We LOVE Gazpacho, and our favorite is made by our friend Mar at Emanar Cellars in Battle Ground, WA. We try to make it over there as often as possible in the summer to get our fix and to have some of their amazing wine. We also always get an order of Gazpacho ‘to go’ so we can have that amazingly healthy and delicious soup at home the next day….if it makes it that long.

We decided that it was time for us to try our hand at the soup. It is that time of year when tomatoes are plentiful, so we decided to give it a whirl. Also, if we could make our soup half as good as Mar’s, it would be a success.

There is a lot of vegetable chopping that is required in making Gazpacho.  All those chaturangas sure came in handy!! We chopped! We seeded! We peeled! …and the onions made us laugh and cry.

Yoga enhances life, it makes you more flexible physically and mentally.  One of my favorite things is how easily you can be present for the 60-90 minutes of practice.  The time just flies by and at the end of the practice you just feel so much lighter and happier.   One of the other amazing things about yoga is the word practice. Every day we participate in yoga we are practicing, not competing.  Letting go and understanding this can be hard, but once you realize that each class is enhancing your life mentally, physically, and spiritually you will be glad you came.

Taking a sabbatical from my engineering job was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I have been working as an engineer and/or going to school since I was 5 years old. I worked every summer starting in high school - working is what I do.

Last September I decided that I wanted more time with my family, and I told my boss I wanted to take the summer off. In March, my business partner Mandy (the M in MKelevate) suggested that I set a date for my sabbatical.  She thought that might help make it real and allow me to take the step I needed to remove myself from the company at which I had worked for over 11.5 years. I set May 23rd as my last day. It was the Thursday before Memorial Day Weekend just before our twins 8th birthday. The closer the date came to my summer off, the more I felt like maybe just summer wasn’t going to be enough time for me for me to decompress and figure out what the next chapter in my life is going to hold.