I can say I'm not sitting idlely by and letting others do the deciding for me and my family.

OK, so I said that I parked in the Ace Hardware parking lot. On my way back to the van, I heard rumors from people that Ace had called and told people to remove their vehicles because their customers couldn't park anywhere... Well, as I headed through the parking lot with kids in tow, I saw 2 police cars pulled next to eachother chatting. I didn't know if they could ticket me or not, but I kept headed straight for my van and was relieved to see that I didn't have a ticket hanging on my window. I loaded the kids in and shut the door to turn and find a police car pulled right up next to me. He said, "Were you down there?" I looked as innocent as I could and said, "Down where?" He said, "At the Commons? Where you at the Commons?" Uh, oh, I thought, he's got me. My whole family was dressed in red, white and blue... it was a dead give away! I gulped and said timidly, "yes..." He replied with an enthusiatic, "I sure wish I could've been there!" I'm sure he saw the look of relief on my face as we talked about the crowd. From his experience, he thought that there was at least 7,000 people. Wow, if there was over 7000 people that came, just think how many are thinking the same thing and were with us in spirit... I can't wait til the next round of elections...