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

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