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

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!

Welcome Baby Sophia!

This is going to be a bit of a scattered post.  I have so many thoughts to jot down  before I have to leave for work!  Please bear with me!

Introducing Sophia Madelynn

Arrived at 1:41am
Thursday, April 15, 2010
7lbs 7ozs  - 21 inches
100% NATURAL & DRUG FREE

Christina did an amazing job not only in delivery but also thru the 9 months leading up to the beautiful birth of their daughter.  Christina chose to do a natural water birth.  We are SO proud of her!!  Last Sunday we went out to Paul & Christina's house to cook them a meal while they adjusted to having Sophia in their lives.  We grilled up some of my secret recipe burgers and had strawberry-apple spinach salad.  Gorgeous weather!  So peaceful to sit out on the deck with Soph and soak it all in.  :)

Dave had his last day of T8 internship yesterday.  Dr. Bruce treated Dave and the entire office staff to lunch.  Dr. Beck took us out for drinks after work to say goodbye.  It was a fun time and thanks for the treats guys!  Dave will miss the office and wonderful patients.  He's got 2 weeks off then starts his T9 internship the first week of May.  He'll be working at Bandana Chiropractic, which is a Maximized Living office in Roseville (about a 30 minute commute from home).  He's really excited to get into this office and have some new patients to take thru the Maximized Living Essentials.  What's great about this next phase of work is that these doctors are going to give Dave a lot more control over his own patients.  I won't get too much into the details, we realize while we find these things exciting, maybe you guys don't...but all you need to know is Dave's going to be having even more fun at work, learning new things every day, and getting closer and closer to graduation in November!

Dave and I attended a Biomarkers of Health seminar two weekends ago in Bloomington hosted by Nutrition Dynamics.  Students were able to attend for free this time, so I dragged my boy along.  :)  It was fabulous!  It was a seminar dedicated to identifying disease in the body and treating it naturally.  I get so excited to learn more and more about supplementation and natural disease reversal. 

In honor of Earth Day, I did a post on Healing Cuisine.  I can't recommend the book Gorgeously Green by Sophie Uliano enough.  If we weren't on a student budget, I'd buy this book for all of you, seriously!  It's great, jam packed full of tips on green living!  Happy Earth Day!

My hunky husband just finished making me a large mug of homemade organic chai tea, so I must leave this post.  It smells wonderful!  Look for a post on HealingCuisineByElise.com with the recipe soon!  We've been working on it for a couple weeks now and think we finally have the perfect ratio of spices!  Yummmy breakfast treat!

Congrats to Sean!

Angela and Joe's son Sean shot his first deer -- an 8-pointer!!  Congratulations Sean!  Here he is with Cedric and Calvin, all three so proud.  :)  Great job!