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!