Week 22 pics

Here are a couple pics that Courtney took of me at Week 22. We were up at the cabin for memorial day weekend with friends Courtney, Sarah and a friend of hers. The weather was unbelievable - 90 in the shade on the deck! So, needless to say, we spent a lot of time at the beach with the sea doo, the kayaks and the doggies! :)

It's a boy!

Brian and I are going to be the parents to a boy!!! Whoo hoo!!!

I will post more later! I post ultrasound pics soon!

Boogety Boo

Saw this picture on CNN today. I couldn't help but burst out in a fit of laughter.

"Boogety -boo....you shall believe everything I say now... "

Charleston, SC!

We had a wonderful weekend in Charleston with Molly and Robert. Robert, as always, is a walking encylopedia of southern history, making his tales more interesting than the tours we paid for! The weather was wonderful....we walked, talked, ate, drank (not me!)...and the weekend went by too fast. When we get pics up, I will be sure to share them!

The picture is of a plantation that we visited. It wasn't open for tours, but it was still really cool to see.

Here is a really mini-picture of me at 19 Weeks. We were at the beach. The water felt as warm as our lakes were. (I can't figure out why it came in so small!)






Here is Brian and I, at the same beach.
















We miss you Molly and Robert!!!

Habitat, Friends, Cleaning and More!

Ok...here I go to rewrite this again...

On April 21st, Brian wrapped up the week of volunteering by spending the day framing a Habitat for Humanity house in Grand Rapids. I stopped by to visit, and was excited to see it was 2 doors down from a house I had designed the structure for!

That weekend, Sarah visited, and we had a great time of chatting, cooking and walking. She made me baby's first afghan. :)

Last weekend, Brian, Dad and I were at the cabin doing spring cleaning. We cleaned and reorganized the shed. The kayaks now have a new home there for the summer. We also did all sorts of misc. odd jobs like fixing water faucets, light fixtures, outlets, etc that have needed repair for a little while. I spent the majority of the weekend cleaning and washing a plethora of towels and sheets inherited from Grandpa Spratke. It was a very productive weekend! Blue got to play on the beach for a while, despite the cold, and we got to have a big campfire with Dad. I can't wait to go back, it was so hard to come home!!!

Here is a picture of me at 18 Weeks with wet hair!

Here is a pic of the cabin with a fresh new paint job (Oct 2005)

The biggest challenge - reorganizing the shed! See - our kayaks found a new home!

This upcoming weekend Brian and I are flying to Charleston, SC to visit our friends Molly and Robert for the weekend. We are very excited to see them!!!

WGVSU Auction....

Last night, Brian and I volunteered for the WGVSU auction, along with a bunch of other Dematic employees (formerly Siemens Dematic). Brian and I got to help calling the winning bidders, finalizing payment and shipping information, etc- so we weren't on TV (which was fine by us!) - but we had a lot of fun doing it. Everyone was great. We were there from about 6-10pm, and the time absolutely flew. We could not believe what great deals people were getting, which lead us to go home and watch the auction! Something which was formerly skipped over and boring has become intriguing and fun to us! Hopefully we will get to do it again next year!

WGVU's website
http://www.wgvu.org/

Brian has the best job in America!

How interesting!!!

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/?cnn=yes

Week 15

Not much new to report these days. The change in temperature has definitely been nice - and helpful, considering I am in this ackward stage of inbetween clothes. Too small to wear maternity clothes, too big for most of my other clothes! What a bizarre feeling!

I started cleaning out the room for the nursery. We have to pull some evil disco mirrors off the walls, so when Dad has some time he can come help me patch the walls and prime them. Then, when we find out what sex "the monkey" is....we can paint the walls. The most bizarre thought: we will probably know by June what we are having. :)

Heading home (Flint) this weekend for Easter - then to AA for a kiddy birthday shin-dig with friends on Sunday afternoon....another crazy drivin' weekend for the Spratke's!

Hide and Go Seek Monkey

We went to appointment #2 today. It was a rather uneventful appointment actually, but we did get to hear the heartbeat again.

Naturally, while she is moving the little unit around, I hold my breath until we hear it, and today, it took a few minutes to find it - naturally feeding into my normal worry wart paranoia. But alas, the monkey came out of hiding and we heard it's heart beating away. I would compare it to the sound of someone in a pair of corderoy pants walking fast; the sound of the cloth rubbing together. Does that make sense?

We have started getting gifts from people...how crazy aye? I suppose pretty soon we will have to start on the bedroom, although, I am semi-waiting for Dad to have some free time to come over and help us tear the hideous mirrors off the wall (left by a previous owner, naturally). The doc says that the next 12 weeks are our chance to get things done - we better get on it!

Oh - and another thing, baby will be heading to concert #3 - as we got tickets to go see Pearl Jam in May. Whoo hoo.

Week 14 and wedding congrats!

Here is a picture of myself at Week 14. We were attending the wedding of Mike and Stacey Wise on Saturday, April 1st - when we took a second to snap the first "side shot".




We had a great time at the wedding, and everything was beautiful! Congrats to the new couple who are on their way to honeymoon in Hawaii (oh envy!) This is my favorite shot from the wedding.

Ultrasound Picture

Here is a picture of the little "monkey" from last Friday (Week 12).

News from the House of Spratke

As of Sept 30, 2006, the Freeman-Spratke families will be one member larger. :) Yup, we are having a baby.

It's taken me a while to post because of course, one wants all their friends and family to find out in a non-webpage means of communication, so posting here is mostly just doing it for the fun of it...

Currently, I am 11.5 weeks along, due Sept 30th (just 11 days after nephew Will's first birthday!). This means, our summer plans of sitting up at the cabin every possible will include me sporting a collection of as non-matronly of maternity bathing suites as I can. :) Of course, it also means we will have to drag lots of friends up, so Brian can have someone to play on the new Sea Doo with (as I am pretty sure pregnancy and high speed water sports are a no-no).

March 7th, we had our first appointment, and were able to hear the crazy little heartbeat...it made me laugh, so it was hard to hear it for too long at a time....but heard it we did. :)

Friday, we get to have our first ultrasound. I am excited!!!

Well, nuff for now...that's our news!

Article about concert...

Great NIN show ends on sour note
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
By Troy ReiminkThe Grand Rapids Press

See what happens when you throw things at the stage?
Nine Inch Nails' show at the DeltaPlex Entertainment and Expo Center ended rather abruptly Monday night after a projectile thrown by someone in the audience struck frontman Trent Reznor in the face.
Reznor was alone on stage, playing the opening strains of "Hurt." The song was approaching its crescendo when the object hit him. Reznor pushed over his keyboard and stormed off stage, not to return. The house lights came on almost immediately.

And who could blame him? You play your guts out for almost two hours -- only to have some clown ruin it. We'll be lucky if NIN ever decides to come back. A show official said Reznor escaped serious injury but got a black eye from the tossed object. The band is scheduled to perform tonight in Toledo, Ohio.
Fortunately, all this happened 21 songs into the show, so it was presumably close to the end anyway, but now we have to speculate about what an encore might have included (I'm guessing "The Hand That Feeds," "Piggy" and "Head Like a Hole").
The end notwithstanding, this was an intense, almost perfectly executed concert. Reznor and company came out roaring with a one-two-three punch of NIN classics: "Mr. Self Destruct," "Sin," "Terrible Lie."
Hearing these songs, it's almost unfathomable how ahead of its time NIN was in the '90s. Can you believe it's been a dozen years since "The Downward Spiral" popularized industrial rock, and that "Pretty Hate Machine" will turn 17 later this year?
Obviously, much of the band's audience exists because of "Closer," whose famously crude lyrics supplied one of the least romantic choruses to ever appear in a top-40 single.
NIN got "Closer" out of the way relatively early, preferring to perform cuts from the overlooked 1999 opus "The Fragile," a few obscurities ("Suck," a song Reznor co-wrote for the industrial band Pigface), and several numbers from the 2005 album "With Teeth."
Backed by a solid, four-piece touring band Reznor, as always, was a compelling, menacing presence on stage, performing new and old songs with equal ferocity. And no, he hasn't gotten any happier over the years.
The older material has aged remarkably well. Maybe that's because so much of what's been on rock radio in the past decade has either been influenced by the NIN aesthetic or has stolen it wholesale.
That aesthetic -- pummeling percussion, searing guitars and keyboards, shout-along choruses and angst aplenty -- made for a thrilling show. Equal credit goes to the visual presentation, a dizzying spectacle of pulsating strobe lights, gloomy atmospherics and not very comforting video footage.
Mid-show, a scrim dropped to cover the stage and, as the band explored some melodic corners of its catalog, a projector showed juxtaposed images of war and creepy domestic serenity.
A projected clip of George W. and Laura Bush dancing at a black-tie event generated a big yell from the near-sellout crowd of about 5,000. Whether it was a cheer or a boo was unclear, but I'm assuming boo. Whatever your opinion of the president, it's worth noting he's provided an impetus for a lot of otherwise introspective artists to turn their intensity outward.
And Reznor's as introspective as they come. No one will ever accuse him of being a great lyricist, as he leans pretty heavily on nebulous, overwrought rhyming couplets, but it all somehow works as a package. The anger, the noise, the visuals, the catharsis, all melting into a seething stew of rage.
Obviously, I'd like to have seen how the show would've ended, but what we got was outstanding.

Concerts...whoo hoo.

Well, we have had an adventerous couple of weeks...we had 2 concerts, 2 Monday's in a row. Last Monday, we went with Bill, Leslie and their friends to see Nickleback (opened by Trapt and Default). I have to say, I wasn't sure what to think, not being a huge Nickelback fan, but I will admit, they put on a good show, and had some mighty cool pyrotechnics (sp?).

Last night, we capped off our concerting adventures, for the month of Feb. with Nine Inch Nails. Once again, with Bill and Leslie in tow. (Kudos to Leslie for putting up with my music taste!) I have to say, I very much enjoyed it...I have been brushing up on my old school NIN lately, combined with the new album, which I really like...I will admit, the venue left something to be desired, and the security was laughable (walmart greeters trying to make extra money?), but the proximity to the stage was pretty good...

...now for the shocker...it was about 3/4 into the show...a couple hours at least...and all the sudden, halfway through the sound hurt...some idiot threw something on the stage at the lead singer...who promptly threw something and left the stage. Everyone seemed to think it was a dramatic lead in to the next part of the song...but then, the house lights came up. People tried to encourage an encore, but no go. HOLY COW. Very disappointing...although, I will admit, at that point, my feet were tired, and I had heard a good many of my favorite songs...so I can't say I left lacking a good show....and hey- we were home and in bed early, so can't complain about that...

Anyways, back to the normal world, sans stinky concert halls and expensive merchandising.

COLD!

Holy cow, is it cold or what!?

Entering another month of winter, still, pretty much snow-less, but we have the cold for a change. Yipes.

We had an uneventful Super Bowl with some friends in town to visit. We were bored to tears over the commericals and thankful for Tivo, so we could forward through the boring portions of the game (which to me, was pretty much all of it).

All has been well in other aspects of life. We have just been putzin' along, trying to keep warm and not go broke over a heating bill. ;)

Not much else to report out there. :)

Greets!

Well, it's been an uneventful week, following an eventful weekend. Jon, Dawn and Sam were up on Friday night - we had a nice dinner to celebrate Brian's promotion and then Brian did some work on their computer. Saturday morning, Sam and I spent some quality time looking at the "Cold snow", and playing with Cabbage Patch Kids. ;) Dawn and I got a nice trip to the mall where we created havoc at NY&Co. We returned home with 50 B-dubs wings for lunchtime snacking. Good times.

Then, later, after they headed home, we drove up to Christine and Jon's for a little dinner soiree. Cara, Chester, Kathyrn and a couple local friends joined in. We played some games (which we were all aparently too genius for) and hung out. Brian and I stayed the night (of course, Blue was in tow) due to the long drive home - and the next morning we got up, had a great greasy breakfast in a little nearby town - and headed home.

Finally...we got to rest!!! So, we are enjoying the fact that this is a very low key week.... :) Thus far, we have no plans for the weekend, a rarity for us, but of course, that could change in the blink of an eye!

Holiday Haze Is Over.

Well, it's been ages since I have posted. Seems we were caught up in the haze of the holidays. We spent Christmas in Alma and Flint...then New Years, with the Blue Sky group at Jon and Dawn's....the following week, I got a horrible cold, and it rained..and rained...and rained!

Last weekend we went to Detriot. On Saturday, we watched the Clare high school basketball team (coached by a fellow Almanite) play at the Palace. Then, we stayed to watch a Piston's game. I had never been to a basketball game before, so it was a new experience. It was a good time, but I will admit, I enjoyed watching the kids better than the professionals! We stayed at Kev and Mon's for the weekend, and as usual, we managed to stay up til 3am talking about a whole lotta who knows what! Sunday morning, Monica made us breakfast pizza, which was pretty good!

Now that we are out of the haze of the holidays and a cold....we resume normal, and somewhat dull life! Not much to report....

Christmas is almost here...

Merry Christmas...almost!

Well, not much to report here. I am walking now...well, hobbling is more like it, but at least I am wearing normal shoes...

Last Friday was my company party. It was good fun. I won boxing gloves, of all the weird things. Although, we have been having good fun at their expense. I will admit...Blue was not to keen on wearing them. You'd think a boxer would be into that kinda thing...??? Guess not!

Anyways, I better get back to work. Just wanted to drop a line. Hope everyone out there has a beautiful holiday.

Progress!

Well, I have great news!

My visit to the doctor has me ahead of schedule on my recovery. This week, I got to start putting weight on my foot. He told me to take 2 weeks to wean myself off my crutches and into a supportive shoe. Horray - this means, I will be walking by Christmas! I am elated!

Last weekend, my mom and Brian's mom came over, and we had a Christmas cookie making extravaganza....now we have more cookies that it should be legal to have around our house!!!

Aside from that, not much is going on in our lives....just busy working, getting ready for Christmas, etc.

New webpages!!!

New pages I have finished....

Under Family Life, the Flint 150th page

Under Fun with Friends, the Party for Louisa and Halloween 2005!

I am trying to catch up!!!