Inaguration Day

Today was a very special day for America! While I don't, for the most part, share the same views as President Obama on this day I was truly proud to be an American! I am completely burnt out on CNN and NPR because I had them on ALL day. It was great to witness how far we have come as a country by electing our first African-American President. I wish him the best of luck and can't wait to tell my children and grand children that I witnessed this day! Overall, I think this was a day not only to celebrate a new President but to realize the greatness of this nation.

Some of my favorite words from today:

"In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today."

-President Barack Obama

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."- Martin Luther King Jr.

If I would have gone to D.C., I would have FOR SURE worn these shoes.

As most of you know, I love red, white, and blue anything (I definately sported my American flag scarf today)! Here are some favorite quotes about our beloved country:

"America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses." Woodrow Wilson

"I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential." Shirley Chisholm

"America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered." Louis Brandeis

"America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole." Bob Goldthwaite

"I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision." Carl Sandburg