From the grandparents to the 2 year olds

I feel like American Idol has taken over my family. No, seriously, it really has. My Mom never has been much of a TV buff, but she has watched nearly every season of American Idol religiously since the very first season, and every season she picks out a favorite in the Hollywood rounds and her favorites generally make it to the finals (Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Carrie Underwood, etc). Anyway, when I'm not at home, I watch it if I have nothing better to do...but now that I'm home...

So, I'm over at my oldest brother's house just chattin' with my sister-in-law (LaShaye) and she asks me if I've been watching American Idol. She says that they watch it most weeks and that their kids love it because they love to dance along to the music (they've got a 2 year old daughter, Shayla, and a 1 year old boy, Kaden) Anyway, so LaShaye's little sister Randee came over one day and had missed the show the night before, so she asked LaShaye who had been voted off. Here's a rough version of how the conversation happened:

Randee: "So, who got voted off last night?"
LaShaye: "Carly...Carly...I can't remember her last name...Carly...?"
(insert sound of little running feet, Shayla, the 2 year old, comes sprinting into the room)
Shayla: "CARLY SMIF-SON!" (she's two...the whole "th" sound in "Smithson" doesn't exactly come out right)

So they laugh and proceed to quiz her on all of the contestants on American Idol, and she can name every single one of them. And then they get to the last one...

LaShaye: "And who's your favorite? David...?"
Shayla: "Archu-LETA"

Anyway, so we all laugh and think its cute. Then I come home, and it turns out that my Mom has picked David "Archu-LETA" as her favorite as well. Which all is fine and dandy until it gets close to the finals...and she starts calling in to vote....and recruiting people to help her call in and vote...But my grandparents were in town last night, so I thought that we wouldn't have to do it. Then it turns out that they're big fans too and THEY wanted to vote, so we had 4 different phones calling in for David Archuleta last night. Not only did we have 4 different lines going at once. But I was on two cell phones at once...no joke. Two different cell phones each to a different ear. I voted 174 times. That sounds pretty impressive right?? And that's VOTES, not calls. I probably called well over 300 times. The things I do for my mother.

So, if you think that's ridiculous -- my Mom voted like 500 times or something insane like that. Seriously. In total, I think she told me that we had around 800 votes between all of us in the house. GO DAVID ARCHULETA! I told my mom if I go over on my cell phone minutes I'm blaming her...My family is crazy: from the grandparents down to the 2 year olds... :)

See what happens when you get stuck in Monticello for the summer?! You start going crazy. You start calling in votes for a 16 year old that you will never see in real life. I don't even think I would have done that back when I WAS 16...even if front row tickets to an NSYNC concert were at stake...Ok well, maybe if they had been FRONT ROW...