Merry Christmas

Hello everyone!

It has been much too long since my last post.  I've been putting all my of free time into Healing Cuisine, and thus have neglected you all.  We are home for Christmas, finally, and it feels great!  At the Schwartz house presently, hanging out while we bake cookies, sip tea, the girls are playing their instruments (flute, piano, singing), and the boys are outside skiing and tinkering with the car.  Very relaxing, so glad to be here. :)

Dave and I have been all over the place for the last 6 months, including living in Canada for 3 months.  Dave has graduated with his Chiropractic degree (CONGRATS DAVE!!!!) and we are now working on opening our chiropractic clinic.  We've been living nomadically since August, going from basement to basement living with various friends all over the place.  On January 1st we will be driving down to Orlando, Florida to relocate for about 6 months.  We'll be training and working with Maximized Living while plans commence on our office in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Greensboro will be our eventual permanent home.  Well, permanent for a little while at least. ;)  2011 is going to be a busy year for us!  Hope to  have our clinic doors open by July if all goes well.

Want to wish you all a very blessed Christmas!  Our next update will be from sunny Florida!!  Visitors welcome!

"Look!  The virgin will conceive a child!  She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means 'God is with us.'"  Matthew 1:23

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

First Trip to Canada

This will be a quick post before I dash off to work in a few minutes..

Last weekend we headed up north for our first trip to Canada.  Well, Dave has crossed the boarder a time or two, but it was my first official time and our first time together.  We headed up to Winnipeg for a seminar on Saturday.  It was only about a 6-7 hour trip, so just like going home to da UP, not so bad of a trip.  It was well worth the drive, too.  We learned a bit of nutrition and cannot wait to be certified!!

This weekend we are going out to Wisconsin to screen for Dr. Drew and Lyra, some good friends of ours in ML.  It will be a fun time!  Dr. Drew just moved into a new building, so we can't wait to see it!  Hope there will be time for that.

Ummm...nothing else has really been going on for us except the usual work and school.  Dave has night classes this trimester as well as early morning clinic. So he's up around 5/5:30am and not home until 9/9:30pm most evenings..  :(  *sigh*  Just gotta push thru til December!!

We can't wait to finally head back home for Christmas.  We haven't been back since Christmas last year.  We've got so many people we need to see, some we haven't seen since our wedding!!  We'll have to make a list and ration our time..

And for those of you keep up with Ashley (yes, Ash, you have followers that live your life thru me...scary thought, huh?), she and Craig had a minor kitchen fire the other day.  Everyone is okay, Dal and the Ash got out right away.  She said the fire dept came and did their thing.  Thank goodness they're alright!  So that's her update. :)  You can check her blog on our blogroll to the right.

That's all my thoughts for now ppl!  Later!

-E

Picture Links

Hi All!

Just finished posting all of our wedding pictures online. So here are the links. I've also included a link for this year's Christmas photos. If you want any prints of any of the pictures, please let me know and we'll mail them to you. Or we can get them emailed to you, too.

All of the professional photos were done by our cousins Laura and Scott Haraldson. They are professional photographers who specialize in weddings. They are stationed in the Twin Cities, but travel all around Minnesota to shoot weddings year round. If you like what you see and want to be put in touch with them, please let us know.

Wedding Reception: http://picasaweb.google.com/ejvertin/WeddingReceptionSnapShots?authkey=ngYfpWV7KkI&feat=directlink

Wedding Snap Shots: http://picasaweb.google.com/ejvertin/WeddingSnapShots?authkey=fpD9cJXestY&feat=directlink

Professional Wedding Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/ejvertin/Wedding?authkey=2NtN0qcGndU&feat=directlink

Christmas 2008: http://picasaweb.google.com/ejvertin/Christmas2008?authkey=3dBHrt_lJLk&feat=directlink


Enjoy!


- Elise

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Well we made it home from the U.P. alive! It was actually a gorgeous 7 hour drive home. The roads were clear the entire way and we got to watch the sun set against the trees that had a light dusting of snow. So pretty!*

Here is a short video clip of us departing to the U.P. Dave decided to capture the atmosphere of our trip: our packed car, the music, and my humming (gag!). Little did I know that this was being recorded, and I just found it now as I'm editing our Christmas pictures..

We had a great five days visiting friends and family for Christmas. We stayed with Mom and Dad S for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, then drove up to Aunt Maija's for Christmas night. Stayed with Mom V for mostly the rest of the trip, spending Friday and Saturday visiting many friends and family.

Christmas morning at the Schwartz house! Elise drew Mom's name this year and Dave drew Dad's. We did the classic box-inside-a-box (times 10) trick for Dad's gift. Good times! :)

Mary had Dave's name and Emily had Elise's this year. (Love the cookies, Em!)

Christmas evening with the Stadius-Vertins! We have 'Sister Power' in the first picture -- Holly made each aunt and Mom a beautiful bracelet. We were trying to be artistic with this picture... And the second is one of the dinner tables at Maija's house. Matt and Joel were cracking us all up, and after viewing the picture, Matt was scared he was going bald (turns out it was just a mild case of hat hair, haha).

This year, Elise had Joel's name and Dave had Eric's. (Sorry, we forgot to get pictures of your gift opening Eric!) We got Joel a new golf bag filled with golfing goodies. The top picture is me delivering his gift. For those who have asked me in the past, THIS is why I use a Junior bag and clubs when I golf... :) And below, Joel was thrilled to find a club umbrella in the bag!

And Holly joined us this year -- She made me a gorgeous necklace and earrings set! So talented!

So that was a brief summary of our Christmas holiday. We hope yours was fun as well! Feel free to share your stories as a comment to this post! Now there's more to our trip that we'd like to share...

On Friday, we went to visit our friends Alanna and Ashley (regretfully their husbands, Tony and Craig were both working...but we got to meet Dallas, Ashley and Craig's new baby boy!). Ashley cooked us her delicious Parmesan garlic chicken pizza for lunch. It was so nice to catch up with the ladies and spend some time with Teija and Dallas. The babies are getting so big! We didn't want to leave them behind either -- they're so cute!

Teija loved Ashley's dish cloth -- in her words, "mmmmm"!

Later that night, Dave and I went to the wedding rehearsal for Betty and Bob's wedding. They asked me to sing at their wedding, which was at Faith Lutheran Church (my old church from when we lived in Laurium). I have known Betty and Bob for about 14 or 15 years -- they are like second parents to me! Betty was my choir director at church (for a group called STARs -- Students Together Always Rejoicing) which I joined when I was about six years old. Since then she and Bob have been there for me for many other things, through graduations, plays and musicals, our wedding, and more to come! Dave and I were just excited to be involved in their special day, that we were waiting over 10 years to actually happen! We also helped to decorate the reception hall and were treated to a pizza dinner that night. Then on Saturday, we visited with Lorraine and Larry in Atlantic Mine before heading to the wedding in Laurium.

The ceremony was just beautiful. Betty really took advantage of all the holiday colors and decorations, having a full Christmas theme. She even made all of the bridesmaids dresses, and they were smokin' hot! Now, some of you know what happens when I get up to sing in honor of people very near and dear to my heart...well it happened yet again, even though I tried not to let it. Problem is they put me singing right after the vows, which at my cousin's wedding, I broke down in tears at the same spot. This time I was fine at the rehearsal, so Dave and I were hoping things would go just as well at the wedding. My mom knew otherwise! I sang a song called "This is the Day," an original wedding song written by a christian solo artist. Dave took video of my performance, which I didn't really plan on posting on here, but he talked me into it. Just please try to look past all of the flat notes, cracking and tears. I promise I really can sing if I can keep my emotions in check.. :)

Besides that happening, we had a ton of fun at the wedding and the reception. We got to see a countless number of friends and even some of the Vertin side of the family at the reception.

Eric actually started the ceremony by playing Trumpet Voluntary! He did a great job!!

Well, I think this about sums up our Christmas trip in Michigan. We went to church with Maija on Sunday, then caught lunch at the Schwartz house before leaving for Minnesota. Got home at about 10pm Central time on Sunday night, so not to bad.

We're getting excited for tonight now -- we have big New Year's Eve plans! We're going to a club called The Lounge right in downtown Minneapolis. So look forward to our next post which will probably have some city pictures. This will be one of the first big clubs we've been to since moving here. We can't wait to dress up and go out on the town!

Happy New Year to all of you from us both! We love you!


- Elise