We spent our first weekend with our new daughter Jasmine. We are so happy to welcome this beautiful little girl to our family.

When we first arrived at her foster home, Jasmine jumped into Emily’s arms. After a long embrace, she jumped down and then jumped back up into Jeff’s arms. Then she invited us outside with her friends Jaiden and Devon to walk a special path in the woods they made for us. As we soon found out, the path was optimized for 3 foot people, so we did much ducking and crawling. Speaking of ducks, Devon introduced us to his duck friends and we all took turns feeding them.

After lunch, Emily, Jeff and Jasmine had some alone time playing with the tree swing.  Jasmine squealed and giggled with delight as her new daddy pushed her way up in the air. But the festivities had to stop frequently to recover Jasmine’s boots, which had a tendency to fly off.

Then we settled down to snuggle on the couch to watch Alladin, staring Jasmine’s favorite character of none other than Princess Jasmine.

The next morning,  Emily and Jasmine did each others nails. And later Jeff and Jasmine had fun playing at the playground.

All too soon, the weekend was over. Thanks so much to foster mom Kristi and foster dad Ron for doing such an amazing job of nurturing Jasmine and inviting us into their wonderful home.

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My brother, John, asked about the pixie tree we mentioned in the last  blog entry. We had not included a picture of it. So, the next time Jeff and I went out for our walk we made sure to get a picture. Well, it appears that things have changed and the pixies have moved out and the gnomes moved in. They were not happy to see us. One of them came out and shook his fist at us and told us to get off of  his lawn. Yeah, those gnomes are bad news. When we find out where the pixies went, we will make sure to let everyone know.

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What’s a typical day like for us? Well here was our Saturday.

6:30am The cats are ready for their breakfast and insist we get up. In other words they meow, lick, and jump on us to get our attention. We pretend not to notice and try to sleep in. Jeff gives up the fight at 7am, Emily makes it to 8am after some heated negotiations.

9:30am We arrive at our chiropractor for our monthly adjustment. In the waiting room, Jeff reads the local paper and Emily enjoys a Good Housekeeping article about maximizing storage in your home. Jeff grows concerned about future purchases Emily will deem necessary.

10:30am Comfortably seated in a nice empty movie theater, we watch and critique the previews and ads. The new Star Trek movie is a must see. The others can wait for DVD. Emily is sipping coffee. Jeff munches on popcorn and drinks a special mixed drink — a soda with 1/2 cherry coke and 1/2 root beer.

1:30pm Wow, that was a long movie. Lots of cool effects. Some concern about the pacing… 4 out of 5 stars. We head to a local park to walk off those movie popcorn calories. The woods are soothing but the air is brisk and our ears are quite chilled after the walk. Emily spots a tree that she is sure at one time housed pixies. She is reading way too much fantasy lately.

2:30pm Hearing rumors of Sunday snow, we decide to go grocery shopping. Apparently every other person in the area made the same choice.

4:00pm Home again, we relax in the living room with our books and enjoy some afternoon sun peaking in through the clouds. Jeff is reading “PHP for the Web” — web programming — and “Parenting the Hurt Child, helping adoptive families heal and grow”. Emily is reading “Bunnicula” – a cult classic childrens book about the adventures of the family cat and dog as they try to expose the truth about the newly arrived family pet — a vampire bunny.  She is also reading “Unplugging power struggles : resolving emotional battles with your kids”.

5:00pm Time to feed the cats again.

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