On The Road Again

So next on The Adventures of Dave and Elise is a massive mid-west road trip! I'm writing to you from on the road, I-94E just past Madison, WI heading toward Chicago, IL!

Dave just had his last, of 11, final exam this morning and we took off immediately from the school. His break is from today until May 5th. For months now we've been planning this extreme road trip. We will be visiting 10 different states in the coming 3 weeks. The reasoning behind it you may ask? Well, first of all, we need to figure out where we are going to live in less than 2 years as well as open our own chiropractic practice. Since we are both sheltered U.P.ers who have only really seen WI and the LP on our major vacations, we decided we need to see the world (or at least the USA) before making such a choice. The second incentive for the trip is to visit as many chiro offices as we can. Not just your typical low back and neck pain chiropractors though, oh no. We are going all out to have one of THE best chiropractic offices in the world. Our goal is to offer the absolute best quality of care to our family, friends and patients. So along our trip route, we are going to visit other offices like the one we are planning to open ourselves. Think of it as our own little business research project. We will primarily be visiting Maximized Living offices, but have a few just high volume, principled chiropractors in the mix. We are SO excited to see the array of offices and meet some new doctors!

We are also trying to "break even" on this trip as we're on a limited budget being newlyweds..a grad student..and an out of work chica. So, our plan to recover the gas and food costs are to screen for the doctors we visit. This is going to be so great, because not only will we get to sharpen our screening skills, but we'll also get to talk to TONS of people from each city we stop at, giving us the ability to get to know our potential future client base. It will be many hours working each day, but it will be so worth it by the end of this trip. Hopefully we'll be narrowing down on some cities we loved and hated..

Today we are heading to Chicago, where we will spend about 4 days and visit some quite amazing doctors, leaders in chiropractic! Today is Dr. Charles Majors' office. Tomorrow will be Dr. Ashly Ochsner's. And then on Saturday is the Maximized Living Chicago Seminar. It's going to be a jam-packed weekend of principle and philosophy! We cannot wait!

This will have to be it for this post. My laptop battery is almost dead. But check back often throughout the next 3 weeks -- or subscribe to or RSS our blog. We're planning to share our adventures with you all as we go along! Don't worry, we'll keep the work part to a minimum and only share our fun experiences and sights. :)


- Elise

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to our readers! We hope each of you have had an enjoyable and blessed Holiday!

We were part of the Kuznia clan this weekend. We joined Vernon, Allison, Ocean and Ezra for their Easter festivities!

On Saturday, we tagged along on their morning Easter Egg Hunt, which was actually held at the chiropractic school which Vern and Dave attend. It drew in hundreds of people! Below are some pictures from the day. It was a lot of fun to spend time with Ocean and Ezra and see all the kids having so much fun in sun! It was a gorgeous sunny day!

The day started with face painting!

Ocean showing off her glittery hopping bunny!

Ezra looking out at his field of eggs.




So this video is a little humorous. Dave wanted us to record the hunt take place, just to see what happened. First, let me explain how the Easter egg hunt actually started. There was a man on the loud speaker coordinating everything. He was supposed to yell "Ready, Set, GO!" when it was time to start. Well there was still about 4 minutes til the actual hunt was supposed to take place.. Kids were divided up in age groups, a huge square of grass per group. We were hanging out with Ezra in the 3-4 age group. So this family standing next to us was messing around with their 3 year old. They were saying "1-2-3 Start!" to him, and laughing about it when he actually ran out!! This of course created a massive chain reaction. Before you knew it, hundreds of kids in all of the age groups flew into their fields to fight for their eggs. It was chaos. So, I was a little thrown off at starting this video because I missed the "official" start. But I brought you to speed on the point in time when I did start taking the video. Then...I got lost. Literally. Hey, it's hard being short and in a mob of people. It took me a few minutes to find my peeps again!!

A pose with the Easter Bunny.

Poor Ezra was wiped out by the end of the day.

Today we headed to church this morning. This Easter was my turn for attending worship service, so we picked out a new church to visit just a few miles from our apartment. (There are actually quite a few Lutheran churches right near our place, so it's very convenient.) The service was very nice and full of color! It was the first Easter service that I've seen a huge array of spring flowers at! Normally I'm used to seeing white lilies in memory of loved ones, but this church did something really neat. They had the white lilies in memoriam and had colorful tulips, lilacs, irises, daisies, gladioli, etc in honor of living loved ones. I thought this was such a great idea. A lot of families were honoring their moms and grandmas who were probably at church with them. It was just so refreshing to see the church full of such life and color in the flowers! After all, Easter is to celebrate life!

After church we headed over to the Kuznia's for Easter brunch. It was so delicious Allison!! Thank you guys so much for having us again! We really enjoyed ourselves. After brunch, we played games with the kids and just relaxed. Later in the afternoon, Vernon, Allison, Dave and I went to see Adventureland at the theater. Allison's mom was visiting from Fargo, so she volunteered to take care of the kids while we were gone. All in all, it was a very relaxing and fun Easter for me. For Dave, on the other hand...he has 3 more final exams tomorrow, some more on Tuesday and just one on Wednesday. Poor guy. We got home and he immediately left to go study with Vern. I won't see him again until Wednesday probably. Alas...at least we have his spring break to look forward to in the coming week!

Again, wishing you all a HAPPY EASTER SEASON!


- Elise

Miss Ella Marie

We finally squeezed in a visit to see Scott and Laura and to meet their new Ella! We popped in on them for the evening on Thursday. They are back in their house in St. Paul, fully restored from the fire they had last fall. The restorations look great! It was a fun night of The Office, good food & wine, and holding our new second cousin! :) I'm looking forward to babysitting soon!

Dad brings new meaning to "double fisting"

Mom and Ella at dinner time

Dave and Ella -- she's just waking from her nap here

Me with the gorgeous babe!

Plants That Cleanse Your Air

So I came across this link from another blog we follow. It's on our beloved TED.com (amazing speeches and presentations. check it out sometime if you're bored!)

Dave and I have started our own little collection of indoor plants since getting married. So far we have two aloe plants, a spider plant, a bamboo (given to us by Amber!!) and some spiky one that we don't know what it's called. We've been hoping to add to the bunch, which are clustered around our sliding deck door. After running across this video, I think we will definitely be picking up these three types of plants this spring to help clean up and detoxify our air year round!



http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/490


Hope you find this video as informative and helpful as we did. It might be one of the simplest ways to create health in your life!


- Dave & Elise