Cosmo Kramer 1996-2008

It is a sad day for us. Cosmo is no longer with us.
We will miss you, Cosmo....You were a good kitty.

We love you.

Jackson Hoopin' It Up

Here is a few seconds of Jackson bringing the ball up the court during his final basketball game this season. He's a playa! He's a diaper dandy! A real PTP'er, baby! He really enjoyed playing this year and was fortunate to have some of his good friends on the team. I did my best to help the Couch's out with coaching. He played about 5 games, most of which we on Saturday mornings. Jackson turned out to be one of the better shooters on the team, but perhaps was not quite as aggressive with the ball as some of his teammates. I will say that he was probably the best defender on the team - he really took his defense pretty seriously and stuck to his offensive assignment real tight. Things went so well that we invested in a new basketball goal for the driveway, although we have had neither the time or good enough weather to actually get it put together yet. Baseball's next...no more teeball - we talking coach pitch! In the meantime enjoy this highlight that was on ESPN last night...

Unofficial Hiatus

I bet alot of you all had given up. Basically two months have come and gone with no new entries for The Whited News. Have i ever mentioned that it's hard to find time to get on here anymore? Heck, if it's hard for me to get on my own blog, I'm sure all of you are not just putting a visit here on your to do list everyday. But - I haven't given up. Maybe I just needed a break after the first 100 posts.

There really quite a bit to cover, including:

~ All the Christmas stuff
~ Carson's 3rd birthday
~ Kim smashing into a deer in the Vibe
~ A trip to the ER with Carson

It would take too long to try to catch up with adequate words, and pictures are worth a thousand words, right? Here are the highlights with words, as needed.

Here are the boys, about three weeks before Christmas. I think many of you got this in a Christmas card. For some reason we did not get the preprinted photocards from Sam's this year.


Here is the tradition Christmas photo, this time in Louisville.


Check out Carse on Christmas morning with the guitar for Guitar Hero that Santa brought. I love the way the lighting of the tree is in the background. I'll tell you what, Carson LOVES guitars and music. If this kid doesn't turn out to be a musician, I'll be shocked.


Here is Carse at his 3rd birthday. Blowing out the candles on his Thomas birthday cake. Actually he extinguished them more with his saliva than he did with air. It was a great birthday for his this year. Some of you may know that in his other 2 previous birthdays, he was sick both times and was not his typical self. This year he felt good and really had a great time.


Kim hit a deer just after dropping Carson off at day care a couple of weeks ago. It did $3,900 worth of damage to the Vibe. You should have seen me doing me best impression of a NASCAR pit crew member on the fender in the parking lot at Kim's school afterwards. Duct tape is awesome, baby! Praise God that Kim didn't get hurt or have the deer come through the windshield. It's not uncommon for us to be going 50+ mph down that road! Notice the deer poop on the fender.


We took Carson the the ER several days ago after he had a bad reaction to the Albuterol medication that doctor had given him. He had been diagnosed with bronchitis, pink eye, a bad cold, and his ears were so stopped up the doctor couldn't even look in them. That night about 1am he was acting real funny and breathing really irregularly/fast after we gave him the Albuterol earlier in the night and we became every concerned very quickly. By the time we got him to the hospital, he had settled down quite a bit. They monitored him for a while and the doctor didn't seem too concerned....Our prayers were answered, because he went from messed up to good shape pretty quickly. Thanks to his Aunt Sheri for getting out of bed in the middle of the night and venturing to out house in the cold to be here with Jackson while we went to the hospital!

Get ready to cry.....awesome stuff right here.

100th Post! : Chris Tomlin concert

First of all, my 100th post! Kinda proud of myself that I have actually kept this up for as long as I have now. Sure I have my droughts, by I have kept with it. Not sure how many are reading???? But I have stayed with it. It's fun.

OK, what I wanted to write about......the Chris Tomlin concert. Kim and I drove down to Evansville last evening to "The Center" to see the band. We bought our tickets when they went on sale about 3 months ago and so we had awesome seats in the first row of the balcony, right near the center. Great seats, GREAT seats. We didn't realize that Evansville was on a different time than us, so we ended up having an extra hour to spend. (Big thanks here to Grandma Marie for watching the lads, by the way.)


It was an awesome time...awesome experience. That many people together just jamming to God was really something. Halfway through, Louis Giglio spoke a great message, as well. Then it was more Praise! I know that we will not forget it! Time for my disclaimer....I would like to say that I took the picture above - I did not. Matter of fact I forgot to take my camera! Man, I never forget the camera. But I did....so I had to go to flickr and pick out an awesome shot that represents what we experienced, and this is what I found.

Thanks for reading....hopefully I can do 100 more posts!

A long one...

This might be my biggest blog entry ever by the time I get it finished. I have been meaning to put all this stuff on here and today I'll just do it all at once. I guess it is mostly pictures, but i wanted to tell you all about four different things that have happened lately.

A couple of weeks ago, on a quite foggy morning, we had noticed as we were all getting ready for the day that Roscoe was barking hysterically. Of course we were kinda rushing around in the morning like we normally do, and we had not taken the time to see what his issue was. After I got Jackson on the bus, and I could take a deep breath, I peered out into the back yard and saw a freaking racoon poised on the top of our fence taunting Roscoe. I figured as soon as I opened the sliding glass door that he would take off. Nope. I grabbed the camera and took a few pictures as I slowing approached it and tried to shoo it away. No luck. This dud was not budging. he didn't even budge when I picked up our umbrella base from the patio and hurled it at him. It kinda grazed him barely, and he did not move...just kept growling at us. Every time Roscoe approached him the coon tried to bite and scratch him. I thought, ""OK I'm going to get rid of this pest" and I went back in and got a large, heavy metal pole that we use for reaching stuff...It was actually a curtain rod of some kind, but it was made of thick, heavy metal. Well, I tried to poke him away. No budging....So I decided to give him a good healthy whack on the head, and it knocked him off the fence - I was amazed that he did not run off!! I gave him a few more pokes from over the fence and then i went in to finish getting ready. I get my shower and was absolutely stunned when I looked out and saw him back on the fence! I grabbed the pole and said enough of this. I bashed him on the head several times, and he really did not seem too bothered by it. So I went all out and beat the heck out of it. I had heard before about nasty coon actually killing dogs, and I was not going to let this happen to Roscoe. He was just laying on the ground on the other side of the fence when i left for work, I was completely expecting him to die there, and I would have to get him out of the yard after I got back from work. Well, he must be the Michael Myers of racoons, because when I got home after work - HE WAS GONE!!!!



Jackson finally lost a tooth! He had been wanting to lose a tooth for a long time, as his friends were losing their teeth and I think he felt like he was missing out on the experience. He got a little scared about 15 minutes before it actually came out. He was sitting on the couch, wiggling his tooth and tasting some of the blood and he was crying! "I am going to die!" He exclaimed. A little while later he got it out with Kim in the bathroom and he was very relieved.


The boys were Anakin Skywalker and Superman this year. I ordered the Anakin costume off eBay and it got here just a couple of days before Halloween.



Kim and I got to go to the Colts-Patriots game in the dome on Sunday. It was being dubbed as the Super Bowl in the middle of the season, as it was the first time in NFL history that two teams 7-0 or better had met. The Colts really outplayed them for the first 3.5 quarters, but in the final 6 minutes, the Patriots scored 2 TD's and won 24-20. We went with Todd and Shelly. Here we are in the endzone seats about 30 minutes before the game.


I did my part to cheer them on, although Patriots fans are claiming that the noise is artificial. There was some kind of technical/audio malfunction during the fourth quarter that people apparent assume was coming from inside the dome. I cannot stand the Patriots....I posted this on the Boston Globe after hearing the ridiculous reports that the crowd noise was fake and simulated:

OK....I just had to address this. I am a Colts fan, and live in Indiana. The Patriots players, head coach, front office, and fans are absolutely unbelievable. It almost leaves me speechless, but not quite. I realize that the RCA dome is the smallest in the league. Nonetheless, there are 56,00 seats in there, and the place was packed - of course. This means that at least 56,000 were witnesses to what you all are claiming happened. I happened to be one of those people at the game. I was there, were you? I have not heard of ONE SINGLE PERSON, out of the 56000 who were there, who claim to have heard it in the dome. Nobody. No Patriots people, no NFL people, no CBS people....Nobody.....guess why? It wasn't audio coming through the soundsystem, that's why. I was there......I love the Colts and of course I wish they would have won. It was a good game. But if I heard the same noise as what was heard on TV, I know that I, along with 56,000 other people who have been immediately confused. It would have been noticeable. Think about this with your brain for a moment, not your Patriot loving hearts....If that strange sound, lasting several seconds, was actually piped in, and loud enough to come through CBS mics, don't you think maybe somebody in the dome would have noticed? just one person, maybe? Or a few thousand (more likely)? This is why the Pats, their coach, and their organization is so disliked by the entire league. Coach Bill has not one ounce of class. Up 42-0 on Washington and going for it on 4th down???? Are you kidding me?? He thought he was above the rules and got busted for it with the whole videocamera thing. I vividly remember last year after the AFC championship when he refused to show the same kind of sportmanship that little league boys show after a loss - and brushed off Dungy and Manning. The evidence for my opinion goes on and on...plain and simple he is a great football coach but a miserable human being. Now listen, maybe you all out their do not value sportsmanship, and that's your choice. I just think if you are going to support this kind of behavior, and then claim the Colts pumped that noise into the dome......It leaves me speechless. There is no doubt that you have a great team to root for. They may end up arguably the best ever. But what you have in talent, skill, and the know-how to play the game successfully may bode well for you in the win column, you pick up losses in the eyes of the country as a result of the manner your players and coach conduct themselves. The Patriots may go 19-0....they might....but even if they do, the vast majority of the country will not honor it because you have absolutely no class whatsoever. I would much rather root for the Miami Dolphins or another pathetic team if they had some class, as opposed to rooting for a great team with a jerkball coach and no class or respect for other people. But that's just me.