From Texas to Colorado Tuesday-Saturday

Hi everyone,

Quite the past week! To make it easier on us, we're going to make this post photo intense. It's hard to recall or write about all the amazing things we've done this past week, but we're gonna do our best to show you with pictures of our Colorado adventures!

We didn't, however, take any pictures while visiting Dr. Eric Narrel, Jen, and the rest of his family. They were such amazing people, truly living the 5 Essentials and raising a healthy family. Dr. Eric and Jen's office was one of the best we've seen on the trip. Just a unique layout, great flow for patients and staff, and wonderful people coming through every day. We met them for our first time on Sunday when we arrived in Amarillo. They greeted us with open arms and made us one of the family. We had fun playing games with their youngest son and getting to know their other two children. The information and advice they gave us on raising an all natural family, starting our practice, keeping the office running, etc and etc and etc is priceless and we cannot thank them enough for everything!! ** And thank you both again for all the food throughout our stay. You are a wonderful cook, Jen!! We can't wait to try some of those recipes!! Let us know how the avacado chocolate mousse turns out for the fam! ** We spent an entire day shadowing and working for Dr. Eric. Our nights were spent chatting late in the night. Dave and I are blessed to have met the Narrells and have them as our friends.

We took off from Amarillo on Tuesday morning, after having some quite delicious buckwheat waffles. And here is where our pictures kick in...

On our way out of Amarillo, literally a few miles from the Narrel's home, was this, um, whatever you want to call it. A Cadillac Ranch perhaps? Basically, as Dr. Eric explained, this neighbor is a little off his rocker and actually buried a bunch of Cadillacs in his land years ago. They used to be the classic pink Caddies, but at some point some people vandalized them by spray painting all over them. Over the years more and more people add on to the graffiti. It was sort of cool to stop by on our way out of Texas. Dr. Eric said it's actually a tourist attraction now, haha!

I actually had a conference call to be on Tuesday morning, which is why we left the Narrell's so early (We could have probably stayed into lunch time otherwise). I guess now's a good time to announce that I have accepted a new job. I will start work on Tuesday May 5 at Revolution Chiropractic as Chiropractic Assistant to Dr. Suzy Holmes. I'll be doing a lot of the same stuff I did in my past CA job, but I will also get to do a lot more as far as marketing/advertising goes. Dave and I have been working with Dr. Suzy since September 2008 off and on, but she just interviewed me for this position a few weeks back. We're excited for a steady income again and a chance to advance our future further! So while I was on the conference call, Dave drove us through Texas.

This is pretty much the scene as we left Amarillo and approached New Mexico. Miles and miles of nothingness. When we finally reached New Mexico, all the green you see in this picture was instead yellow/brown, a quite dull and boring couple hours of our Tuesday.

Once we got to New Mexico, we gassed up and switched places. Let me just say that Dave gets bored when he's not driving...so he does things like this.. :) Here is what we've been living out of for the past 2 and a half weeks.


Our sweet FM tuner and sassy green iPod, perfect setup for listening to influential speakers and some darn good motivational books.

I took this one...a view of the miles behind us.

I think we were singing some Rent while this one happened..?



We eventually approached Colorado and this was one of the first mountains we saw!! The rest of our drive through Colorado toward Colorado Springs was BEAUtiful!



We had some time before we needed to be at Dr. Kristin Kell's office, so we hit up Garden of the Gods, which is a free mountain/wilderness park. in the background you can see Pike's Peak, the one with the snow on it.

This is actually a view from our car. We only had time to really drive through the park rather than take time to walk the trails and experience the park.

We did get a chance to stop at the tourist center though. Picked up some organic huckleberry honey! YUmmm!!!

This illustrates how Pike's Peak is the 2nd tallest mountain in the US.


Driving to our hotel Tuesday night, we happened to drive past the Mile High Stadium, where the Denver Broncos play. It was quite the sight! Very trendy! Dave was pumped!




So Thursday thru Saturday was the Maximized Living Colorado seminar in Colorado Springs, so the whole club was in town. We had most of Thursday free, so a few of us decided to head back over to Garden of the Gods to explore and see the mountains. Neal, Bre, Vernon, Allison (and their kids), and Nick came with us. We really got intense with not only hiking but also some novice mountain climbing. Here you can see Nick, Bre and Neal waaaay up on the side of the mountain.



Half way up



Our view from the top!


The famous "kissing camels"



So this was sort of funny... First, do you see the little tree growing on top of one of the peaks? Also, the climber was going up while on his cellphone -- holding it in his right hand!!!! We watched him go the whole way up this way!



Bre and Neal doing some climbing.


Dave and Nick's engagement picture.. :)


I don't think short legs were made to climb...




Gorgeous day!!



The back/end of the trail we took.



So then we had the seminar Friday and Saturday. Here is most of the gang out to dinner together.



There was maybe just a little too much fun going on...

Dr. Greg Loman (right) and Dr. Ben Lerner, the founders of Maximized Living!! Love these guys!

We are now on our way to Jay and Kendall's house, Dave's uncle and aunt. We're just spending tonight with them and their kids before heading out tomorrow morning for Nebraska. One more office to visit on Monday before going back to the Cities! We'll be staying with Art and Mary Ann and family on Sunday, my uncle and aunt. Trying to work in as much family as we can! Driving through pouring rain right now though (thank goodness Dave volunteered to man the wheel.). It's also pretty cold, about the mid 30's now.. We're almost at their house now though, took me almost 2 hours to finish this post with all the pictures to upload!! :) We hope you've enjoyed our more photo journalistic approach this time around. Only 2 more days of our road trip, then back to normal with our blog! We'll touch base again soon!

Congrats to Dave!!

Whoops! I forgot to mention one more thing...so real quick before Dave switches for me to drive:

We found out a few days ago that Dave passed his Part 1 National Boards!! :)

He has 3 more parts to go over the next year and a half. He can't wait to be done, but it will come soon enough.

Congrats to the doctor in training!!


- E

Oklahoma and Texas Wednesday-Monday

Wow, sorry for our delay in posting and this post's lack of pictures! Dave and I have been quite busy here in Texas! We're currently driving from Dallas to Amarillo. We'll be staying with Dr. Eric Narrell and his family tonight and tomorrow night. We're looking forward to a fun couple days with their family!

So where do I need to pick up... On Wednesday we left Kansas and headed for Oklahoma. Dr. Georgia's office was pretty sweet. She is currently doing some construction/updates to the layout of her office to make the flow better, so it was neat to see that process in the works. She also had a lot of unique products as she is highly trained in nutrition and detox. And she is a very practiced adjuster, having studied several of the different techniques out there. We're happy to have stopped by her office in Wichita! We ended up camping in Wichita Wednesday night then headed out in the morning for Tulsa, OK. We stopped by Dr. Lance Bailey's office in Tulsa, which was also pretty sweet. He uses a mixture of techniques in his office as well, so it was good for us to see, in two different offices, how using a mix is quite possible and more productive for the patients.

While in Wichita, we had a few hours to kill before Dr. Lance's opened up, so we decided to GPS some parks close by so we could lay out in the 90 degree weather and sun. Dave picked out one called Swan Lake Park. Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? Well, unfortunately we didn't bring our camera from the car when we got there, but it was possibly one of the coolest parks we've ever been to, and it was right in the middle of a residential area, houses all around it. Basically there was this random lake (more like a large pond, not too too big) which had a fence around it. There were walking trails all along the fencing, so we just started walking thinking it was just a lake with fountains in it shaped like swans. As we walked along, all kind of cool animals and plants showed up. First we saw the real swans. There were only a few, but they were so beautiful! There was a family of ducks, most were mallards, but one was just like the Aflac duck. Pretty cute! We made it to one end of the lake, and from a distance I saw these long orange figures in the water.. I pointed and asked Dave what they were. We had no clue, so we got closer. They were these H U G E goldfish! HUGE! I'm talking like the size of a salmon or something. There were at least 4 of them that we could see, who knows how many more populated that lake. That's what we wanted to take pictures of for you all to see, but the car was so far away at this point in our walk. We also saw a gray heron, tons of turtles, and some normal minnows and larger pond fish. All in just a couple miles worth of habitat. It was quite a cool park! If you're ever in Wichita, look it up! You'll enjoy the walk. :)

After hanging out at Dr. Lance's for a few hours, we grabbed lunch at this AMAZING pizza place, local to Tulsa. So delicious, thanks for the recommendation Dr. Lance! Then, we headed right out of OK for Texarkana, TX. We decided we wanted to avoid all the tolls around here, so we set the GPS to avoid tolls and took off on the back roads through Kansas and OK. Let me say it was pretty darn cool! We were able to see real ranches, like what you see in movies. Also a ton of free range cattle, horses, sheep...so cool! We did stop for gas at a quite shady station in this uber small rundown town. True southerners with thick accents, walking around in overalls with no shirts, and carrying beer in both hands. We live to tell about it though, and the $1.75 price tag for our 11 gallons of unleaded.

We spent Thursday at Dr. Randy John's office. Amazing! Eye-opening! Wow! His office is yet another one we will be striving to meet or beat when we open our own. We not only spent the day there, but he also let us sit in on a training session with him and his staff as well as watch his Doctor's Report. Just an amazing chiropractor who knows so much and is totally on the mission to bring real health to the world.

We stopped at a park in Texarkana to kill some time.




This might be a little more Generation Y oriented, but who remembers Land Before Time (the original, not parts 2-16! lol)?? Just pretend I'm Littlefoot!

Our own Tree Star!

We camped out in Texarkana for two nights then headed to Dallas on Friday morning. We were a little behind schedule and ended up missing Dr. Rob Vasquez's office hours, so we didn't get to shadow him at all. But we at least got to stop in the office and see his layout and unique office ideas. We decided to bump Saturday's plans up to Friday, so we spent the day with Dr. David and Dr. Kimberly Erb who are also right in Dallas. Their office had a bit more laid back feel to it than most of the others we'd been to so far on our trip, but we really liked it. They had a unique layout to the office, so the flow from when patients walk in the door, do their rehab and finally get adjusted was a bit different than what we're used to. It was definitely interesting to see and gave us some ideas for our plans.

This is an experiment being conducted at Dr. Erb's office. The sign is pretty self explanatory. Let's just say this is why Dave and I have committed to never eating from McDonalds again (or any fastfood joint for that matter). This experiment started in May 2007. Gross! There wasn't a spot of mold or decomposition of any kind (believe me, Dave touched it all to see!)

We had originally planned to camp in Dallas Friday and Saturday nights, but some how Dave remembered that our friend Colton, who is the Maximized Living President at Parker Chiropractic College, lives right in the area. So he called Colton and he was happy to let us spend the weekend with him. He lives alone so no biggy. It was fun to catch up with him! Hadn't seen him since January!

Driving through Dallas, we drove past the Dallas Cowboy's stadium. (We also just drove past the Texas Motor Speedway on our way toward Amarillo, where NASCAR races are held. Didn't have a chance for a picture though, but it was quite cool to see a speedway in person. They're a lot bigger than you'd think!)

The presidents from Life Chiropractic College's ML club, Blake and Ricky, were also going to be in town, ironically, to do some screening for Dr. Rob. Dave and I were also supposed to screen for Dr. Rob, so all four of the presidents from three different chiro schools were together for this screening yesterday. The five of us screened in 57 individual people! That is an amazing number -- LOTS OF LIVES SAVED YESTERDAY! We were pretty pumped after that, so we went out to celebrate last night. Good times guys, good times. Haven't laughed so hard in a looong time! It was so good to see you all again!

We made a swing by Parker's campus on Saturday after screening. Nothing too exciting there, but this is a statue of the late Dr. Parker.

I think that brings us up to present time, still driving toward Amarillo. The GPS just said "Continue 210 miles." Ouch. We'll arrive around 6pm CST.

Looking forward to the Colorado Seminar in just a few days!!!


- Elise

Missouri Sunday - Tuesday

We arrived at Joe & Angela's in Sedalia, MO at exactly 2:30am Saturday night/Sunday morning. Poor Joe got out of bed to let us in. We are such horrible guests! We spent all of Sunday with the family. They have 4 kids, Sean (9), Calvin (5), Cedric (3) and Eva (2). Calvin is our godson! They have all grown up SO MUCH since we saw them at our wedding in August! The boys have shot up like weeds!

Calvin shooting a basket

Cedric riding his cycle up and down the driveway.

Me, Calvin and Elise playing his Superheros card game before bed.

Group Picture! Sean ran from the scene... Cedric, Dave, Eva, Elise, Calvin

My two favorite ladies! Eva didn't want Elise to leave. Eva wanted Elise to move her bed into her room and said they could share her closet!

We took off from the Schwartz house around 11am on Monday and went to Lee's Summit, about an hour away. Dr. Amanda Campbell's office is located there. We had an hour to kill before her office opened for its afternoon shift, so we toured around Lee's Summit. What a great city! I can honestly say that Missouri is at the top of our list for opening up at and living in in the future. We'll see what the rest of this trip brings, but as of now, Missouri is winning.

A painting on a building coming into the downtown.

We found this little park near the still functioning train station. This station was in use during the early 1900's. There was also a museum at the station, but was closed when we went unfortunately. You can see a train coming down the tracks just to the left of the station.


We were standing right next to the tracks. The train was so close and so loud! We'd never been so close to a moving train before.

After leaving the train station, we drove around a little while to see the downtown, then searched some activities on our GPS. We found a nature park and decided to check it out. When we got there, the parking lot was empty and the buildings looked dead. The sign said it was free to the public, open from 8am-4pm and to just go inside. So, we did. Luckily there was an extremely nice lady inside. Apparently they were closed for the winter until May 1, so we were a couple weeks early... ;) But she was nice enough to let us in to at least the downstairs of that one building where the reptiles were. Here are some of what we saw. This little guy above was the brightest green snake we'd ever seen. He was almost a neon green!

This was an absolutely HUMONGOUS elk's head.

And this little guy was so weird looking. It's a soft shell turtle, common to Missouri. We'd never seen a turtle with a nose like this. Probably our favorite animal out of them all.

Next, we found signs to a campground with trails. We thought maybe we'd have some time to take a walk. As we turned into the park, we immediately came up to these bison. Quite the startling experience when you're not expecting it! A few feet down were some elk. It was quite the campground!

Luckily (for Elise), we didn't have to camp there. Our friends from the Cities, Neal and Bri, were visiting their sister and brother-in-law in Lee's Summit, just a few miles from Dr. Campbell's office. They all were so nice to let us spend the night. You guys have no idea how nice it is to have a warm place to sleep and a shower in the morning. Thanks!

So we went to Dr. Campbell's office after the campground tour. Let me just say that her office is one of the best we have ever seen! She let us observe for her entire afternoon shift, and afterward she joined us for dinner. We spent 2 and a half hours getting advice and visiting with Dr. Campbell. Then we headed to Neal and Bre's sister's house for the night, visited with them a bit, then turned in for the night.

We left at 9am this morning and have been touring neighboring cities within an hour from Lee's Summit. Like I said, we are really enjoying Missouri and can definitely see us living here and raising a family in the future. So we'll see how everything pans out. Right now we are in Kansas driving to Dr. Georgia Ohlmberg's office in Wichita. Don't know where we'll be spending the night tonight. We'll probably need to look for a campsite somewhere or else sleep in the car. (Don't worry, our back seats fold down and we'll just blow up our air mattress over them. Quite nice if it's necessary.)

And one quick note on the weather. We heard that the UP is having April snowflakes instead of showers. Well, we're enjoying extensive sunshine and 70-80 degree weather down here. Texas in the coming days... We wish you blizzard dwellers luck with the snow! :)


- Dave

Chicago, IL Wednesday - Saturday

We're on the highway again, this time leaving Chicago and driving toward Sedalia, MO where Joe and Angela live. We left a bit later than planned as we went out to dinner with some friends tonight before leaving the Windy City. We plan to arrive at the Schwartz residence around 2:30am.. Right now we're staying awake by singing the entire Rent sound track. It's something we do on road trips...yeah we're a little weird, but hey, who's not. :P

We need to thank our wonderful hosts during out Chicago stay, Jen and Jeremy. Thank you both SO MUCH!!! Jen also has a 3 year old daughter, Marnie, so in the mornings and evenings Dave and I had fun playing with her. Jen and Jeremy are also Northwestern grads, last fall, and are currently Maximized Living doctors interning with Dr. Charles Majors. They were so nice to let us stay with them for a few days. **We'll see you in a couple weeks guys! :)**

Here is a video Dave took of Marnie and I "dancing." SUCH a CUTIE pie!!

On our stop in Chicago, we ended up not doing any screening for doctors. So that was nice, but we probably could have used some cash to cover gas & food along our adventures in the city. On Wednesday, we went right to Dr. Major's office and shadowed him and his associate doctors working for a few hours. It was quite an eye-opening experience. We have never quite seen an office like his. Flow was incredible. Talking to some of his patients, it was clear the loved Dr. Majors and everything Maximized Living stands for. His patients are true testimonials to a Maximized Living lifestyle in health.

On Thursday, we spent most of the day at Dr. Ochsner's office. Elise and Courtney (two other Max Living Club members from Northwestern) also met us at Dr. Ochsner's office and stuck around for an hour or so. For Dave and I, we not only got to shadow and watch patient/doctor/CA interaction, but we were able to stay for the office's Doctor's Report. Dr. Ochsner's intern associate gave the Report that night, so it was great experience for Dave to see what it's like to give one of your first Reports to a full room of people. For those reading who don't know what a Doctor's Report is, it's basically an educational session for patients in the office where TRUE chiropractic principle and philosophy is explained. The doctor explains what chiropractic is and why it is the only way to truly let your body heal and find health. We hope someday soon each one of you will sit in on one of Dave's Reports!

Friday was our "vacation" day, as we're calling it. Instead of screening, we did just that, went on a mini vacation to the heart of Chicago. We mainly drove around the downtown city streets, but also stopped at the Navy Pier for a bit. Here's the "Sear's Tower," which as you may know is now known as the Willis Tower.




It was just a gorgeous day, couldn't have asked for better weather the past few days! The Pier actually wasn't all too excited. It mostly had stores and restaurants geared toward kids and spending money, both of which we are lacking, so we walked around for a bit, grabbed a cheapish lunch and moved on. We then went to the Chicago History Museum which was very interesting. We ended up spending close to 3 hours in there, and it wasn't that big of a museum! It was only about one level and just a few rooms of material, but a lot of reading and movies none the less. They also had an Abraham Lincoln exhibit going on thru this summer, so that was pretty cool. We enjoyed learning some of rich history of Chicago. Here are some Navy Pier pics during our walk outside:

Navy Pier sign


A ship coming in, can you see the lighthouse in the back?


More of the Pier



We were walking away at this point, but you can see the huge Ferris wheel. They Pier has a mini amusement park on it.

Today was the Chicago Maximized Living Seminar. Dave and I attend seminars throughout the US every few months throughout the year. These seminars are training intensive and help us refocus on our mission of saving lives and creating health through chiropractic. Following the seminar, we headed out to dinner with a bunch of friends from all over who were at the seminar. It was a lot of fun to reconnect with these people! :) I won't go through and name everyone because it'll get a bit confusing, but let's just say it's always a good time when we can go out together!






And that brings us to present time: 10:39pm, now in Springfield, IL. Making good progress from Chicago! Almost my time to take over the wheel..blah! Why do I get the graveyard shift?? :) Enjoy the rest of your weekend everyone!


- Elise