Missouri Sunday - Tuesday

We arrived at Joe & Angela's in Sedalia, MO at exactly 2:30am Saturday night/Sunday morning. Poor Joe got out of bed to let us in. We are such horrible guests! We spent all of Sunday with the family. They have 4 kids, Sean (9), Calvin (5), Cedric (3) and Eva (2). Calvin is our godson! They have all grown up SO MUCH since we saw them at our wedding in August! The boys have shot up like weeds!

Calvin shooting a basket

Cedric riding his cycle up and down the driveway.

Me, Calvin and Elise playing his Superheros card game before bed.

Group Picture! Sean ran from the scene... Cedric, Dave, Eva, Elise, Calvin

My two favorite ladies! Eva didn't want Elise to leave. Eva wanted Elise to move her bed into her room and said they could share her closet!

We took off from the Schwartz house around 11am on Monday and went to Lee's Summit, about an hour away. Dr. Amanda Campbell's office is located there. We had an hour to kill before her office opened for its afternoon shift, so we toured around Lee's Summit. What a great city! I can honestly say that Missouri is at the top of our list for opening up at and living in in the future. We'll see what the rest of this trip brings, but as of now, Missouri is winning.

A painting on a building coming into the downtown.

We found this little park near the still functioning train station. This station was in use during the early 1900's. There was also a museum at the station, but was closed when we went unfortunately. You can see a train coming down the tracks just to the left of the station.


We were standing right next to the tracks. The train was so close and so loud! We'd never been so close to a moving train before.

After leaving the train station, we drove around a little while to see the downtown, then searched some activities on our GPS. We found a nature park and decided to check it out. When we got there, the parking lot was empty and the buildings looked dead. The sign said it was free to the public, open from 8am-4pm and to just go inside. So, we did. Luckily there was an extremely nice lady inside. Apparently they were closed for the winter until May 1, so we were a couple weeks early... ;) But she was nice enough to let us in to at least the downstairs of that one building where the reptiles were. Here are some of what we saw. This little guy above was the brightest green snake we'd ever seen. He was almost a neon green!

This was an absolutely HUMONGOUS elk's head.

And this little guy was so weird looking. It's a soft shell turtle, common to Missouri. We'd never seen a turtle with a nose like this. Probably our favorite animal out of them all.

Next, we found signs to a campground with trails. We thought maybe we'd have some time to take a walk. As we turned into the park, we immediately came up to these bison. Quite the startling experience when you're not expecting it! A few feet down were some elk. It was quite the campground!

Luckily (for Elise), we didn't have to camp there. Our friends from the Cities, Neal and Bri, were visiting their sister and brother-in-law in Lee's Summit, just a few miles from Dr. Campbell's office. They all were so nice to let us spend the night. You guys have no idea how nice it is to have a warm place to sleep and a shower in the morning. Thanks!

So we went to Dr. Campbell's office after the campground tour. Let me just say that her office is one of the best we have ever seen! She let us observe for her entire afternoon shift, and afterward she joined us for dinner. We spent 2 and a half hours getting advice and visiting with Dr. Campbell. Then we headed to Neal and Bre's sister's house for the night, visited with them a bit, then turned in for the night.

We left at 9am this morning and have been touring neighboring cities within an hour from Lee's Summit. Like I said, we are really enjoying Missouri and can definitely see us living here and raising a family in the future. So we'll see how everything pans out. Right now we are in Kansas driving to Dr. Georgia Ohlmberg's office in Wichita. Don't know where we'll be spending the night tonight. We'll probably need to look for a campsite somewhere or else sleep in the car. (Don't worry, our back seats fold down and we'll just blow up our air mattress over them. Quite nice if it's necessary.)

And one quick note on the weather. We heard that the UP is having April snowflakes instead of showers. Well, we're enjoying extensive sunshine and 70-80 degree weather down here. Texas in the coming days... We wish you blizzard dwellers luck with the snow! :)


- Dave

Chicago, IL Wednesday - Saturday

We're on the highway again, this time leaving Chicago and driving toward Sedalia, MO where Joe and Angela live. We left a bit later than planned as we went out to dinner with some friends tonight before leaving the Windy City. We plan to arrive at the Schwartz residence around 2:30am.. Right now we're staying awake by singing the entire Rent sound track. It's something we do on road trips...yeah we're a little weird, but hey, who's not. :P

We need to thank our wonderful hosts during out Chicago stay, Jen and Jeremy. Thank you both SO MUCH!!! Jen also has a 3 year old daughter, Marnie, so in the mornings and evenings Dave and I had fun playing with her. Jen and Jeremy are also Northwestern grads, last fall, and are currently Maximized Living doctors interning with Dr. Charles Majors. They were so nice to let us stay with them for a few days. **We'll see you in a couple weeks guys! :)**

Here is a video Dave took of Marnie and I "dancing." SUCH a CUTIE pie!!

On our stop in Chicago, we ended up not doing any screening for doctors. So that was nice, but we probably could have used some cash to cover gas & food along our adventures in the city. On Wednesday, we went right to Dr. Major's office and shadowed him and his associate doctors working for a few hours. It was quite an eye-opening experience. We have never quite seen an office like his. Flow was incredible. Talking to some of his patients, it was clear the loved Dr. Majors and everything Maximized Living stands for. His patients are true testimonials to a Maximized Living lifestyle in health.

On Thursday, we spent most of the day at Dr. Ochsner's office. Elise and Courtney (two other Max Living Club members from Northwestern) also met us at Dr. Ochsner's office and stuck around for an hour or so. For Dave and I, we not only got to shadow and watch patient/doctor/CA interaction, but we were able to stay for the office's Doctor's Report. Dr. Ochsner's intern associate gave the Report that night, so it was great experience for Dave to see what it's like to give one of your first Reports to a full room of people. For those reading who don't know what a Doctor's Report is, it's basically an educational session for patients in the office where TRUE chiropractic principle and philosophy is explained. The doctor explains what chiropractic is and why it is the only way to truly let your body heal and find health. We hope someday soon each one of you will sit in on one of Dave's Reports!

Friday was our "vacation" day, as we're calling it. Instead of screening, we did just that, went on a mini vacation to the heart of Chicago. We mainly drove around the downtown city streets, but also stopped at the Navy Pier for a bit. Here's the "Sear's Tower," which as you may know is now known as the Willis Tower.




It was just a gorgeous day, couldn't have asked for better weather the past few days! The Pier actually wasn't all too excited. It mostly had stores and restaurants geared toward kids and spending money, both of which we are lacking, so we walked around for a bit, grabbed a cheapish lunch and moved on. We then went to the Chicago History Museum which was very interesting. We ended up spending close to 3 hours in there, and it wasn't that big of a museum! It was only about one level and just a few rooms of material, but a lot of reading and movies none the less. They also had an Abraham Lincoln exhibit going on thru this summer, so that was pretty cool. We enjoyed learning some of rich history of Chicago. Here are some Navy Pier pics during our walk outside:

Navy Pier sign


A ship coming in, can you see the lighthouse in the back?


More of the Pier



We were walking away at this point, but you can see the huge Ferris wheel. They Pier has a mini amusement park on it.

Today was the Chicago Maximized Living Seminar. Dave and I attend seminars throughout the US every few months throughout the year. These seminars are training intensive and help us refocus on our mission of saving lives and creating health through chiropractic. Following the seminar, we headed out to dinner with a bunch of friends from all over who were at the seminar. It was a lot of fun to reconnect with these people! :) I won't go through and name everyone because it'll get a bit confusing, but let's just say it's always a good time when we can go out together!






And that brings us to present time: 10:39pm, now in Springfield, IL. Making good progress from Chicago! Almost my time to take over the wheel..blah! Why do I get the graveyard shift?? :) Enjoy the rest of your weekend everyone!


- Elise

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