Happy 54th Birthday, Mr. President!

Happy 54th birthday to our 44th (and current!) president, Barack Obama! 

You might remember, when we celebrated George W. Bush's birthday a few weeks ago, and I tried very hard not to step on any toes with political speak. Well, I'm going to super speed through this one, and avoid any sort of opinions, because oh my goodness do people get weird about politics. I'm here for informative purposes only, my friends. In an effort to do that, I'm going super basic with this blog. But, do I ever know a whole lot about Barack Obama. I read lots on him, and I read his book (Dreams From My Father), to get some background on him. It's a good read, I will say that. The middle section dragged a decent amount, but the other two were entertaining and informative, and that's as much opinion as you'll get from me this blog. 

Anyway, because Barack has such a different background than any other president, I went back to his grandparent's generation. This is his grandfather Onyango Obama. He was born in Kenya. 

He married  wife #1 (seen here with a dowry of horses and a dinosaur), but as it turns out, she couldn't have any kiddos. Instead of returning her family (which apparently was a thing).. 

Onyango just got married again, to wife #2. It was with wife #2 he had two kids: Barack Obama (aka the president's father who was known as 'the old man'), and Barack's sister. 

There was a third wife, and her name was Grammy Sarah. 

Basically wife #2 (the president's biological paternal grandmother) ran away, and the old man and his sister were raised by wife #3, Grammy Sarah. 

So, the old man (the president's dad), grows up. He's rebellious and a bit of a trouble maker. But, his dad gets him a job in Nirobi, and he gets married to wife #1 and has two kids: Roy and Auma. But, then he hears about an opportunity to go study in America, and was accepted to the University of Hawaii, and off he went. 

Meanwhile, the future presidents' maternal grandparents are living in Kansas. (Barack called his grandparents 'Toot' and 'Gramps'). 

They have a daughter, who they name Stanley Ann. (An unfortunate name for sure, she went by Stanley longer than anyone could have expected before finally just going by her middle name, "Ann".) 

Anyway, they moved around a lot, but eventually ended up in Hawaii, where Ann headed off to learn Russian and met a guy from Kenya, Barack Obama. 

Before you knew it, a 19 year old Ann was married to that Kenyan, and on August 4, 1961 they had a son. They named him Barack Hussein Obama II. (Barack meaning "blessed" in Swahili) though in his childhood he was known as 'Barry'. 

The old man didn't stay in Hawaii long after his son was born though. He went off to Harvard law school. The plan was he would go to school, then head back to Kenya and then send for Ann and baby Barry. But, Onyango had other ideas, and sent letters back to his son telling him his plan was a bad idea. Eventually, the old man listened, and when he went back to Kenya, he didn't send for Ann and Barry. 

Instead, he married wife #3 (a woman named Ruth he met at Harvard), and had a few more kids. 

When the old man returned to Kenya, his fancy American education made him rich. He was in with all the politicians, and was a famous guy in Nairobi. 

Meanwhile, Ann went on with her life, she always told Barry stories about his dad, and never said anything negative about him. Eventually, Ann met someone else at the University of Hawaii, a a guy from Jakarta, Indonesia named Lolo, and they were married. 

So, a six year old Barry and his mom packed up to move to Indonesia. There, Barry got to try snake meat, and dog meat, with the promise someday Lolo would bring home tiger meat for them to try. His littler sister, Maya was born in Indonesia too. But, life was hard, and rather violent, and Ann began to worry about her son's education, so she'd wake him up early in the morning and teach him before he went off to school. 

When Barry was about to go into 5th grade, Ann thought it would be best to send him back to Hawaii to live with Toot and Gramps, figuring he would get a better education there. 

Toot had a job as a Vice-President at a bank, and her boss had an in at the prestigious Punahou school. 

Eventually, Ann and Maya came back, too. She was tired of Indonesia, and her and Lolo ended up divorced. Shortly after Ann came back from Indonesia, the old man came to visit his son. Barry was 10, when his father (who he had told his classmates was an African King) came to visit. He spent a month there, but the two never really hit it off. The old man gave him a basketball and some dancing lessons, but also thought a young Barry was too influenced by America (too much TV, not enough work). After the month was up, the old man was back to Kenya, and Barry went on with his childhood, playing games with Gramps and reading Spiderman comics. 

Barry spent his high school years playing basketball (though he was never a starter), and scooping ice cream. But, he also had a rebellious streak. He got into drugs and drinking, and everyone told him he needed to clean up his act and pick a college already. 

After some nagging, he decided on Occidential College in L.A. He spent two years there, getting involved in college politics, and giving speeches. His grades improved, he decided to go by Barack instead of Barry, and he applied to get into Columbia. 

So off to Columbia he went to earn his bachelors degree in Political Science. 

But back in Kenya, the old man had fallen from grace. He disagreed with the change in government in Kenya, which ended up in him being blacklisted. He lost his money, he couldn't get a job, and he started drinking heavily. 

Then he got in an accident, and died. Barack Obama had only met his father once. 

But, the death of his father started correspondence between him and his family in Kenya....

....Particularly his sister Auma. (Though he did meet up with Roy once when he was in D.C.) 

He got a New York kind of job after graduation, but he had dreams of becoming a community organizer and sent out letters to anyone would listen. 

Eventually, a guy in Chicago replied, and gave him a job, where Barack spent the next two years in the poorer communities of Chicago helping organize rallies and programs for African American Communities. His salary wasn't much: $10,000 a year. 

After two years helping out in Chicago, he went off to Harvard Law School. 

Oh, and he made his first trip to Kenya, and Auma introduced him to the rest of his family. 

He was made president of the Harvard Law Review, which garnered some interest from a publisher. Since he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, the publisher wanted him to write a book about his experiences with race, and 'Dreams from my Father' was born. 

After law school he went back to Chicago, where he worked in a law firm and met Michelle. 

Sadly, his mom and his gramps had passed away by then. 

But, Toot and Maya, and his whole family from Kenya made the trip when he married Michelle. 

Barack then decided he wanted to run for State Senator. He was considered a long shot, and an underdog. On the ticket was just 'a guy with a funny name' (his words from his book, not mine) and a bunch of white guys. 

But, he won, stunning everyone. And Malia and Sasha were born (Malia was born on the 4th of July, she shares a birthday with Calvin Coolidge!) 

Anyway, people were starting to know who Barack Obama was, at least in Illinois. His book was republished and sold really well, and then he decided he wanted to go bigger. Barack set his eyes on the United States Senator. 

Again he was an underdog, and again he won. 

While in the Senate, he wrote his second book "The Audacity of Hope" (Which I'll read someday), and people started taking notice of the only African American in the Senate. Making him even more popular? A speech he made at the Democratic Convention in favor of John Kerry for the 2004 election. 

We know John Kerry lost, and W remained president. But, four years later, Barack (yet again an underdog to win the nomination) ran for president. You know, "Yes we can!" and all of that. 

Sadly, two days before the election, Toot passed away. (But, she did vote for her grandson days earlier with an absentee ballot!) 

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president, making him the first African American President. His inauguration drew the biggest crowd in Washington D.C. history. 

Of course we have Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton as VP and Secretary of State. 

He inherited a war in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan. 

Rolled out a stimulus package to get the economy, and focused on a universal health care system. (Something many presidents before him tried to get done including Truman, JFK, and Bill Clinton)

He brought the troops home from Iraq. 

And under his watch, Osama Bin Laden was captured... 

...and killed. 

We had the Oil Spill in the Gulf, one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. 

And then in 2008, it was time for re-election. You might remember our Candy Bar Election from then, but you might also remember that I took Peyton to rallies for both Obama and Romney. This is our button from the Romney Rally. (He's totally excited to do this again next year too!) 

Of course, we know Obama was re-elected (this time with John Kerry as Secretary of State). 

And he's spent his second term still working on closing Guantanamo Bay... 

... and still supporting the Affordable Care Act, clean energy, and marriage equality. Also, he's won the Noble Peace Prize a couple of times (and a Grammy for best spoken word album). 

Oh, and about a month ago, he went to Kenya, where he met with leaders and his family. He's the first sitting president to ever visit Kenya. 

Obviously, there's no legacy to talk about. Who knows where he'll place in history? Love him or hate him, it's WAY too early to tell. 

His famous quote.. 

And some fun facts (Peyton yelled at me for writing he read all SIX Harry Potter Books to Malia, when it should be seven. Oops.) 

We had our owl mail this morning. 

We watched our president in 60 seconds. 

And made our birthday cards.. 

...These puppies are headed off to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! 

Our activity today was a variety of rainbow crafts as a nod to marriage equality. 

Hayden's will be the background for his Dalmatian he made last week so he can enter it in the fair. 

Peyton did a crayon drawing.. 

And Calib did a paper design with hole punched paper. 

For dinner, we had one of Obama's favorite's, chili. 

And for dessert we'll be having pie, apparently he is obsessed with it.  We took some help from the store on this one, thanks Publix! 

But, there will be no ice cream with the pie, because after scooping ice cream in high school, he really doesn't enjoy the stuff, which inspired our historical hashtag. 

So what else have we been up to? Well, Calib came home, obviously. 

And *most* of us were happy about that. 

We experienced days upon days of rain. Seriously, it was breaking records, and more than I had ever seen before. 

People were kayaking down streets, and finding fish swimming in their neighborhoods. We didn't have that here, but we did end up with a confused frog in the house. 

Asa caught him and set him free. 

The pillow pools provide a nice spot to wait out the rainy days. 

Although, I did see the sun today, and that was exciting. It's heating up the house again though. No worries, Sophie's figured out how to stay cool. 

That's it from here, hope that was as non-partisan and non-biased as I think it was. 

Next Up:  I'll be back Thursday with an early birthday blog for Herbert Hoover (It isn't until the 10th, but I'm not doing a president's birthday on my own!)