How Sweet It Is

Being one of only 6 schools with both the men's and women's basketball teams in the Sweet 16 is pretty exciting! There certainly is a lot of excitement around the department these days which is a nice change. I was lucky enough to travel with the women to Chattanooga for the first and second rounds last week and it was awesome. Normally the marketing staff never gets to travel but we have been having some issues with our cheerleading program over the last few years and they cant be trusted to take care of themselves on trips. Aside from our cheer coach, I am the only other person in the department that's cheer safety certified and knows anything about what they should or should not be doing thus I get to travel. Our regular coach goes with the men and I babysit 12 cheerleaders on the women's trip.... totally worth it! Chattanooga was a nice city, bigger than I expected and our hotel was right downtown so we could walk to restaurants and various sites. The trip was a lot of down time so that was also nice, we left on Thursday for games on Saturday afternoon and Monday night so we had time to do whatever we wanted on the non game days. In addition to beating North Carolina to advance to the Sweet 16, the other highlight of the trip was taking over a restaurant downtown to watch the men beat Washington on Saturday. I felt bad for the families that were in that place because with 30 band kids, 12 cheerleaders plus the staff and some of the players parents we were really loud! It was a really exciting trip with no problems other than the super long security line on our flight back after the game. Usually when we fly charter out of the Purdue airport they trust that we aren't trying to blow each other up and skip all the metal detectors and bag searches but not on this trip. It was pretty quick on the way out but on the way back they had us stop outside of the plane to do all of this after midnight with only 2 people to check about 70 of us. We didn't make it back to town until about 2 am but no one seemed to mind... had we lost I can guarantee that I would not be able to say the same thing.

Although I prefer the weather in Glendale, I am happy to be heading to Oklahoma City on Friday for the women's Sweet 16 match-up against Rutgers. We get to bring guests on the trip this time but Karl has to work so my brother is coming to town today to go with me. Should be fun! I have some pictures from Chattanooga and the men's big ten championship game but I got a new camera and haven't quite played with it enough to get the pictures off. I will get it done soon though! More to come this weekend from the sooner state where we hope to beat the Sooners and get to the Final Four. In the words of our athletics director, Morgan Burke: "Its an exciting time to be a Boilermaker."

10 Week Update

Today I have officially reached the 10 week mark and am almost to the end of the first trimester. Not really any news to report and I will spare everyone all of the details of morning (and night) sickness. I have been busy with work and pageants since I found out about the baby but now things are finally starting to slow down so I can relax in the evenings and try to get more sleep. I am tired most of the time and either starving every few hours or not wanting to eat at all. I thought I was going to escape the morning sickness but for the last 2 weeks its been pretty consistent- mornings until about 10am are rough as well as before going to bed. I read an article that said eating a small bowl of grain cereal before bed helps and it has a little but I'm looking forward to this ending soon. We still haven't told that many people but the athletics department rumor mill has started going a little wild so I am making my way around to the coaches and departments that I work with to fill them in. I have met with my bosses and the good news is that we are going to add a new staff member in August to cover most of my sports while I am gone. I was really surprised to hear that considering we have been trying to grow our staff for a long time, but it will only be a 10 month position (august-may) for a recent graduate that needs experience to fill. It will be a full time internship to go along with our graduate assistant position which will also take some of my events. It puts me at ease a little knowing that there will be another body here to help but I still have a lot to get done for my sports before the baby comes.

The most popular question we get is "are you going to find out what you are having?" We haven't decided on that yet but feel free to make your guess in our football player or cheerleader poll. If we do decide to find out early, it wont be until our May doctors visit but we want to see what you think! More updates to come, maybe the next one will feature some photos of a growing belly... the pants are starting to get a little tight :)

My Grandma Should Start Her Own Business

Here is Ella modeling the latest winter fashion- her doggy overcoat. My grandma is a very talented and creative lady when it comes to sewing projects and upon reading my post about the frozen Ella-cicle she decided that Ella needed a jacket. Now Ella is a little round in the middle so this one was custom made just for her. It came in the mail today so I got it when I went home for lunch and of course, I had to put it on right away. It is so cute! Its made of a puppy print polar fleece with velcro straps around her neck and fat belly. Ella was more interested in smelling and chewing it than wearing it but once I got it on her, she didn't seem to mind too much. She is a wonderful model and loves the camera so this picture was pretty easy to take. Granted, she looks less than thrilled about her ensemble but I think its super cute and very functional. She will be happy she has it when it gets cold again tonight and she wants to go for a walk! Thanks Grandma Sandy for the great gift!

Miss Purdue 2009

Sunday marked my last Miss Purdue pageant. I have been the director of the program since 2005 and the 2009 program was going to be my last. I love working with the program but its more than a full time job in itself and with my already more than full time job and a baby on the way, its just not going to be possible to do it all anymore. This year I only had 8 contestants which also makes it hard. Numbers are dropping across the country and while I enjoy helping the contestants and the actual production of the show, its a lot of work to only have 8 girls compete. You don't make much money for the program with so few but the work load is still the same! This year, I started meeting with the girls mid-January and we met once a week to rehearse until the pageant yesterday. They all did a really great job and were very impressive on stage. A much closer competition that I expected, especially in the talent area. Since we had so few contestants we were only have to give out three awards and I would have been more than happy to have any of the three as Miss Purdue. In the end, a sophomore named Jackie won. She competed last year and has done a few other locals this year and you could tell she was very focused yesterday. She has a beautiful wardrobe and really let her confidence show on the stage. I was so proud of everyone but Jackie stood out this time and I look forward to getting her ready for the Miss Indiana pageant in June.


It will be hard to leave the pageant behind since I really enjoy the production of it so much. My mom used to take me to the Miss Oshkosh pageant when I was young and I performed as entertainment with my twirling group several times until I was old enough to compete myself. I never really seriously thought I would win but I loved doing it and I loved the ladies that put the program together. Once I moved to Indiana I had no idea that the pageants here were SO competitive but I tried a few before deciding to take over the Purdue program. I think I have put on some good shows and even if we have never had a Miss Indiana I would say we put in a valiant effort each year. Of course there is always more I want to do, but I think I'm ready to pass on the torch to someone else.

A Message From Ella

Yes.... Ella is going to be the big sister! Karl and I are expecting our first child to make its arrival at the end of September, just in time for Big Ten football season. We have known for about a month but we wanted to wait until we had our first doctors appointment and were sure everything is going well before we broadcast the news to the world. We told our families two weeks ago and they are so excited. I used this picture of Ella to spread the word, the card turned out very cute and it really surprised everyone. So far I am feeling ok, a little sickness this week but overall everything seems to be moving along. We met with our new OB on Wednesday and he seems very nice. My fear of hospitals, doctors and needles is going to have to change very quickly! I will see him every 4 weeks for the next 5 months or so and then every 2 weeks until September, and then every week until the baby decides to come. We are really excited and are keeping our fingers crossed for a healthy and happy little baby. Boy or Girl? That's a point of contention right now... I want to find out but Karl wants to be surprised. We have a while yet before we have to decide if we want to know or not so we will see who wins out.

I will do my best to keep the blog up to date with pictures and news as we go through the next 7 months. Its an exciting time for us and we are so happy to be able to share our news with everyone! We do have some pictures from our ultrasounds but they are very fuzzy and scanning them made it worse. Stay tuned for a lot more pictures and updates to come to our electronic scrapbook of Baby Kraebber, aka Player to be Named Later.