7:30am Jeff wakes up wondering why the house is still quiet. Usually the whole family is awake at 6:30am. He checks around and finds that wife and daughter are still asleep. He then decides to take advantage of the time to pay some bills and plan the day.

8am Emily and Jeff wake Jasmine with some back tickles. Jasmine displays her best grumpy face at us and rolls over. Parents wonder if she is 6 or 16. Dad says, “Well I guess I will have to go to the festival alone today.” Jasmine yells “Wait for me!”

9am Family finishes breakfast. Jasmine gets her morning dose of cartoons including SpongeBob.

9:30am There are some strong negotiations on what to wear between Mom and Daughter in Jasmine’s bedroom.  Daughter emerges from her room ready for the day sporting some hip sunglasses.

10am Family makes their weekly visit to the library. Dad and Mom pick out books while Jasmine plays on the kids activity computer.

11:30am We arrive to the Parks and Rec Family Festival. The place is packed and full of activities. There are big lines for the attractions – Jasmine does a great job of being patient – better than her parents roasting in the hot sun. Jasmine admires the vintage car show, gets her face painted, does a little rock climbing, and conquers a bunch of inflatable toys.

3pm We are back home and relaxing on our back patio.  5 minutes later Jasmine proclaims “I’m bored”.

4pm Jasmine watches the movie Shaggy Dog while Emily looks at cookbooks. Jeff goes upstairs to take a nap.

6pm Dinner.

7pm Jeff and Jasmine head to the park to play and for a bike ride.

8:30pm Parents read Jasmine bedtime stories.

9pm Jasmine is asleep. Parents read before falling asleep as well.

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Jasmine had a great time visiting with her foster family and sister Destiny. Many activities were had from bike riding, duck wrangling, horse riding, movie watching, tree swinging, playgrounding and eating.

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We had a great time at the Bandon Animal Park. We went with Jasmine’s foster family mom Kristi, daughter Kara, son Devon, and foster daughter Destiny (Jasmine’s sister).

The highlight for me was the parks wonderful collection of wild cats. I really enjoyed looking up close at the lynxes, panthers, leopards, cougar, lions and bengal tigars. Not to mention all the baby wild cats the keepers brought out for us to view.

Word of warning though. You definitely have to watch your step, because the free ranging goats, llamas, and deer don’t care where they um do their business. And if you purchase an icecream cone full of grain to feed the animals, be prepared for a mini stampede, and watch out for the geese, they are vicious.

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We had a long weekend in Southern Oregon to visit Jasmine’s sisters and foster family. First up was a visit with Jasmine’s older sister Selena. We met for icecream. Jasmine let her eyes do the selecting and picked rainbow sherbet. Selena let her taste buds choose chocolate peanut butter. They both seemed happy with their selections. Due to the huge portions we all had trouble finishing and tummy aches were reported afterwords.

We enjoyed our visit with Selena and made plans to get together in the future.

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We headed to Rehobeth Beach for some summer fun. In attendance were my sister Hollie, her son Josh, sister Heather, her daughter Savannah, friend Rita, her daughter Madison, her son Cody and a bazillion other tourists.

First up was getting some boardwalk fries, pizza, and Nic-o-Boli’s at famous Nicolas Pizza. The place was packed, but we made it in and had a hectic but yummy dinner. Then we were off down the boardwalk to enjoy the scenery as we made our way to our destination of funland – a maze of kiddie and adult amusement rides.  After the kids were somewhat sated from many adrenalin pumping attractions, they did some running on the beach, and some of the kids even made into the Atlantic ocean, which was an unexpected surprise to some parents. We ended the trip with an icecream dessert with a beautiful backdrop of an ocean sunset.

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