It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's about time for an update!  We sent our Christmas cards out this week and anticipate a few new visitors (if that's you, comment on here so we know you're following us!  We'll write back, promise!), so it's time to do a little life summary in time for Christmas.  Dave and I have both been meaning to do a real update for about 2 months now...I beat Dave to it today even though he is all done with school for this trimester!!  He just finished up Wednesday afternoon with his last practical!!  Hurray!  He's now officially a T8 (trimester 8 student, out of 10 trimesters).  One year to go, so we're in go time for planning our office, business plan, adjusting technique, all of that stuff... YAY!  SO exciting!  :)

I have been pretty busy as well beyond working the normal job.  I've been taking a nutrition and detox certification course on Saturdays and Sundays.  It's a four part certification and we meet once a month for 4 months.  Last weekend was the third session, so just one left in January (phew!).  I passed my first 2 tests with flying colors!!  100% on the first one!!  I am a bit surprised as I am the youngest person in the room and just about everyone else is doctors!  Nutrition and detox is becoming a real passion of mine.  Our office isn't just going to be chiropractic.  We are going to create a healing place, a whole wellness center, where patients come to get off the medical treadmill and start letting their body heal from the inside out and live to their full God-given potential.  I'm already getting a ton of training and experience at Revolution every day on helping people get off medications, start exercising, doing a cleanse and start the healing.  It's absolutely a blessing to be in my position at work and to have the opportunity in the Twin Cities to network and get in to these seminars for extra training while Dave and I have the time to do it.  Our path is being laid for us and becoming clearer every day!

Subject change....  Lots of you have been asking us about the mice.  Well, a few weeks ago we caught 4 more within a couple days of each other.  We've been using just one trap and resetting it over and over.  Wait, let me rephrase that... Dave is the one doing the resetting and clean up.  :)  Brave brave Dave!!  He hates mice, but he does it all for me.  What sacrifice!  xo!  For about 3 weeks now I think it's been pretty quiet in the "mouse corner" of our bedroom.  Hopefully that was the last of them.  I think the count is up to 17 or maybe closer to 20 now?  We've kind of lost count.  Dave has talked to our apartment managers a couple times lately about getting out of our lease due to the consistant mice issue, but they said the only thing they could do is move us to a different apartment.  We don't want to do that though because it would be on the 3rd floor, and we're in a first floor apartment now.  The reason we'd like to get out of our lease is so we can move into a slightly cheaper apartment closer to Maple Grove where I work.  In January, Dave will start interning at an office in Plymouth (just a minute from Maple Grove).  So it'd save us a lot of drive time and gas money if we could move...but for now, we're staying put in Bloomington (about a 25 minute drive from Maple Grove).

This year we actually went home for Thanksgiving, the first time in I think 2 or 3 years! And it was our first time home to the U.P. since last Christmas. We were shocked to find we BOTH had the Friday after Thanksgiving off from both school and work, so we decided why not head home for the 4-day weekend. We spent Thursday and Saturday with family, and sandwiched Friday in between with a little shopping and visiting as many people as we could, some of which we haven't seen since our wedding over a year ago!!!   We still have to make rounds to a few more friends this coming week on our Christmas visit.  We'll be in town Christmas Eve evening thru Sunday. Can't wait!!

Over the Thanksgiving trip, we went over to Ashley and Craig's for a few hours. Alanna and Tony joined us and Alanna made a DElicious lasagna meal and brought a couple of pies from her bakery -- the raspberry pie was to die for! Here are a few pictures of the babies -- can't believe how big they are getting!!!!!! Dallas is just over a year old and is as big as Teija!! And yes, that is THE Teija, our littlest flower girl at our wedding. She is almost 2 years old now come January. Wow time flies. Also enjoy the video below of her dancing to the music of a toy. Adorable!

 

On December 7th, Dr. Suzy treated Dave and I to our very first real concert, Chris Tomlin's Glory in the Highest tour!  http://www.christomlin.com/home.php  We were SO EXCITED to go!!  We had been eying up his concert since we heard a commercial for it in October, but we just couldn't scrape together the funds to go.  Thank you so much Suzy, we had a BLAST with you guys!!  We appreciated it so so much!  It was such a great night.  His music filled up our wells!!  All of us were beaming on the way out.  Who knew worshiping on a Monday night after a long day's work could be so uplifting! :)  Christina and Paul also joined us, as well as Rob, Suzy's fiance.  We all went out for some dinner afterward, a pretty late night, but so worth it.

You can sort of make out Chris's face on the screen.  He's down there holding his guitar.  We were sitting in the front row balcony.  The concert was actually at the church we attend, Grace, very close to our home!!  http://www.atgrace.com/

 

After the concert. 

Paul and Christina on left, Rob and Suzy in middle, Dave and Elise on right

Just flipping through other pictures from this month...  Here is our Christmas tree, although it didn't quite turn out.  We wanted to put this up to show Calvin, our loving Godchild, what we did with the cute little Santa ornament he gave us last year.  It is dressed in a camouflage suit!  The Santa is sort of shaped like a star, so we put him at the top of our tree.  :)  Maybe you can just tell him about it, Angela?

 

We've been starting a food blog as well, with healing diet recipes, foods and other ideas.  This is one of our experiments -- Chipotle burgers.  100% organic from the bun up!  Grassfed beef (we bought a 1/4 of a cow a few months ago and are slowly enjoying), lettuce, avacado, caramelized red onions, raw swiss cheese, organic whole grain bun with no sugar, and a homemade chipotle sauce!!  These burgers were ABSOLUTELY TO DIE FOR!!  Possibly the best burgers we've had in a verrrry long time.

 

  

Here is the Christmas picture we sent out with our Christmas cards this year at Revolution.  You can see our real tree in the background -- the aroma every day when I come in to work to open up is heavenly!  The nutcracker was brought in by Christina's (far right) father-in-law.  The kids in our office love it! haha

 

This is a photo of Dave doing one of his workshops.  He does talks for our office (and others on occassion).  This one he did just last weekend on Burst Training, the type of exercise Dave and I do and what we will teach our patients to do as well.  You work out for just 6 minutes per day and burn fat for 36 hours after.

And that's about all I have to talk about today.  :)  I know, we covered a lot in this post.  Hopefully you hung in there!

We're looking forward to seeing many of you in just a week for Christmas!  Eek!  It's just a week away, I have just a little more wrapping to do..  For those we don't get to see this year, Dave and I wish you a blessed Christmas and New Year's and hope you create lasting memories this year!  May God shine his light in your heart and for your family this Season.  Luke 1:14  "And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth."  Have a wonderful time relaxing and celebrating!  Blessing for good health and happiness for 2010!  And again, if you're new, shoot us a quick message on here and we'll look forward to getting back in touch with you soon!

Love, Dave and Elise