Welcome to Vreeman Family Website

Expecting a new addition

dvreeman — 2010-08-30T01:46:58Z

We are very happy to announce that we are expecting Baby #2! Lorrie is now 20 weeks along, so we're halfway there! Baby's due date is January 9, 2011.

After an early look back in June, we just had our 20 week ultrasound and Baby is right on target for size in the 63rd percentile. We were thrilled to learn that Baby's health and growth looked great! We're sticking to the plan of not finding out the baby's gender (like we did with Gavin), and are looking forward to the surprise. If you ask Gavin what's in mommy's belly, he'll tell you “baby”. And if you ask him if he thinks he is going to have a brother or sister, he always says “sister”. We'll see…

We can hardly believe that Gavin will be 2 years old next month! He has become quite the fun and talkative little toddler, and we are excited to see him become a big brother. We recently posted a bunch of new videos and some more photos too, including many from our amazingly fun vacation on Lake Michigan to celebrate Mom and Dad Vreeman's 35th anniversary. As you can see, Gavin has become quite the entertainer and explorer. Along with his second birthday, Gavin will be moving into his big-boy bedroom with a real bed! We'll see how this transition goes, but I think he will enjoy it. We're currently planning a sports theme with lots of basketballs, footballs, soccer balls, baseballs, and more, because he just never tires of playing with them. So, lots of changes, fun, and new adventures ahead!

Homeowner's hack

dvreeman — 2010-07-29T13:14:59Z

I always love a good hack. So, when the toilet in our main floor bathroom kept running because of a bad gasket I thought it would be the perfect time to hack it with one of these inexpensive dual flush retrofit kits (the MJSI HYR270 HydroRight to be exact). You see these kinds of dual flush toilets more often in other countries - they have a small flush for #1 and the full flush for #2. Of course, after it arrives from Amazon I realize that my Mansfield toilets have some crazy non-standard flush valve which are not compatible with this kit (or any of the others like it). At this point Lorrie laughs about me and the package that boldly proclaims:

Installs on any toilet without tools in 5-10 minutes!

After a quick trip to Lowes I return with a new flush value, which unfortunately requires you to remove the tank from the toilet base to install. My most clever insight of the night was to use the pneumatic pump for bleeding car brakes to pump the residual water from the tank that is left after you turn the water off and flush it. This meant no leakage when I loosened the bolts to take the tank off from the base. Both the flush valve and the retrofit kit were pretty easy to install from that point on. After a couple of minor adjustments to get the water levels for the two stages right, we were good to go. Total time was more like an hour and 10 minutes (not including the trip to Lowes). Not too bad for something that could reduce water usage by 30%. We'll try it out for a while, and if it holds out the other toilets in the house just might get the same install.

Here's to water conservation!

Post Script: As I'm writing this we're having a thunderstorm and the power flickered off. No worries! My servers and other computers kept right on humming because of those new UPSs I mentioned in the last post. Cool.

Back Online

dvreeman — 2010-07-06T01:50:43Z

I'm happy to report that we've finally got this website back online. Just before we left for Brazil a storm took out our power and killed the hard drive in my webserver. After a new hard drive, an upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and a couple of new Cyberpower UPSs I got the server rebuilt and ready to rock. Unfortunately, my backups we're as reliable as I thought and I was only able to restore posts on this website back to August 2009. Fortunately, our media was stored elsewhere in the cloud, so that is all back. So, we'll start things back up here again.

First things first, you'll want to head over to the photos and videos to check out the latest uploads.

11 Months

dvreeman — 2009-08-31T02:09:10Z

Gavin finished off month 11 today after surviving 4 days with Dad. The Vreeman boys had fun together while Lorrie saw kids at the hospital and went to a peds continuing ed course. There was the infamous "zip tie" event and the first push toy excursion. Gavin was pretty disappointed that he wasn't able to rock out with me and Uncle Phil at the Creed concert Saturday night, but we did listen to their music all day at home and I showed him how to use drop D tuning. At this point though, Gavin is mostly concentrating on his percussion and DJ mixing skills.

Last year at this time we were thinking he could be coming any day. We definitely didn't know all the adventures that lay ahead...

Practice and breakthroughs

dvreeman — 2009-08-28T10:24:17Z

Gavin's 10 month old nervous system loves to practice. Squatting up and down, playing catch, investigating how straps and buckles work, splashing in the tub. Ad infinitum. And that's how it was with the first step on our staircase. In June, Gavin started to take an interest in the living room stairs and just kept practicing going up and down the first step over and over. This continued for about a month or so until one night when had the Sellers and Taylor families over for a cookout. Inspired by the older kids going up the stairs and the larger audience, Gavin took off and climbed the whole flight (with me spotting behind). It was a breakthrough moment and now he can't leave them alone. In the time I've been trying to write this post he's gone up them at least 6 times. Here is one of the runs on video (though 2 min 30 secs is one of his slower times).

The last few weeks have been filled fun adventures with family and friends: Mike and BZ's 40th birthday, an afternoon adventure at the Indianapolis Museum of Art with Uncle Joe and Aunt Rachel, visits from both sets of grandparents, fun at the Indiana state fair. Here is the full media collection for the last few weeks:

August 2009 gallery (Gavin 10 months) : slideshow here | thumbnails here
August Indianapolis Museum of Art adventure (Gavin 10 months) : slideshow here | thumbnails here

Family vacation - round 2

dvreeman — 2009-07-10T03:27:36Z

All of us thoroughly enjoyed our extended weekend vacation up at Houghton Lake, MI - especially Gavin. As you can see from the photo gallery below, he certainly didn't lack for attention. I guess that's what grandparents are for. The weather was beautiful, the setting very peaceful, but most of all we loved getting the time to spend with family to enjoy stories and laughs, good food, kayaking, late night bonfires with s'mores (every night), and all sorts of other fun. We've added a couple of videos and a photo gallery of the trip:

Houghton Lake, MI Vacation Gallery: slideshow here | thumbnails here

Now that Gavin has turned the corner on 9 months, we've also started a running collections of photos over on Picassa. After a couple of days with constant attention from many people, Gavin has really started to perfect his showmanship.

Gavin 9 Months Gallery: slideshow here | thumbnails here

His latest motor development (which he learned up at Houghton Lake) is pulling to stand. It's still a bit of a challenge for him, but he keeps practicing more and more each day. Cruising is not too far away!

Teething biscuits are a bit messy

dvreeman — 2009-07-04T22:08:33Z

We've just arrive up here in Houghton Lake, MI for a couple of days on the lake with Mom and Dad and Phil. The weather is beautiful and we're looking forward to a relaxing couple of days. Last weekend we had a great time at the Fisher's Freedom Festival. It was Gavin's first fireworks display. Funny enough, he decided to go to sleep just when they started. (It was about 10:00PM). We've added a few last photos to Gavin's 8 month gallery. The other highlight is a series of photos for another messy experience with teething biscuits. Gavin gives a little after dinner commentary in this video:

Gavin has fun with a teething biscuit