The Dismissal!

After a lot of waiting, watching Top Gear on the laptop, blogging and anything else I could think of to waste time, I was dismissed by the defense. The case was a domestic violence one. I didn't know any of the attorneys or witnesses. Dang! I did find out that one of the other jurors was a neighbor. I think I was dismissed because when the prosecution asked if anyone had heard of the "cycle of abuse" I raised my hand. Still, though, I wasn't dismissed for a while after that. The prosecution approved the jury as it stood twice before I was let go. I almost jumped and did the happy dance when the defense said, "And we'd like to thank and dismiss juror number 11." There were some interesting moments. One guy immediately said that he had a problem with domestic violence and that he had no leniency for a guy beating on a girl. ZIP. I wonder who ended up serving? Well, I'm done for the year now. YAY! Cousins Conference starts tonight and Emily and Madelyn are gearing up for that. Spencer had his 13th birthday on Tuesday and received an underwater camera which he loves. Rich and I are still working on plans for the Rancho house and making progress. Beams and shear walls seem to be an issue lately but we have it solved now. Mormon prom is next Saturday as are volleyball tournaments for both Madelyn and Melissa. That should be a challenging weekend. Then BYU women's conference for me! YAY!! I can hardly wait!

Here I sit.

Here I sit in  a jury assembly room waiting for who knows what. My original reporting date was 3/23 and I was able to get it postponed until this week 4/13. It complicated how long we could be out of town for spring break. If I had known that I wouldn't be called in to serve until today at 12:30pm we could have goofed off more in Brian Head or at Franks's house in Henderson. I used to never report but then the government started issuing fines for no shows. Anyway, here I am waiting. At least they have wi-fi here. Cool. Here's another beef I have with jury service. The government pays you $15 per day for your service. If I was a gov't employee I would be paid my normal salary whether I'm there doing my job or here on a jury. I think that either each juror should be paid an equal amount regardless of employment status. No more jury pay for anyone. Nor should anyone else. Make it a true act of  civil service. Equal pay for equal work.  The current system favors juries to be filled by public employees which to me seems slanted in the liberal direction. Ok so now the jury guy just came in and said that he's not going to do orientation until there are at least 60 of us. There are 23 right now and I don't think the number is going to increase anytime soon. I'll probably sit here until 5pm and then go home and probably come back tomorrow. Oh joy.

That's my girls!

Here's a funny video!

News from Allen, Texas

We received a brief email from Collin this morning. Here's a bit of it.

Hey Mom,
hows it going. Everything is going well. I am in Allen
Texas, serving in the 2nd and 4th wards with Elder
Gifford. I am the senior companion, and it is a bit
different. Well, lets see Elder Gifford is from north
California, and is 22. He went on his mission late
because he had some medical issues that needed to be
resolved first.
so Allen is suburbia. and the members are pretty
concentrated. the wards are also very young and upper
middle class to just plain upper class. There are some
huge houses out here.
So here we email form the library, but not today
because we cant get a library card yet.
my favorite talk was either elder L. tom Perry's
talk on member missionary work, which is what we need,
or Elder Holland's talk. it was very spiritual.
There was a lot of stuff about temples.
Conference was awesome. we live with some members.
oh and we were double transfered in because we took over
the area from some sisters. obviously just 1 sister
couldnt leave.right now we have to go. i love you all
very much. i hope you are all doing well
Love,
Elder Collin Brown

Some new stuff.

I just posted a new slideshow of some of the recent things we have been doing. Tennis is there and also volleyball and California All state honor choir. Collin sent some new pictures and some of those are on as well. Collin's big news this week is that he has finally been transferred. Took a little longer than we all expected it would. We don't know where he is yet but will find out Monday sometime. He did know that it was a double transfer. That means that both elders will be brand new to the area. He said that it would be a lot of work but that's what they're there for. He spent 7 months in Quitman. Wow! That's more than a quarter of his mission. Here is an excerpt from a letter. 

oh, and something cool to note. We had dinner with the Stewarts the other day and got to talking, They talked about an exchange student from Sweden they had over here for a while and they went with her back and visited her family. I asked what part of Sweden and they said a tiny island called Gotland. Then i asked where in Gotland and they said Visby. So i met some people in Texas that have been to Visby. The foreign exchange student lived inside the wall somewhere. It was pretty cool. Its the first time i have met anyone who knows where Gotland is, much less to have actually been there.

So i got a bunch of emails to read and then a bunch of things to do to finish packing.

He also sent home a name tag of his. It's cool. He knows a lady that has a bunch displayed on her mantle on little stands. They're from her children and grandchildren. Fun.

Life goes on!

Consumed by tennis

It seems like lately our whole family has been consumed by tennis. From March 9-21 we were very involved in the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Ca. It's really quite fun but VERY consuming. Madelyn, Spencer and I all participate as ball kids or coordinator. Emily's choir works a concession stand in the stadium so she volunteers there. Everyone else comes and watches. Alec, our good friend from Finland, came and stayed with us during the tournament and we really enjoyed having him. Madelyn and Spencer were both invited back to work the final weekend this year and they were both happy about that. Madelyn got to be Rafael Nadal's towel girl on more than one occasion and  both she and Spencer got lots of autographs from high ranked players. I got to work stadium for the first time and my teams did well. They're all really great kids to work with and it's fun to see them year after year. Some of them come from far away and some are local kids. This year I had one girl nearly pass out while on court. She collapsed and myself and another person caught her before she was completely out. The chair stopped play and sent someone over to help. She apparantly hadn't eaten anything that  morning yet and that was the cause of her collapse. I made her take 2 bites of a banana and kept her out for a while. Her mother showed up soon thereafter and took it from there. I later told my other teams that if they ever felt sick on court to just sit down. I don't want anyone to hurt themselves by falling over and hitting their head or knocking teeth out. YIKES! That would be bad. We had some real fun stuff happen. Alec knows Jarkko Nieminen who is a player and Teemu Selanne who is a hockey player. They're all finnish. Anyway, so Teemu and his wife, Sirpa, came out and watched Jarkko's match with Alec, Rich and Spencer. I requested to work that court for the day so I was there with Madelyn on my team. It was great fun. Later, Jarkko was playing Blake on stadium and we had regular tickets given to us by Alec from Jarkko. Now the best part of this is that we could cheer. when you're in uniform you can't cheer for either player. So that night we were in normal clothes so we cheered very loudly! Alec taught us how to say "good" in finnish so we would yell that out whenever possible. People gave us ugly looks. Especially because Jarkko was playing an American. We were the only ones cheering for Jarkko in the stadium. It was fun. We were loud!

Collin has been doing great and we 're thinking that he will probably get transferred this coming Monday. He will be notified on Saturday if he does get transferred. He said that there has been a lot of rain lately and that he and his comp got stuck in the mud in front of a members house. It took quite a while to get out but eventually they did. All is well with our family and hope all is well with you and yours.

It's Been A Month!

Well... I looked on the dashboard and noticed that the last post was a really long time ago, so I'll just tell you all what's going on. :)
Mom and Dad are both very preoccupied with the new house and painting rooms, doing repairs, etc. Since the new house has every kind of citrus you can think of, Mom has been looking at citrus recipe books. On Sunday, we made lemon snaps (she and I) and they were really really good.
Collin continues to serve and teach on his mission. In his most recent email, he told us that he had been speeding around a corner because he had been trying to pass three cars and he got pulled over. As for me, I think he is kind of justified, since he was passing three cars and that's really hard to do at a normal speed (on a two lane highway, nonetheless). Rightly, though, Mom sent him a post card (in the style of Molly Weasley's Howlers) telling him to obey the laws and only then will the Lord protect him.
I got in to BYU, for everyone who doesn't know yet! I am very excited and have been looking at housing. I plan on participating in the Honors Program and double majoring in English and Music Composition. Also, All State Honor Choir is at the end of this month and if anyone wants to go, it's in Pasadena and I can give them more information.
Madelyn is doing volleyball and she had a tournament on Saturday. She made it into the Drama Showcase coming up with a speech by Winston Churchill. She and Spencer are starting ball kids next week, so you're sure to see a lot of posts on that by Mom.
Spencer made his school play as a character named Dusty (it's a cowboy show). He is very excited and it's kind of special, since it's hard to get in to plays as a 7th grader. He is always making noises with his voice and his hands, which makes it hard to read and stuff. He's really funny and can make everybody laugh.
Melissa is also doing volleyball and likes to bump/set/spike her volleyball in the house. She also likes to play with the neighbor's dogs a lot, causing speculation as to where she is a lot of the time. She draws a lot and today she had to take a state writing test. It was a narrative about what she would do if she were principal for a day. She said she would have a giant water party, no class all day, and free dress.
Well, I guess you're caught up for now! :)

Scavenging

"Crud, forgot my lunch" I groaned as I walked down the aisle with my friend, Albane, from Algeria. "Forgot mine too." he grumbled. So we started off on the hunt. "Derek, can we eat your sandwich." His sandwich was like cake. White bread, marshmallow fluff and peanut butter. Good food. Yes! We got the sandwich and split it 2 ways.  Visit www.superspencersports.blogspot.com to find out what I do next.

The pick up

On Wednesday morning I witnessed something sort of interesting for me. I watched an illegal immigrant get arrested, detained or whatever you call it. I was on my morning run/walk that I do most Wednesdays and about 1/2 mile into it there were a few vehicles pulled to the side. A police car, a border patrol car and the alleged bad guy car. At the moment I ran past they had this guys hands behind his head and were handcuffing him. He was in tears. He was wearing a chef's uniform. The black pants and white jacket. He had been driving a metallic blue sporty looking car. Anyway, it was weird. I didn't want to look to close. I know that most of the time I am of the opinion that if indeed he is here illegally he knew that this scenario was possible. For a brief moment my heart went out to him. I wondered if he had a wife and kids who would be wondering where he was. I have noticed that since this economic downturn I see border patrol cars in the area more often than I ever did before. Hmm. Maybe no one wants to cross lately so they've shifted agents here. Makes me think of a scripture in the BOM in 2 Nephi 1:6. I quote,  "Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall ^anone come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord." 

That's interesting to me. Lehi is speaking about this land of Liberty. Makes me wonder about everybody.

Life goes on.

Here it is January 2009! Life is busy and I'm currently sitting in my car outside of the building where Spencer has piano lessons. Someone in said building has an unlocked wi-fi so I've hitched a ride onto the internet to blog. This building is also next to a municipal airport and 3 private jets have taken off in the 20 minutes that I've been sitting here. I love listening and watching airplanes take off! Ok. So about Christmas. Everything was great. Our telephone call from Collin was great. We recorded it on the mac and I've gone back and listened to it twice. It's just good to hear his voice. He sounds the same. Even the slightly annoyed part when we were all talking at once. He is doing well and did not get transferred on Monday the 5th of January. He told us in his weekly email that when he does get transferred  he will have spent 1/4 of his mission in Quitman. He and his comp had 4 more baptisms over the weekend. They're having success there. He gave Melissa a Texas Longhorn shirt for Christmas. She likes it and it looks good on her. Especially with the old cowboy boots we have. 

Emily is working hard towards everything. She made California All State Honor Choir! Yipee! She will perform in March in Pasadena. Should be fun. Her most notable Christmas present was a bicycle. It is an Electra Alexander Girard Art bike called the "Madonna." It has LOTS of personality and little old ladies roll down their car windows when they see her and say stuff like, "You have a beautiful bike!" It's true too.

Madelyn is playing club volleyball and also got a cool bike for Christmas. Her's is the same make but a different model. It's called the red tulip or something like that. It's bright yellow with red tulips painted all over it. Cool. In volleyball she is the setter. Her coach asked her if she wanted that position and she declined at first. She wanted to be a hitter. They had a conversation about it and she understood that he sees things that she can't. He told her that he thought she had the presence of mind to be a good setter so she happily accepted. Now she practices setting over and over and over and over and over....

Spencer wants to do everything and we're trying to find the time to let him do just that.  I do wish that everything was a bit closer. He received a lego train for Christmas and our ward missionaries helped him put it together on Christmas morning. It has lots of track. He loves playing with his cousins.

Melissa had a blast playing with her cousins over New Years and wishes that she could have brought home one of their puppies. 

Just some other notes. We made a real quick trip to AZ to spend New Years at my sister's house. We stayed up until 2 am, shot off fireworks and ate too much junk food. Rich rode his bike all over the Phoenix metro area and ended up on the new light rail system there. He said it was fun.

I got the bike I had hoped for and it truly is a beautiful bike. I hope to have Emily, Madelyn and I ride our bikes in a local bike event in February. 

We went and saw 2 movies over break. Marley and Me and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Marley and me wasn't what I expected. It's more of an adult movie than a kid movie. Benjamin Button was great!