Oh no----------Ruth

I wanted to add that my wonderful mother in law fractured her left arm right below the shoulder in 3 places a week ago.
My in-laws were coming over for dinner on Saturday the 18th and stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up dessert. On the way out of the store Ruth slipped, on what we don't know - she is blaming her tennies - and she fell. Some wonderful patrons helped her. Of course she being the person she is, just asked them to put her purse on the other arm and went to the car. She then preceeded to drive to our house, don't you think she could have called us? We got Ernie and his oxygen inside and all set and then I took her to the emergency room. After not too long actually, we had x-rays done and a sling since the area can't be casted.

She is quite a bit of pain but is doing ok. Lauren spent the night with them on that Saturday to help them and stayed all day Sunday, I drove them home of course and stayed to help Ruth change and get Ernie's breathing treatments done. Kippy came out the next day and stayed until Tuesday night. The guards changed and Leslie pretty much moved in. She has been there since last Tuesday and plans to stay until Ruth is feeling less pain and can get off the vicodin a bit since she can't drive. The orthopedic doctor looked at the x-rays and said there were 3 fractures when the emergency room doctor only said one. So as usual, when Ruth does it she does it good.

There you go. We thought we were done with 3 hits to the family for this year already with Honey passing, Lewis passing and Ernie in the hospital but nooooooo. Maybe the 4th is the charm for us this year. Let's hope so.

Love to all,
Kim

Tennessee Spring Break

Tennessee you might ask. Why? I know it's not a top destination spot for Spring break but that's where we headed. Actually my dad lives in Tennessee, about an hour south and a bit west of Nashville. I haven't seen him in 12 years and hadn't spoken to him in about 6 years before this past Christmas. I sent him a picture Christmas card of the kids and that's how we re-connected. After talking with him over the past few months we decided to go see his farm. We've always wanted to see Nashville, remember we're the country music lovers. So why not go do both???? We were definitely nervous, the last time I saw him I was 28 and now I'm 40, what a shocker that must have been for him :-)

We all had a great time, it was such fun and sooooo relaxing. In fact I'm planning another visit in June when the kids get out of school.

Here is a picture of the farm from a flattened area up a hill where his house will be built at some point. Quite a farm huh?
Here is my lovely family. The kids got to ride (well sit on and walk around) on a horse a couple of times. The building in the background is a garage for a semi truck and motor home on the right half and one of the stables on the first floor of the left half and the second floor has 4 one bedroom apts and a 4 bedroom apt. We stayed in the 4 bedroom one on the far left end with a great balcony. Alan sat on the balcony and did lots of reading.

This is my dad...

Roman taught Ryan to drive the tractor and a Kobuto (which is some other type of little farm truck). Ryan loved it to say the least.

This is the apartment we stayed in looking into the living room from our bedroom. On the left side are three more bedrooms. This place is bigger than my house and it's an apt.

We hung out at the farm and visited the horses a bunch, there are lots there. The kids rode, got to know their Opa. We took a tour at the Jack Daniels Distillery, saw a show at the Grand Ole Opry which was amazing. The kids and me all got cowboy boots too.

Keep reading below on the next post for some more stuff.

Hugs to all, Kim

Long time no post

Let's start with SOCCER - my life is not complete without soccer soccer soccer. We went to the opening game of the Womens Professional Soccer game for the LA Sol team. This is part of Lauren's tournament soccer team. The girls had fun as always.
and our three coaches had fun too. The beer was a flowing.....

Now onto Ryan. He has been busy with his first year in Cub Scouts. Here is a picture of him at the Irwindale Speedway for a Nascar evening. The boys had a great time. Lauren and I thought it was a bit cold and very loud, but still fun.

Here is Ryan as the Sun in his 3rd grade play. He sang beautifully and had some great moves to boot

Lastly, this is a picture of him getting his bobcat badge in his scout den. He has since earned his bear badge but that has not been presented yet. I think they only do the big "paint your face" ceremony for the bobcat badge so the rest should be a bit cleaner.

Hope everyone is well. Love and hugs to all,

Kim

Country, country, country - music that is

We had a wonderful weekend, how about you?
Alan and I went out on Sunday night. We had a great dinner at Maggiano's restaurant and then went to Universal City Walk to the Gibson Amphitheater to see a Brooks & Dunn concert.

It was an amazing concert, the first non Jonas Brothers concert I have been to. Prior to my three Jonas Brothers concerts in 2008 I hadn't been to a concert since Neil Diamond pre-Lauren. Now that was a long time ago.

Here's a great shot of the guys......they sounded perfect live. I will say they're getting a tad old but boy can they sing.

REBA WAS THERE. What a shock that was. She sings a verse on their song "Cowgirls Don't Cry" and she was there to do it live. She was great, but I wish she would have come out at the end to sing a song. Guess we'll have to buy tickets to her concert some day.
Here's the goofy "I'm taking my own picture" shot. But what else is there to do when it's just the two of us. Look how happy we are, and this was before the concert started. Just imagine what we looked like afterwards. It was so late by the time we got home that we felt bad for Ruth and Ernie since they stayed with the kids. Suprisingly they were awake when we got home, I thought for sure they'd be out. I recorded some of the songs on my phone and Lauren has been having fun listening to them. She likes country music, it's hard not to when you grow up listening to it, though she won't admit it to any of her friends. She was mad when I bought the tickets for Alan for Christmas, since she wasn't going with us. She also didn't like it when I commented about it everytime one of their songs came on the radio......gee I wonder why.

You know I can't have a blog entry without soccer. Without further ado, here is the soccer blurb...

High school season has come and gone but never fear, tournament season is here. There was a soccer banquet for the high school teams and Lauren got an award for most improved player on her frosh team. Well yeah, of course she's most improved. When you're the goalie and you get shot on 20+++++ times per game of course you're going to get better. :-) This picture has all three of the teams in it (a few people were missing but most are there). The second from the right in the back row is Mariam, Lauren's coach, and Lauren is laying in front (what a silly girl she is)

Anywho, that's all for now.

Night all, Kim

Yeah-We WON......

Hello all, happy valentine's day.

Here is Lauren's school soccer team after their first win at the last game on Thursday. What an exciting last game they had. The parents went nuts after they scored and I must say that the other teams spectators looked at us a bit funny, it was only a goal after all. We had to explain that not only had we not won a game all season (we tied two though), we had only had 2 goals the entire season so this was huge for us. They held onto the one goal lead for the entire second half and won their first game, it happened to be the last game of the season too. Way to go Lauren!!!!!!!! (Lauren is on the left of Sarah who is in the red jacket)

We had the memorial service for Aunt Honey last weekend, though it was sad it was a day to celebrate the amazingly wonderful life she had. What an amazing woman she was.Here's an old picture of her in a tree, imagine that....

Here she is getting the Florence Nightingale award in Nicaragua.

We had three cousins come in from out of town, Jimmy on the left is from Colorado, he had been out before so it was great to see him again. Ryan is holding little Owen (Erin's son).

Here are the girls, Meghann in green and Erin on the right end. We had never met them before and feel very blessed to have them in our lives now. It was wonderful to spend time getting to know each other. The girls both live in Washington state.

Of course the kids had a great time with baby Owen, who latched onto Ryan big time. They had a great time playing at Grandma and Grandpas house.

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

Hugs to all, Kim

Soccer, soccer, soccer...............

Lauren is my soccer star...........................
She has played in AYSO soccer for 10 years, she was asked to play on an AYSO Tournament team this year which will start in a couple of weeks and run through June plus she made it onto her high school Freshman/Sophmore soccer team. Not bad for a 9th grader.

The high school season is coming to a close, next week Thursday is the last game. Ryan and I have been at every game, rain or shine. Yes they do play in the rain, I think the only thing that will stop the game is lightning. The weather man calls for rain tomorrow so we might be huddled under the umbrella once more to watch and take pictures.

I am VERY proud of Lauren, though her team has not won a game but we finally tied at yesterdays game, Lauren has gotten better with each game. She plays goalie and has only been taken out of one game for about 10 minutes, other than that she has played full time in goal. She can't help but get better when she gets shot on 10-20 times or more per game.

Here are some pictures of her games. In this first picture (the goalie is in the blue shirt) she is diving to save a goal and she was successful (in the rain no less)

Walking up to meet us after the game. Ryan went running up to meet her!!

Practice before a game. The girls take lots of shots on goal for her to practice. This is one of MANY for practice.

This was at yesterdays game, she is the one wearing the yellow scrim shirt (it was too hot for the long sleeve blue goalie shirt). You can see the ball in the air and she is starting to jump to block it from a corner kick, with her knee up the way Alan taught her to protect herself from a player trying to get in her way. She had 3 or 4 corner kicks in a row here and saved everyone of them.

Here she is with one of the defenders, Rachel.

Hugs to all,

Kim

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