Holiday Travels

We had a nice Christmas, complete with trips to Wisconsin and California. We were able to beat the blizzard and leave early on Tuesday to get to my parents. The drive was pretty smooth, slow but we made it before the roads got too icy and before the snow really started to come down. Ella stayed behind with Karl's parents so it was just the two of us making the trip. We did some last minute shopping and were lazy most of the time we were there. My dad made his famous Christmas Eve ham on Wednesday night and we spent Christmas day with both sides of my family. In the morning we did presents with dad then we headed over to mom's for lunch and presents with my mom, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We got a lot of great gifts and even though Ella wasn't there, we brought a few back for her. After the presents were all opened at mom's we helped grandma and grandpa set up their wii and showed them some of the wii fit and wii sports games. Friday morning we had to get up really early to make it to Chicago for our flight to San Diego. It started to snow pretty hard on Christmas so we allowed extra time to get there for our 11am flight. We planned to meet Karl's parents at Midway to take the direct flight but with the weather, things got a little crazy. The ice in northern Indiana made getting to the airport difficult for them and what normally takes 2 hours took 4. We made it just fine but we had to watch the boards in the airport to find out when and where our flight was leaving from. It ended up being delayed 3 hours which was pretty lucky considering Henry and Sharon probably would not have made the flight if it went as scheduled.

San Diego was a fun place to visit. I have only been to California one time and that was for the Rose Bowl in 2000 so I barely remember it. We stayed at a really nice Hilton resort and were close to a lot of the things we wanted to do. We didn't have any set plans other than visiting the San Diego Zoo and going to the Chargers game. The Kraebber family has a close relationship with Nick Hardwick, former Purdue player and center for the Chargers so he provided us with tickets to the game. Karl and I have gotten to know Nick as well so it was great to see him. The game was really the highlight of the trip, not only did the Chargers win and make it into the play-offs but the tickets we got were in the 4th row! The seats were amazing and I didn't need to use the zoom on my camera at all. I usually don't enjoy pro games as mush as I enjoy college games but its certainly more fun when you know people out on the field. Some of the other highlights of our trip included visiting the Wild Animal Park, Torrey Pines Golf Course (home to Tiger Woods), San Diego Zoo and downtown San Diego. The weather wasn't as warm as I was hoping for but it was sunny and beautiful every day. We were able to see the beaches but it was really not swimsuit weather! It wasn't a very long trip but the few days was still relaxing and fun. We made it back with no delays and were back at work on new year's eve.

Click the image below to see some of the photos from our trip:

Corey's Graduation

Saturday we headed back to the home land for my brother's college graduation. He is finishing up his Bachelors degree in Sport and Rec Management from Marian University (formerly Marian College- unrelated to the one in Indy for those who are wondering). He played baseball there for his first 4 years and did a half victory lap to finish up a few credits. For someone who really didn't like school ever or put much effort into school, he has really grown up and is now even looking at graduate schools. He wants to be like his big sister and work in athletics but he thinks he's going to make way more money than me because he was a student-athlete. Clearly he is not ready for the real world.... Anyway, I am so proud of him and look forward to helping him with grad school, jobs or both! It was fun having our parents together and doing things as a family. The ceremony itself was very small so only my mom, dad, Karl and I got to go. The gym was about the size of an elementary school with a whole 6 rows of bleachers. Corey was on stage to present his class gift and get his diploma (er- empty folder since they don't get mailed until mid January) but most of my pictures didn't turn out very well. Here are the important shots from the day.

Way to go Corey!

Thanksgiving Recap

With the craziness of the last few weeks, I forgot to add some photos from the weekend in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. It was a pretty relaxing trip and by far the longest amount of time I have spent at home in quite a long time. I was able to catch up with some old friends on Wednesday, eat two meals (one with each side of the family) on Thursday, spend some time with my brother on Friday, watch Boilermaker volleyball beat the badgers on Saturday and drive back home with the rest of the midwest on Sunday. Ella wasn't as good as she usually is in the car but there really isn't much we can do to help that. She enjoys playing with everyone when we get there and is dead tired when we get home, its the ride there and back with her all over the back seat thats a pain. It had been a while since Karl made the trip with me so he was happy to see everyone too. Here are some of the more exciting moments of the trip:

Karl and dad frying up the turkeys at grandma and grandpas. Only a small fire, nothing major.








The completed birds, one of which we never even cut into!








Corey and Karl beating on Grady... poor baby! Sucks to be the little one doesn't it?









Catching up with my long-lost roommate Stefanie in Madison. She is an IronWoman!








Sara celebrating her strike/showing off her sweet bowling shoes at the Badger Bowl in Madison.

The Calm Before the Storm

I wish you could all see Mackey Arena right now. With tomorrow's highly anticipated match up against Duke, the Paint Crew students were allowed to camp out starting today at noon for the 600 lower bowl seats. The seats are general admission and the university has given them permission to do this for four games this season, today being the first. We expected a sort of mad-house with maybe 30 or 40 groups but at noon there were 138 groups! Its been snowing most of the day and at this time of night, there are tents of all shapes and sizes on the tarmac of the arena just outside the student entrance. There only needs to be one member of the group present at all times (a group can be up to 10 students) but it seems that the majority of the students are toughing it out together. I am still at work at 9:52pm and the electronic board outside Mackey says 23.4 degrees and there are students playing football, doing homework, and sleeping outside my door. Its quite a sight! These few pictures cant really capture it... plus I was shivering so they are a little blurry. I will try to get some better ones in the daylight tomorrow but I wanted to share with you how far the Paint Crew has come since the good old days of the Gene Pool. For any sports fan, this is as good as it gets! Tune in tomorrow night at 9pm (eastern) on ESPN for whats sure to be an awesome game with lots of love for the Paint Crew for Dickey V. He should arrive tomorrow afternoon so hopefully he spends some time with the kids and gives a little nod to our students and not just the dukies all the time!

November Update

Not much new to report in the Kraebber house. We are all ready for this misery that has been the Purdue football season to end and for the excitement of basketball to begin. We had lots of visitors come for football games so that made me happy, even though I had to work while they were here. One game left, which initially should have been an exciting event and nice send-off for coach Tiller, has now turned into a game that no one cares about with a coach that most fans cant wait to send into the sunset. Its kind of sad but at the same time I am sort of excited about no bowl game- I know, I shouldn't say that but its nice not to have to rush around between basketball games, the bowl game and trying to spend time with my family during the holidays. Now I can relax a little more and not have to run off right away after thanksgiving and we can spend some time traveling for fun at Christmas... somewhere other than El Paso or Orlando for once! Basketball season has already started and the expectations are so high for our teams that it seems like the games just cant get here fast enough. Karl is busy at work during the days but has free time at night to hang out with friends before meeting up with me at the games. Women's basketball continues to struggle with attendance but I'm pretty confident in some of the initiatives that I have been working on so hopefully that will pick up when we get into the conference season. No projects to report around the house- the deck and landscaping look great and we have been very pleased with how both turned out. Neither one of us are too pleased about the change in season and the jump right into winter but that's Indiana for you! Ella is a happy little puggle but is not appreciating this rain much right now. She loves playing with Bob and spent the weekend with him when we went to MSU for the game last week.

On a not so happy note, both of my grandparents have been in and out of the hospital a lot lately. I have a very close relationship with all of my family, but especially to my grandma Marilyn and the past week has been hard not being there and not always knowing whats going on. I am entering a stretch of 18 athletics events over the next 10 days so I really cant leave here so phone calls are really all I have to stay connected right now. This is a serious down side of not living at home but hopefully everyone will be back home and out of the hospital very soon.

Upcoming events for us include lots of basketball games, specifically two crazy games for the Big Ten/ACC challenge with Duke and Maryland. Our holiday plans include an extended trip to WI for thanksgiving, a short trip there for Christmas then a few days vacation in San Diego before coming back to work basketball over the New Years holiday. We are excited to see my family and to spend time with Karl's parents in California, even though we live in the same town we really don't see them that often! I'm hoping to see friends from home and visit Madison for volleyball and hockey over the holidays. (Its rather funny that my two closest friends at work are also from Wisconsin so we are making plans to cheer the Boilermaker volleyball team on when they play the Badgers the Friday after thanksgiving since we will be so close.) Wisconsin Hockey is really the only team Karl will wear Badger gear and cheer for!

Other points of interest: fantasy football standings have EK in the lead at 9-1 and KK tied for 4th at 5-5. Karl has the points lead but I have the best record!

Big Happy Birthday to my mom on Saturday :)

Ella did not think the Devil ears were fun but she loves tugging on socks with Bob!