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Ed's Daily Routine, Non Stop with the Kids

Ed's Daily Routine, Non Stop with the Kids

Ed Carpenter
Ed Carpenter Racing
November 13, 2013

Cruz joined the Carpenter team on 12/12/12

November 13th 2013 - Things have changed quite a bit since we had the win at Fontana last year.

Heather and I had our third child on 12/12/12 with little Cruz joining the family along with my daughter Makenna (age 5) and Ryder (age 4), so things got pretty busy for us since Christmas time.

We don’t have a nanny or somebody who helps on a regular basis, but my mom and Heather’s parents and sister really have been lifesavers since Cruz joined us. They really assist us since I have the IndyCar team responsibilities and Heather is still very busy with her real estate duties. Packing everyone up for trips to the races can be a little stressful at times.

Actually, dealing with the kids is good sometimes to get the racing off my mind. I have never really had any trouble getting focused on my racing when it is time to jump into the cockpit. In addition, we have Makenna going to kindergarten this year and Ryder still has pre-school, so that leaves Heather home with Cruz most of the time.

Heather and I usually get up around 6 a.m. or so. Makenna has to get to the bus stop at 7:40 a.m. each day. Once Makenna has gone to school, we get the other two up and rolling. I need to feed myself and get ready to go the gym for a 90-minute workout too.

In the lunch hour and early afternoon, I will have meetings with team or sponsors or other commitments. Makenna rides the bus back home and Heather or I will pick up Ryder from pre-school. Then things get really crazy. That’s because the kids have activities every day of the week. Ryder has finished up baseball and Makenna has gymnastics for the afternoon events. She has tennis all year long and both kids are starting up soccer. Ryder will be getting basketball. Plus they took swimming lessons part of the summer too.

I don’t make all of those activities but we do go to many of them. Needless to say, I am on my IPhone a lot at those events as I try to keep up the business aspects. Dinner is never really at a set time. Sometimes we do it at home or we do on the fly at a restaurant. It’s always pretty crazy how we fit in the dinner hour each night. We both cook when we can. I do like to cook more than Heather does. So I usually jump in and make something for all of us.

Our notes and calendars are synced up together between our Gmail accounts, so we both know if we need to shop at the grocery shop or if we have something to fix at the house. We run off the same calendar so we can keep track of everything the family has going that day, that week and that month. It’s combined effort. She puts in all of the kids’ schedules, her schedule and I had my schedule and other commitments we both have.

We keep a running store list and we can get the right things when each is out of the house. I liked to shop from the list because Heather usually has the kids with her and they are grabbing stuff off the shelves. The kids love grabbing the cookies and candy. That’s why I like to shop by myself.

When I’m out of town testing or on business, Heather’s mom and sister help in the summer because they are both teachers and have the time to assist us. My mom helps too but for the most part, it’s Heather who handles most of it. Plus Heather is president of a big racing charity, Indy Family Foundation, and that takes time too.

We have a couple of babysitters when we have some night time events to make. We try to shoot for 8 p.m. for the kids to go to bed but that can stretch out too about 8:45 to 9 p.m. Then Heather and I can work on our own activities like email or social media stuff. However, we just moved into a new house and we spend the night time unpacking boxes and other things. Now that the racing season is over, we are starting to hang things and setting up the house as we like it. We have to go through lots of stuff because most of our things were in storage for the past year.

Since last year, there has been a big change in our lives with Cruz added to the equation. It just takes more time to do things. It was easier with just Makenna and then we were getting acclimated with Ryder and now it’s Cruz that takes a lot of time. Babies required a little more attention than the other ones. We just have less time for Heather and I to be together since we are just getting caught up after all of the kids’ events. It does get a little easier with the kids back in school.

But football season has started up. My brother-in-law Will (Younger) and I have a team in a Fantasy League and we follow it pretty closely. I’m not in as many leagues as I used to be but we can get pretty intense about too.

Being a Colts fan I watch them very closely, but I don’t draft that many Colts players. We are in a "keepers” league and we have had Tom Brady for five years so that can be tough being a Colts fan. He has beaten the Colts quite a bit over the years. But I’ll still root for the Colts against the Patriots, as it’s my home team rather than the fantasy team.