Moving on

Just a quick message from the couch at my mom's house.  :)  Taking some me time to de-stress and refocus my goals.  I am hanging out here for two days before Mike and Lori's wedding in the Soo on Saturday.  Dave just left with Joel for Mike's bachelor festivities for the next two days.  They are ready for a weekend of fun!  Especially Dave, he's excited to see his buddies again and get some time off before moving himself to Canada and starting full time work again.  He needs this break!  His MIND needs this break!

The past couple days here have been absolutely nutz.  All good things, just the stress that goes along with moving.  We are successfully moved out of Hampshire Hill in Bloomington!  Half of our belongings are now here in Michigan, half still in Minnesota.  We sold all of our furniture on CraigsList.com!  Wahoo!  We only kept our amazing bar stools (a wedding gift from Mike and Lori) and our small kitchen table.  Our bed and frame were the last to sell and we were sad to see them go, but made the last minute decision to sell them after thinking about all the hassle moving them would bring.  We'll be sleeping on an air mattress once we arrive in Florida in 2011.  For now, I'll be living with my FABulous friend Jan in Maple Grove in her spare room (with a bed).  Dave's family in London also has a bed for him.  I am excited to be moved very close to work, saving me 30-40 minutes of drive time twice a day!!  It's going to be a marvelous Monday morning! :)

All in all, we only had to make two trips with our stuff up here.  Not too bad!  We downsized a lot and it felt great to shed all the "junk" we never use.  I highly recommend doing it as you transition or if you're stuck in a rut.  It opens your eyes to what's truly important and gives you the opportunity to refocus your life on what you want to achieve.

Also have been meaning to throw this picture on here:

The day after Dave's surprise party, after all the family had headed back home and friends said their goodbyes, we headed out with Mark & Nicole and their friend Elyse (!!) to the horse races!  We've had this list of "Things I Want To Do Before I Leave This Summer" with all the major Twin Cities events we hadn't done yet.  The Canterbury Park horse races was definitely one of them!  This is their 25th Anniversary I believe, so all year is free admission.   We brought $7 with us and won on our first two or three races...then we got maybe a little to cocky and blew all our winnings.  Oh well.  We went for the experience.  :)  And it was a blast!

That's it for now.  Excuse me while I stretch out and flip thru some channels on the tube.  :)

-Elise

A Suprise Party: Congrats and Farewell Dave!

I can finally talk about it!  For the last four months or so I had been planning a top secret surprise graduation and farewell party for Dave.  We held it on Saturday afternoon, July 31st.  Family and friends came from ALL over to attend and aide in the surprise! :)

Dave's official graduation date will be November 19th, 2010.  But with the chance that we won't even be attending the graduation due to his final externship dates and the risk of poor driving conditions come the fall, I figured it'd be best to throw him a party now rather than wait til who knows when.

And so the planning began.  I'll spare you all the behind the scenes details of decorations and site selection.  The biggest challenge was getting Dave out of the area for the night of the 30th so I could take over the apartment and cook up a storm.  I developed a few plans with various friends...all day golf outing, holding a garage sale, back to back movies at the theater..but none got him out of the apartment overnight.  Then I talked to Chris (Dave's brother Chris) and he thought of taking Dave camping for the Fri-Sat.  Perfect!  And to solidify his story even more, there was a triathlon in Bemidji on Saturday morning.  How perfect was that??  Well, Chris is a trainer and regularly does triathlons!  So he called Dave to make the "plans", signed up, and off they went to Bemidji.  What a trooper Chris was!  Not only did he run the triathlon and got first in his age division (!!!), but they also got rained and poured on Friday night AND had a gallon of water leak all over the floor of the car.  The video below is all of Chris's hard work to keep the secret paying off....it is Dave and Chris arriving straight from their 4 hour drive home.  And thank you to all who helped behind the scenes, most of it I still haven't had a chance to tell Dave about!  I had a ton of help from family and friends all around!  Thank you to everyone who pitched in before and after!  It was definitely a group effort!  And we did it!!  Dave was successfully SURPRISED beyond belief.  Check the video.  Joel's behind the camera.  My favorite part is the high five between Chris and him.

For this party (and any future party of ours) I vowed to make a complete spread of Healing Cuisine foods, meaning ALL of our family and friends could eat (organic, sugar free, grain free, gluten free, dairy free, etc).  Well, with the exception of the cake.  I wasn't about to open my kitchen to making a completely gluten free/sugar free cake for over 100 people AND deal with the stress of keeping the surprise from my hunny..!!  As the party got rolling, all of my creations were a hit!  I love to make people happy and help them realize healthy eating can be absolutely delicious!  If you were looking for a recipe from the party, I've begun posting them every other day for the next two weeks!

Here are a few pictures that our friend Kenny took.  If anyone has any others, please send them or tag us!  I forgot my camera in all the rush!

Walking in to the room full of loved ones.  Shocked..Eyes welling up!

A thank you hug!

Some of the kitchen ladies!  My mom and aunts headed up the food set up and refilling!  FABulous job ladies!!

Hugs for his fans.. :-P

His cakes:  vanilla and carrot!

 

Suzy, Dave, Elise, Paul, baby Sophia and Christina!

 

Us with Kenny  <3  Our party photographer!

To those that weren't able to attend, we missed you!  There were so many faces Dave asked about, and I shared all of your emails, letters and voice messages with him!!  We are SO BLESSED to have a strong support system!!

And aside from the party and pictures, an update on our phone situation.  We've decided to go without phones for at least the next 4 months (thru Jan 2011).  This is mostly because Dave is leaving for Canada the end of the month and, gosh, Canadian service is thru the roof!  We've also been super cutting back on spending for the past two years...this is another way to save each month and put money into savings for opening up in NORTH CAROLINA!  Did I mention that part yet?  In our last post...but in case you didn't hear, it's NC for sure baby! :)  Book your winter vacations in advance.  Our spare room will fill up fast! haha

Love you all!  XO!