A New Bike and Civic Duties

ELI'S NEW BIKE!

Grandma and Papa brought Eli his very own big boy bike on Saturday.  Eli LOVES it.  He has already put several miles on it riding around the block and back and forth in front of our house.  He got a name plate with his name on it (one says Eli, the other Elijah) and he wanted to put the "Eh-yi-jah" (as he pronounces his name) one on his bike, after all a bike it not complete until it has a licence plate.  Here he is carefully watching where his wheels are going pre-licences plate.

I wanted to have one picture of him smiling, but requesting this always results in his cheeseball grin.  None-the-less, I think he's still a cutie.  Oh, and yes, he does have a Hot Wheels helmet.  Our little shopper was able to find it, probably because he always has his Hot Wheel radar on and found the one that came with the free car.  And yes.  He CAN tell you exactly which car he got with his helmet.  It's the purple one.  He informed me of this today.  And no, you cannot try to supplement with a different one.  He knows.  KNOWS!

He couldn't spend all of his time on his new bike.  Liam had his car out which meant Eli had to have his out too.

When they had enough of bikes and cars, it was clearly time to go for a spin in the wagon.  Liam climbed in and Eli loved pulling him.  He didn't want to share the pulling. 

MY CIVIC DUTY

Yesterday I had my first experience of being summoned for jury duty.  I can honestly say that I wasn't exactly thrilled to go, but was still interested in the process.  Knowing of others' experience with the process, I had my laptop with me ready to work on some things for school.  Unfortunately (?) I never got the opportunity to pull anything out and get anything done.  After sitting in the initial jury room for about 15-20 minutes, a judge came and greeted us to the Kent Regional Justice Center (RJC).  He was humorous and was fun to listen to. 

After watching a few videos explaining the process, which was really hard to listen to thanks to the two total chatterboxes behind me - not a word of English either by the way, but sure loud enough, a clerk came out and said they were randomly pulling 62 names for the first group to be selected from.  I did not make that group, however not 5 minutes after this group was pulled, as second group of 18 was called.  I was part of this group.  We went upstairs to a courtroom where we were greeted by another judge, a prosecutor, two defense attorneys, and the defendant.  Our judge was hilarious.  He was always thoughtful of the "jury" and explained everything to us in detail. 

The lawyers asked questions for a while, then we were asked to go to the deliberation room while they made the final cuts.  We went from 18 to 7 (one person was the alternate, however we had no idea who this person was going to be).  After being sworn in as jurors and listening to opening statements, we were off to lunch.  After lunch we listened to the first half of the witnesses and went home around 4:30.  Today we had to report to the courthouse by 9:00 when the trial was underway again.  At this time, we finished listening to witnesses, had lunch, then had closing statements.  Again, very interesting.  At this point, we, the jury, went back to the deliberation room, were chained in (seriously, there was a chain that spans the doorway-held on by magnets so not to be a safety hazard), and came up with out verdict: Not Guilty on both counts if you cared.  The whole process was pretty interesting and I'm glad that I participated and was chosen to be on a jury.  However, those poor people who were called in the initial 62, they were still trying to "Strike the Jury" (narrow down to their 12 jurors) today when we left.  Clearly that is a much more significant trial than ours was.  I am thankful I wasn't called for that group.

As for my fellow jurors, we had a great time together.  We laughed, a LOT, and definitely made the best of this experience.  Sadly, we had a pretty new group of attorneys....and we could all tell.   They were confused during the trial, the witnesses were....well....interesting to say the least, and caused for a lot of laughing when we could finally talk about the trial.  HAHA  Once we were dismissed today, four of us went to a shoe store at Kent Station and did a little shopping.  They liked my flip flops and two of them left with matching sandals.  LOL  They are by far the most comfortable pair I have EVER had.  There was more laughing, talking, and then we parted and went our separate ways.  These last two days were quite the experience and one that I will never forget.

Oh, and because I know you want to know....

The trial that I was a juror on was for two counts of violating a No Contact Order.  We felt like we were jurors for a set of middle school kids who couldn't solve a problem on their own.  The "victim's" witnesses testimonies didn't match and the state could not prove without a reasonable doubt that the defendant wasn't following the order.  There were too many inconsistencies and through the collection of witnesses, it sure sounds like he was doing his job and following the order and that she was trying to cause problems.  Hopefully this man has learned his lesson and will no longer frequent these places, even if he had been going there since before they started dating. If you want to avoid the drama, don't go!