Birthdays Times Three

Aunt Carol this ones for you...here is a picture of Ruth and Ernie tonight when we all got together to celebrate some Carpenter birthdays. My wonderful and beautiful mother in law and my dapper (even with the breathing thingy) father in law. Love you guys.
Ernie's birthday was on April 8th. Leslie asked him what he wanted to his birthday, he said a bottle of Absolut vodka to which Ruth said absolutely not (haha). Instead she got him a box filled with little bottles of all different kinds of vodka, just as good I think.

Alan's birthday was April 26th. We always say that we are turning into our parents, well Ruth wanted to make that so with Alan so she gave him a package of underwear since Ernie seems to get those at all his birthdays and Christmas. Uh-la-la, them are some sexy BIKINI briefs, wonder if they'll end up at the bottom of a drawer!! (this picture is a little fuzzy, sorry)

Leslie's birthday was on May 16th. We all went in together and got Leslie the Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device. Alan and I both have one and they are amazing. We have both been reading like crazy, not too much watching TV lately. If you haven't seen it, check it out at amazon.com. Anyway, since Les loves to read this was a must have for her. She was so surprised, she had no idea it was coming. I hope she gets lots and lots of use out of it.

That's it for the birthdays. We all had fun and ate tooooo much. I had two helpings of strawberry shortcake, oh oh, and Ruth makes the absolute best one around with tons of whipped cream and strawberries layered and layered. Um um good.

Night, Kim

Cub Scouts Memorial Day Flag Planting

Today I took Ryan to the Veterans National Cemetary with his Cub Scout Pack. For the eighth year the Boy Scouts & Girl Scouts have been coming to the cemetary on Memorial Day weekend to plant flags at all of the grave sites. This is no small endeavor. The cemetary is 105 acres and there are 85,00 grave sites including 14 medal of honor recipients. It was an amazing experience (at least I think so). Here is Ryan with his Pack Flag....

They had to address the grave site, which Ryan did by reading the persons name out loud and we read what state they came from or in a few cases what country they came from. Then he planted the flag in the ground...
then he had to salute the person and move onto the next grave. Ryan went through a little over 3 bundles of flags and I think each bundle was about 20-25 flags.
This is a picture looking out at the cemetary prior to the event starting

This is looking forward after the planting was completed. It took about 20 minutes to mark 85,000 graves with flags----AMAZING american flags as far as the eye could see. It kind of took your breath away.

I hope Ryan will remember this for a long time. I think we will definitely participate in this again next year.

Night all, Kim

A Request -------

Oh my, oh my, oh my
I've had a request, yeah.......
Erin here are the charms from the kids that they picked out for Mother's Day. Which one do you think Lauren picked out?
Wrong.......she picked out the peace sign and Ryan picked the soccer ball. Now every year they can get me new charms, I'm sure within no time the necklace will weight about 50 pounds :-)

Off to watch NCIS with Lauren - bye all.
Hugs to everyone, Kim

Beach - Soccer - Beach - Soccer ???????

On Saturday we spent the day at the beach in Santa Barbara and I mean the entire day. We left at 6:45 am and got home at 7 pm. We had a soccer tournament, a soccer in the sand tournament. A first for all of our girls. They sure had a great time but were pretty exhausted afterwards. The team was split into two, we had Fusion (in wht Jerseys) and Fusion Too (in yellow scrim shirts). They each played three games and then faced each other for game four. I think they had the most fun playing each other. Here is the full team picture including the three coaches...

Here is Shelby in the blue scrim shirt, she was playing goalie for Lauren's Fusion team when they played each other and she rolled the ball out and ran with it all the way to the opposite goal while Lauren jumped into their goal to cover. Can you see that huge grin on her face? She has such a blast and almost made a goal. The game amongst themselves ended in a 2-2 tie, went into a 3 minute sudden death overtime and then in a 3 on 3 shoot out. After all that Fusion won by one point after the shoot out. The referee was having fun watching them play each other and couldn't believe we went to a shoot out.Here is Lauren covering the goal when Shelby took off with the ball. She ended up jamming her finger in the first game so badly that she didn't play goalie for the remaining games. I even took her to the urgent care on Sunday because it was ver swollen and black & blue. Luckily no fractures just a really bad bruise. It's her left hand so it doesn't effect her writting but does hinder her a bit in doing the dishes, poor child.

In between games we all hung out under the easy ups. The girls all had swim suits on so lots of them worked on their tans.

The girls all had a good time. We have a tournament at the end of the month and then possibly another sand tournament in Santa Monica in June. I can't tell you how happy I was to get home and take a shower, I am definitely not a beach person.

Kim

Mom's Day

Happy Mother's Day to ME...
This is our self portrait on mom's day. Alan was out of town so we did this one ourselves, well actually Sammie took the picture, she is very talented. Do you belive me???? No???? I wouldn't either. I had a nice mom's day, we had dinner with my family on Saturday night and then went to visit with Ruth, Ernie and Leslie on Sunday. Alan came home and met us at his moms which was nice. The kids got to swim a little at Grandmas too. I even took the kids to Brighton so they could pick out charms for the charm necklace I got last year. I had them wrap it without showing me and just handed over the credit card. A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do, you know.............
Night,
Kim

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