Christmas times FOUR

Alright, here we go with Christmas time. Here's the kids christmas picture in front of the tree, very traditional annual pose for them. I could have probably had Ryan put on a clean shirt though, oopsie.
We have FOUR, yes count them FOUR Christmases. Here's how it goes.

Christmas #1, this was on December 20th - we call it Thanksmas. We got this idea from Aunt Carol and her gang on the east coast. Since we want to celebrate the holidays with our good friends, but we each have our own families to see, we started a Thanksmas tradition last year. This year we held our Second Annual Thanksmas with the Sinnott's and Winget's. Everyone had a great time and great food.

Here is Josh and Chris........
and here is me and hubby.....................

there's the boys...........Josh...Steve...and Alan.........................

now it's Jen and Steve...............................

my darling daughter...............Lauren............growing up way tooooo fast

everyone gathered around the dinner table. The little kids sat at their own table around the corner behind Allison in the foyer.................

the Sinnott boys............Collin and Evan..........

the Winget kids less 1.................Dylan, Allison and Lia........

my two.............Ryan and Lauren...........

That's Christmas #1 all wrapped up..............


Onto Christmas #2

This would be Christmas Eve at our house with my family..........Jim, Jackie, Udo, Kelly, Toni, Alysha, Gram, Jack, Heather and the four of us.......

From left to right we have Jack, Alan, Kelly, Udo and Alysha

Here are the kids with Opi, their grandpa...my stepdad....

Christmas #2 over and done.......

Here comes Christmas #3, the best one in my book since it's just the four of us at home opening gobs of presents from Santa and hanging out in our PJ's

The kids start the morning by making us breakfast in bed to wake us up. They made english muffins, cut up apple, coffee for Alan and OJ for me. Yummy, yummy in the tummy

Then it's onto presents, presents and more presents.......

Ryan looks like he did ok.......

This is the framed golf score card that Deacon Jones signed for Alan. More info on that one in the November happenings post below.

Lauren opening her Nintendo DS.....

here's me with 4 Brighton boxes, yup four of them. Alan got me gift certificates to Brighton so I could go have some fun in the store. He knows how much I love their stuff. He gave me one box and I had to look around the house for the other 3, they were hidden in plain sight but it was so very wonderful of him to do this. What a great guy he is. I went shopping at Brighton after Christmas, they actually had a few items on sale (that never happens there) and I got a necklace, bracelet and a wonderful black purse. I can't believe I found a purse that I could get and not have a complete heart attack over the price. The necklace wasn't on sale but the other two things were. Yeah for me..........

Look Santa brought us the Wii...................including the Wii Fit...

and we be Wii-ing................go Alan.....

go Ryan......

and last but definitely not least is Christmas #4

This is the Carpenter family Christmas. We went to Leslie's house on the 25th in the afternoon to celebrate with Alan's folks and family.

We got a Tripoley card game for the family to play. The Carpenter's have always been big on card games and this was one that the Sinnott's showed us. It's lots of fun to play and the kids can play it too, less the poker hand anyway......

look at these two, are they into Christmas or what????????????? I had to do a double take when I first saw Ernie with that hat.......

Thank you all for sharing my family and friends with me. Hugs to all, Kim

Oh So Late on my happenings ---- here's some late November news

Amazingly enough, Lauren went to yet another Jonas Brothers concert. This was her fourth in 2008. Her friend Jamie invited her to go to the Hollywood Palladium to see the Teen Pop sensations yet one more time for 2008. She's already hinting that they are going to tour again in 2009 but I'm not looking for another $300 plus concert. Can you blaim me, I've done 3 of these with her and was very happy to sit this one out.

Alan went golfing with his buddy in Anaheim hills and ended up paired up with Deacon Jones. He was in the football hall of fame in the 80's. He was so thrilled and had one of his best rounds of golf ever. Deacon signed his score card and took pictures with guys so for christmas I framed the score card and picture for him.
Very Cool.................

Then of course we had Turkey Day. We hosted and had Alan's side of the family over along with our good friends the Sinnott's. Here is Alan's turkey which tasted amazing. Thanks Jen for taking all the pictures as I fell down on the picture taking job.

We all had a great time and sat around after dinner playing cards. We haven't done that in forever.

Here is Lauren and Evan

and Ryan with Collin

This is Lauren and Jamie, the same Jamie that took Lauren to the Jonas concert. Through her dad's girlfriends best friends connection (complicated huh?) the girls were able to participate in a recording for the Jonas Brothers 3D Concert Movie that is coming out in Feb or March. Unfortunately the Jonas Brothers were not there but the girls had a blast, plus they got paid $135 for a couple of hours of time. I'm sure they would have been happy to be the ones paying for the chance to do this. We can't wait for the movie and soundtrack to come out so we can listen to see if there is anyway to pick them out of the background vocals.

This was just a silly pictures we took while at Red Robin restaurant in the mall during a shopping trip. We went to have dinner there and this GIANT bird was there. Lauren is taking after her Omi (my mom) and had her camera in her purse so we could take a picture.

Last but not least, here are the kids at halloween. Lauren was Marilynn Monroe and Ryan was a ninja. We went trick or treating with the Sinnott boys and Lauren's friend Stephanie who was a red crayola crayon. They all looked great and got lots of candy.

Hope everyone is well. Love to all, Kim

Soccer Days

Today was Lauren's last game for this season of AYSO soccer, but not to worry she made it onto the high school team so we have lots of soccer to look forward to. Grandma and Grandpa just happened to stop by after church to visit and decided to stay and go to the field to watch the game with us. Here is a picture of them with Ryan as the game was getting ready to start. It was pretty chilly out today plus very windy so everyone was bundled up.

This is a picture of Lauren's team, she is number 28 in the yellow scrimage shirt. Lauren plays goalie so she has to wear a shirt over her uniform so the ref and other team know she's the goalie.

The coach took her out of goal toward the end of the game since one of the other girls couldn't run due a hurt thigh muscle. So Lauren got to get on the field and run a bit which was a treat to see since she is normally in goal.

This is a picture of Ryan, the red one on the left, at one of his games a couple of weeks ago. He has a funny look on his face but that's ok.

On a different note, I made a couple of quick cards today. I was getting my October birthday cards ready to mail out today and wanted one with a bicycle for my brother and one with a motorcycle for our friend Steve. This is what I came up with, hopefully they'll like them.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is well.

Love, Kim

Galaxy Soccer Game

On September 20th we went to see the Galaxy Soccer game at the Home Depot Center. They have AYSO days which is the league of soccer that both the kids play in each year. The 20th was the night for our region so the kids received free tickets and we bought tickets for the adults. It was lots of fun. I was very excited as it was the first professional sports event I have ever attended. We met up with some friends at the arena. Lauren's team ended up with 7 of the players attending, so the girls of course had a great time. Especially screaming for Beckham.

This is Beckham.

Here is Alan and Lauren's coach, Mark, also a good friend. They look like they're having fun, what's not to like - a beer and a hot dog!!!

Here are the girls that went. From the top left it's Kirsten, Lauren, Hannah, Julia, Taylor, Kimia and the bottom is Abby (she's not on our team but all the girls have played together for 10 years now so they're all friends) and Alexis.

Here is Ryan with Collin

and last but not least here is Alan and I. This of course is taken as a self portrait with the long arm stretch for the picture which is why we look ohhhh soooo lovely.

It was a great night. I definitely can't wait until the next time we go.

Love to all, Kim

Mini San Diego Family Vacation

We went to San Diego for a mini vacation since we didn't get away this summer. This is the first vacation we have taken in a few years that Alan's folks weren't with us and I must say it was kind of weird. The kids tried to get away with grandmas catch all motto of "We're on Vacation, anything goes" but it didn't work for them. I kept telling them that only works when grandmas there.
We went down for three days. On the third day we were supposed to see a Chargers pre-season football game. We were all excited to see it and then Lauren and I both got what we think was food poisoning. I started first, I tried so hard to keep going and not miss the game but in the end I just couldn't do it. We drove home early, which was fun with not feeling well on a 3 hour drive. Lauren started feeling sick on the way home. Poor Lauren threw up all night and felt horrible, I luckily did not. We both felt really bad the next day and took it easy. The day after that the kids started school and I had to go back to work, lucky us.
So our vacation, we did a ton of stuff. We went to the Wild Animal Park, The Festival of Sail, the Birch Aquarium, The Air & Space Museum and the Auto Museum.

Here's Alan in front of a motorcycle which was the first motorcycle he had when he was a kid. Look at that big grin.
The kids playing around at the Auto Museum.

This is at the Air & Space Museum. They had a Star Trek exhibit which we went to also but weren't aloud to take pictures. That was really neat. Both Alan and I always liked Star Trek so it was neat to see all the movie props.

Can you tell that this was at the aquarium???? No that's not a real shark eating us, ha ha.

Here is Lauren doing her Titanic impression. The Festival of Sail was happening while we were there so we went to explore. There were about 20 large sailing ships there. We bought the passports to go onboard them but only went to about half before Ryan had had enough of ships. It was neat to see the ships, but I was pretty much done too. Seen one sail boat, seen them all.

That wheel is awfully big, Ryan looks so small standing next to it.

Here is one of the ships. Most of them were like this though there was a Russion submarine that we toured too.

Here's the Wild Animal Park. Look matching hats. It was hot and we forgot hats soooo, we had to buy some.

So I opted for no hat, Alan got another hat to add to the River hat collection.

The jungle kids.......................

And here we have Ryan on his first day of school with Trent. Ready to start 3rd grade. He's grown up so fast. Lauren started 9th grade high school but didn't want me to take a picture. I wonder why.

That's all for now.

Night all, Kim

More Happening for August

I turned the big 40 on the 22nd so we went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse with our wonderful friends for a nice adult only dinner.

I wore my new Brighton sandals that my wonderful in-laws gave me for my birthday and a cute top that I bought while out shopping with Ruth. I even changed my earrings, which I haven't done in probably 10 years. Mind you I haven't put earrings back in since the dinner, see how bad I am about that, that's why I just leave my hoops in and never take them out.














They even got me to taste an alcoholic beverage, the the always DD. As you can see by my face I wasn't impressed. Here are picture of our great night, Jen & Steve, Chris & Josh and Alan & me.

Lots of Happenings

Well I must say that August has been a super busy month. Here's the latest on the Carpenter clan in no particular order..........

The kids finished camp at Shoup Park Camp Sharwood

Here's Ryan with a couple of his counselors and a CIT



This was Lauren's first year as a CIT (counselor in training) at Camp Sharwood which she attending for 7 years as a camper. She worked (for free since CIT's don't get paid) for two 40 hour weeks.

Lauren took 6 weeks of summer school to get ahead this summer. She took one of her 9th grade classes early so that she would have a fun elective staring high school. She took Spanish as her first elective and since she went to summer school and got rid of one class she is able to also take Design in Glass as her fine art requirement.

We celebrated our usual mass of August Carpenter birthdays.


Here is a picture of Ryan with Aunt Honey who turned 95 this year.



Here is Kippy and me, both with August birthdays.





Carol this one's for you. Here is a nice picture of my wonderful in-laws, aren't they just the bomb!!!


We finally did it, the remodel is done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All that's left is to call for the final inspection but one of us needs to be home for that one. Alan's been traveling and I'm at work so maybe next week one of us can be home so we can get the final sign off. Keep your fingers crossed that the inspector signs off and doesn't want us to do anything else.

Here is our gorgeous frameless shower door, isn't it a thing of beauty. You know it is, go ahead and admit it. Towel bars are hung up, the mirrors are over the vanity, all that's left is some shopping with Ruth to get some things to pretty up the bathroom.

Here is the laundry room with the last of the door trim and baseboard done. We had to do jam extentions on this door which we thought would be a bear. We borrowed my brother Udo's table saw and it really wasn't bad at all, turned out really good too if I do say so myself.

Of course we're both trying to figure out what project is next. Stay tuned, there will definitely be another project on the horizon.

I took Ryan miniature golfing this month with Christine and the kids. They played miniature golf, did the bumper cars and bumper boats as well as played laser tag. So much to do when you go to Golf N Stuff, it's not just golf. Who'd of thunk it.


















Well there is installment number one of the August happenings.


Hope everyone is well. Love to all, Kim