Same Ol' Same

Wanted to get something posted quick before heading off to work this afternoon.  We arrived home safe from Florida on Sunday morning after sleeping in the airport's food court overnight.  Our flight left FL at 5:20am and we were back in Minneapolis around 10:30am.  We slept away the rest of my birthday and got up to make some dinner around 8:30pm.  It was good to recover a bit after the seminar though.  Early mornings and late nights of training call for some extra sleep when you get home from it all!  We had a really good time at the Maximized Living seminar though.  It's always great to see all our friends that are scattered around the world and get energized and refocus together for our same mission and purpose.

In other news, Elise got the results from her final exam for the detox and nutrition seminars she has been taking.  She passed (of course), four for four with flying colors!, and this was a seminar for DOCTORS!  I was really impressed and can't wait to have her applying her skills to our own patients soon.  Now she is helping to restore health to patients at Revolution.

Nothing much is new with me.  I'm interning at an office in Plymouth and it's pretty much the same ol' thing every day.  I'm trying to spice things up and encourage the doctors to branch out and try new things.  I am excited about one thing though.  They are allowing me to do a talk for their office!  So I'll be starting out with my burst training talk as I know it's something everyone gets excited about and brings their friends to.  I hope to do more workshops for them in the coming months of my internship, hopefully can get one in on nutrition, maybe a cancer or heart disease talk, autism maybe.  Whatever time will allow for!  And I am already looking for my next office to intern at.  I will start at my T9 internship in May, so I'm looking for an office that better fits the type of office we want to open for ourselves, which means more focused on wellness, mission based to save lives, sees lots of kids and families.  Those are our top points.

Still no hits on our apartment for a subletter.  If anyone knows anyone looking for a place to live in Bloomington, let us know!  We'll work out a deal!

Need to get on the road, but I hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday wherever it leads you!

- Dave

2010 is in full swing

Hi all!  Sorry for not posting in a while.  Hope everyone had great holidays!  It is hard to believe January is already half way up!  We have been pretty busy since getting home from our Christmas trip home to Michigan.  We had a quiet New Year's at home this year.  Dave surprised me with a bottle of champagne (cheap from the Cub down the block, but still fun to celebrate!) and we snuggled up in bed to watch the ball drop on our laptop.  I believe it was about 11:30pm EST that our TV cut out and we couldn't find any channel that had any balls dropping, so we resorted to webTV.  The same but on a smaller screen.  :)

After our little break from work and school, we have been in full swing since January 2nd.  Dave has started is T8 training (trimester 8 out of 10).  He is working at an office in Plymouth, about 5 minutes from the office I am currently employed at.  He is adjusting, working on a few marketing projects, networking and getting some of the office training, too.  He picked this office out himself to train in.  He's had 2 full weeks of it so far and is enjoying it, but is also ready for more of a challenge.  I'm sure in the coming weeks the docs will throw more at him once they see his confidence and skill levels!

Work has been pretty busy for me at Revolution.  We have about 4 events planned for this month.  A usual month will hold 1 maybe 2 workshops, so this month has been about double the work load.  I'm not complaining though, I really do love it.  This job lets me use all of my talents while having a blast with patients and all the kids!  So much fun!  I have also begun some training for my job promotion.  Christina is expecting her first in April, so I will be assuming her manager position around that time.  We have been doing a little training so far this month, but that will come full fledged in February where I'll learn the ins and outs of insurance.  Woohoo!  (not)  Even with the insurance side of things, we're off to a great start.  2010 is going to be a great year!  :)

We are still hoping to move up north about 30 minutes.  So get this...  The other night we posted our apartment on Craig's List (finally, had been putting it off for about a month) and the next morning we had heard back from 3 people!  So we set up meetings this weekend.  One couple came by today, super cute, about our age with the same hobbies and interests.  They appreciated that we were also an organic family.  I thought that was pretty cool.  We're keeping our fingers crossed that they contact us in the near future to take our place!  We think they would be very happy here!  Once someone wants our place, we'll have to pick out an apartment up in Brooklyn Park like..in 24hours or something ridiculous like that and get moved, BECAUSE we are attending a Maximized Living seminar in Florida the 27-31.  We are hoping to be moved out before the seminar.

I also just got home tonight from the first day of my last Rakowski Nutrition and Detox seminar.  One more day left to certification!!  I passed my third of 4 tests and got the results a couple weeks ago from that one.  This final test is on the male and female reproductive organs, how to detox them, estrogen toxicity in both males and females, how to treat prostate cancer...that sort of stuff.  I love to learn about this all, but will be glad to be done.  Honestly I can't sit for that long anymore and don't know how I did it in college!  haha, anyone else feel that way??

That kind of sums up our January so far.  Oh yeah, I forgot to put on here that we have purchased a second car.  We bought Dan and Allison's car (our friends who had the cutest triplets recently).  Dan just graduated from Northwestern this December and is now in Florida training in the same program Dave and I will train in next year.  We purchased their Chevy Cavalier after they upgraded to a van (for obvious reasons :).  It will get us through the next couple years at least.  It's good we got it when we did, because car pooling got impossible around that time, I believe the end of November..

Have a great rest of your weekends!  Dave sends his love to all, as do I!

- E

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

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween every one!  We have a new look to our blog as of today.  It was time for a change, after about 2 years into blogging.


No major plans for either of us this Halloween.  Usually we'll at least dress up and go out or hit up a party or two, but this year Dave is out of town.  He's down in Florida for the quarterly Maximized Living seminar.  I am so sad that I missed it this year, but we had a HUGE event finishing up at Revolution that I had to assist in running.  It was a great turnout, packed house, so it was worth it to stick around town for sure.  But I'm disappointed I didn't hop on a plane and get down there for today -- Dave called this afternoon and said he was honored with an award and called up on stage for his outstanding leadership and direction as President for the past year!!!!!  This is a tremendous honor as he was hand picked out of all the presidents from all the schools around the country, AND the ML leaders rarely congradulate students let alone honor them with an award.  I say the first of many!  :)  Sad I missed the big moment, but so excited for Dave at the same time.  Perhaps we'll get a pic up here when he gets home to show it off.


So while I've been home alone this weekend (with the exception of our lovely roommate, Kelly, who is scrambling to get her last-minute costume together right now -- eek!), I've done a little bit of pre-Christmas shopping (for those of you who know why my Secret Friend/Secret Santa is this year, you know why this was the perfect time to do some browsing) and have successfully cleaned our entire bathroom and about half our bedroom.  Needed a break, so thus I am blogging.  My goal is to get it all done before bed tonight.  Then get a restful night's sleep before rising early to pick up Dave at the airport.


Dave got his test scores back from National Boards and bum, bum, bum.... he passed!!  2 sets down, 2 to go!  And he's down to 1 more year of school as of the end of November.  Exciting!!  Can't wait to move, get our office set up, and start saving lives in a new city!


I think that's all the major news for now.  I might pop in a scary movie soon to set the mood while I finish tiddying up.  :D   Don't forget to fall back tonight every one!



-  E

I Just Pratt Myself

We're back from sunny, but cool, Orlando, FL. Our flight landed this afternoon around 4:30pm CT. You can't really be jealous of us though. Dave and I were there for a Maximized Living chiropractic conference (www.maximizedliving.com), so we didn't make it outside much at all, especially not during the day. Plus, it was freezing down there as far as Florida is concerned. We arrived on Thursday, where there was a county "winter weather advisory" in effect where some schools were closed and they even cancelled an evening prime time TV shows to air weather warnings for -- get this -- 35 degree weather. Yeah.. It apparently frosted the grass that night. Ha! Brrr for all of our group, though, who barely brought long pants, let alone sweatshirts and jackets with us! It did get into the low 70's on Saturday, but otherwise it was in the 60's and felt quite chilly.

We had a G R E A T experience at the three day conference though. We learned so much about our mission in chiropractic and cannot wait to continue saving lives and helping families here in the Cities!

So without boring you all with the details of the seminar, we of course got some pics and video of the night time fun that we had in Orlando. This was a national-level conference, so all of our friends and doctors from all over were there with us. We had fun going out with everyone and reconnecting since we're all up to so many different things.

On Thursday night we had most of our gang with us for dinner at an Irish pub in Disney World:

Left front to back: Vern, Nick E., Dan; Right front to back: Jake, Mikala, Dave, Elise

A toast to the night!

On Friday night we had the opportunity to go out to dinner with a doctor from Forrest Lake, MN. No pics of that night, but the guys had a great time talking and getting to know the doctor on a more personal level. Then on Saturday night, our favorite new docs were able to come out with our entire Northwestern University group -- Jay and Heather! They just graduated from Northwestern this past fall and are down in Florida training to open up their practice soon in Madison, WI. We don't get to see them enough anymore. It was such a treat for Dave to visit with them for a few hours!

And I have to put this on here... Okay, so Nick E., Dave and Vern were not in any way intoxicated during this. It happened one night while we four were waiting for the other guys to come down from their hotel room to go out. They were bored, it all started so fast..I was lucky to have my camera for this, because there were so many other funny moments that we wished we had caught over the weekend. Enjoy. :)

And here are my three oh-so-tired travel buddies while we waited to catch our first flight this morning. The seminar really wiped them out! First pic is Nick Pratt (the title of this post is dedicated to him) and Shane trying to gain energy from unhealthy sources.. And then there's poor Dave attempting to wake himself up.



That's a basic sum of our trip. If any of you want more info about Maximized Living, what it's all about or how you can get care from a chiropractor, just let us know. We're always happy to help!

Still waiting on Dave to get his "skinny" posted...the weekend kind of snuck up on him, but hopefully he'll have the time early this week between exams. We'll also be busy this week, besides our school and work schedules, planning our birthday party. We're acutally throwing ourselves a party this weekend -- cannot wait! For those who might not know, my birthday comes on the 29th and Dave's on the 31st, so we're two days apart. We're having a combined party on the 30th with a lot of our friends that live around here. I'm working on a menu right now. It's going to be so much fun! We're hoping to turn this into a yearly thing.. :)

Well bedtime for me now. I'm wiped after all of the flying today and lack of sleep over the seminar weekend. Dave is still out studying, but will hopefully be home soon. He needs his precious sleep the most!!


- Elise