Jury Duty and Broken Kites

I was summoned for jury duty on Monday.  I'd been avoiding it for years by mailing back excuses, but finally they got me.  The night before a scene from "The Grinch" kept running through my mind.  The one where he is in the mail room throwing jury duty letters into The Whos mailboxes just to make them miserable.  Adam was able to stay home with the kids, with the hope that I'd be home before 11.  It was a long process involving some very uncomfortable chairs, but I'm grateful for what I learned.  I went into a courtroom with a group of 35 other jurors.  The judge said the trial would probably last for 3 or 4 days and I knew I had to get out of there.  One mom raised her hand and said she had a kindergartner that she had to pick up and the judge was rather unmerciful.  He just told her to find some help.  So I knew I couldn't use that excuse, but I was ready with the pregnancy card.  I could have lied and said I was ready to puke right there in his courtroom, but I couldn't muster the courage.  I just told him I was pregnant and nauseous and he pretty much told me to sit tight.  It was horribly nerve racking to communicate with him (me on one end of the courtroom and him on the other, plus my wimpy voice doesn't carry) in front of all those people.  Then they called up a group of 25 jurors (luckily not me) and started asking lots of questions.  The judge and each lawyer got a turn to drill these people to see if they would be qualified for this particular trial.  I sat and listened and wondered how I would respond to issues like illegal immigration, housing fraud, etc.  But when they said a juror would have to be able to say "not guilty" if the evidence was not there to prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" (even if you thought he/she was guilty as sin) I wondered if I could really do that.  I'm grateful for our legal system but I'm more grateful that I don't have to be there to make those decisions day after day.  At noon the judge set me free and I rushed back home to relieve Adam.  

On Tuesday we were walking Sierra home from school and stopped by to visit the Bishop (who lives two doors down).  He and his wife were cleaning out their garage and they gave my girls two kites they no longer needed.  It was a perfect day for kite flying.  


Kaia did a great job, but lost interest after a few seconds. She spend most her time on the swings pretending to be a kite.

I thought I'd capture a Sierra meltdown for posterity's sake. Somehow a vitally important piece of her kite became lost and she was beside herself.

Mom saves the day by using a stick to fix the kite. Moments later Mom is the enemy again because kite broke while Mom was flying it. Sierra grumbled that she wished Kaia's kite was broken too. Moments later it was. And that was the end of that.

My favorite blog post of all time: here