**To Read This Story From The Beginning, Click The Graphic Below.**

Episode 6

The next year, Mark and I had earned our first incentive trip and we were excited because it was in Fiji! The company was not only paying for the trip but also our flights to Fiji and back, so Mark and I asked if it mattered what dates and route we took. They told us, as long as we stayed within a certain generous budget, we were fine, so we looked on a map, and saw that Kauai, Hawaii was on the way to Fiji. We had been told by several people that Kauai was awesome and had it on our bucket list of places we wanted to experience, so we talked a couple of other couples into going to Kauai with us and we booked the trip. Ok, so one of the other couples just so happened to be our friend, who had originally made the first WiebengaLife shirts that weren’t ours, and his now wife; the girlfriend who we had inducted in Vail. The other couple joining us in Kauai was some people we really didn’t know that well at the time, but they had also earned their way onto the Fiji incentive trip and we thought it would be nice to get to know them. We had booked a house worth more than $1,000,000 to stay in while on Kauai, with travel dollars given to us by the company we represent, and the house had a fourth room.

So Mark talked our good friend, who had just gotten out of the Marines and had been stationed in Hawaii for a while, into going with us. He had been inducted into the WiebengaLife in Cancun. He would be our tour guide because he knew Kauai well and we set out on another adventure.

We remember arriving at the house on Kauai, and knowing we would be there with other WiebengaLifers, we were kinda all wearing WiebengaLife gear. By now we had hats that went with our shirts. So when the other couple, who was not in the WiebengaLife, showed up, they were like, “What is this WiebengaLife & why would we even want to be in it?” Our other friends said, “Oh, you’ll see. You’ll want to be in it by the end of this trip.” Mark and I weren’t so sure about that, but we told them that it was silly and that they didn’t have to feel pressured. We had a blast on that trip doing everything from doing a helicopter tour around the island, riding along the Na Pali Coast by boat, & hiking the Na Pali coast, to bathing in Queens Bath. Every night we would pick a different beach to post up on, play games, and have a couple drinks while watching the sun set. It was a perfect vacation shared with fun and chill people. We still look back at that trip as one of the best.

So, as the last days of that leg of the trip wound down, our friends, who aren’t in the WiebengaLife, sheepishly declare that they didn’t know what they didn’t know, before, and they wanted to go in front of the panel to be inducted into the WiebengaLife. We told them what it entailed, and the husband pulled us aside and said that they both wanted in, but if we could only accept one of them, he asked us if it could be his wife, because she REALLY wanted in now.  Mark and I said, “We’ll see what we can do, but she better have a really good answer for, “The Question”. When no one was looking, we laughed so hard over our new friend who was so sincere about protecting his wife’s feelings. Needless to say, we had a little fun with them, but they both got inducted into the WiebengaLife!

The inductions have continued to this day and we are still figuring out what WiebengaLife means to others. Needless to say, we are having a lot of fun with the process!

So, now you can see how something so innocent became something beyond even our control. WiebengaLife is out there and grew as organically as it could, seeing as how Mark and I really didn’t seek to expand it, but it has grown nonetheless. We jokingly say that we made some mistakes that led to it coming about, but we have had a ton of fun as we embraced the silliness of it all. No doubt, this website and blog will be looked at as another of those mistakes that led to the continued growth of WiebengaLife! In reality, we are nothing less than flattered by those who have championed our story and sought to be a part of it. This brings us to today and the fact that we constantly have people asking to hear this somewhat long and involved story about how WiebengaLife came about. They want to know how it even started to be a thing and, while we love telling the story in person, we wanted to get it down so that others could share in the spirit of the WiebengaLife story. We hope you enjoyed reading about this journey so far. 

Oh and our Fiji Trip was amazing as well, we will save that story for another day but here are some fun photos from that part of the trip.

Join Us On Our Journey To Come!  

Read Next Blog “It’s Been A Whole Year! I Didn’t Know. . . “

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**To Read This Story From The Beginning, Click The Graphic Below.**

Episode 5

So, Mark has a brother, also with the last name of Wiebenga (obviously). He had started assuming he was already in the WiebengaLife, simply because he shared the same last name. We thought about this and realized that the answers we were getting for what WiebengaLife means to people, had nothing really to do with the last name (other than the fact that I think people just like how it sounds when they say it), but had everything to do with the way Mark and I have designed our life. Therefore, we decided that he would have to go in front of the panel and we informed him that he would have to do it on the upcoming trip to Cancun we were going on with about 500 of our friends that year.

Being that it had been a whole year since the last Cancun trip where we first unveiled Mark and my original WiebengaLife shirts, and we had made several spectacles of people being inducted into the WiebengaLife and earning the gear, we had a multitude of people wanting to be inducted. I would tell each of them this: “You have to catch us on a trip, go in front of a super secret panel, and you will be asked the question.” They always say, “What question is that?” & I say, “We are allowed to ask you more questions, but you will, for sure, be asked this question, ‘What does WiebengaLife mean to you?’” Then I say, “You may start preparing now.” ; ) They always get this super serious look on their face (mostly because I try to look very serious while delivering these instructions) and assure me that they will have something great prepared. Then they ask, “When can I go in front of the panel?” and I reply that it has to happen on a trip and they have to get 3 other WiebengaLifers to join us before it can happen.

Being that it had been a whole year since the last Cancun trip where we first unveiled Mark and my original WiebengaLife shirts, and we had made several spectacles of people being inducted into the WiebengaLife and earning the gear, we had a multitude of people wanting to be inducted. I would tell each of them this: “You have to catch us on a trip, go in front of a super secret panel, and you will be asked the question.” They always say, “What question is that?” & I say, “We are allowed to ask you more questions, but you will, for sure, be asked this question, ‘What does WiebengaLife mean to you?’” Then I say, “You may start preparing now.” ; ) They always get this super serious look on their face (mostly because I try to look very serious while delivering these instructions) and assure me that they will have something great prepared. Then they ask, “When can I go in front of the panel?” and I reply that it has to happen on a trip and they have to get 3 other WiebengaLifers to join us before it can happen.

So, fast forward to our Cancun trip and there are a ton of people wanting to go in front of “The Panel” and we are thinking, we don’t have time to induct all of these people. So we find a night that everyone is hanging out at the same main bar at our resort and start to hand select the people who have bugged us the most about the induction process, including Mark’s brother. We had a lot of fun and ended up inducting another 5 people into the WiebengaLife after making sure they were able to prove that they were worthy of being a part of it. It was a blast and Mark’s brother even made it in. . . OFFICIALLY!

Read the End of the Story on Episode 6 . . .

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**To Read This Story From The Beginning, Click The Graphic Below.**

Sorry it has been so long since our last blog involving our crazy WiebengaLife story. ; ) We have been moving and if you have ever moved, you know what I mean when I say that we have been doing A LOT.  A lot of re-organizing, assembling new purchases and re-assembling old ones, painting, and CLEANING. Needless to say we are ready to settle in for the winter and head off on a new trip somewhere warm. . . which IS booked, by the way! LOL!  However, before we get to that, we MUST finish this WiebengaLife Explanation Business! Therefore, here is the next episode in what I have come to think of as The WiebengaLife Saga.

Episode 4

So, now people really think there is actual WiebengaLife gear and some sort of WiebengaLife club, including our friend who had us make shirts for him and his buddies that we went on the trip with. Fast forward a couple months to the night of the Super Bowl that year and we are back to hanging out with that same friend and his girlfriend. Our friend decided that his girlfriend needed to be inducted into the WiebengaLife so she could wear a WiebengaLife shirt on their next trip.

Oh yes, he had decided that there needed to be an official induction process to get a shirt and get into the WiebengaLife! We played along and even helped set parameters and they go a little something like this:

People wanting to get into the WiebengaLife must go in front of the panel while on a trip with Mark and Sarah Wiebenga and at least 1 (at that time, now 3) member(s) of the WiebengaLife. No one, except the panel members, know exactly what happens during any particular induction, except that all potential inductees will be asked this one question, “What does WiebengaLife mean to you?” I came up with that question, because, well. . . I honestly want to know. ; )

So, our friend needed us to go on a trip with him and his girlfriend so that we could have a panel for her to go in front of and answer the all important question of, “What does WiebengaLife mean to you?” The problem was that Mark and I were heading to New Zealand and Australia for the better part of a month in about a week and they were headed on their trip while we would still be on the other side of the world. Back to our Super Bowl with our friend, after a few adult beverages, we ended up booking a 3 room condo up near Vail for the following weekend, not knowing that we would be up there during the 2015 World Ski Championships!

We recruited another couple and stopped on the way up to get WiebengaLife gear made, and found out all of the festivities that were going on that weekend when we checked into our condo.

We enjoyed watching the ski competitions and excitement that comes along with such a big event where people like Lindsey Vonn compete and musicians like O.A.R. perform. Also, we held a panel to induct the other couple and our friend’s girlfriend into the WiebengaLife. We had a lot of fun with it and we got some pretty interesting explanations for what WiebengaLife means to them. It was pretty close, but they all three made it into the WiebengaLife and they were all authorized to wear their WiebengaLife gear.

Mark and I were starting to realize our namesake had taken on a life of its own and we could have a little fun with this whole thing. We got home just in time to wash clothes, pack and head on our 14 1/2 hour flight to Sydney, Australia and then on to Queenstown, New Zealand.

To Be Continued on Episode 5 . . .

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**To Read This Story From The Beginning, Click The Graphic Below.**

Episode 3

So we’re strutting our goofball-ness around the pools at the Hard Rock Cancun in our neon #WiebengaLife tank tops chuckling to ourselves and making sure nobody misses the ridiculousness of what we are doing, but we hear something very different from what we were expecting. All of these people had been watching us go on adventure after adventure all while winning with our business and they were under the impression that #WiebengaLife was an actual thing. So while we are doing our strut around the pool, all we hear are a bunch of people asking how they can get a shirt and be “In The WiebengaLife”. Over and over it was, “Ah man! Now you have shirts!? How do I get one? Can I be a Wiebenga?” As Mark and I got to the end of our walk, we looked at each other a bit disappointed that no-one had thought it was as funny as we had thought it to be, and a little worried that we were going to have to go into the shirt making business. We laid off on the hash-tagging for a bit and made no promises to anyone regarding shirts and thought we had gotten away with not feeding the fire. I’m not sure what mistake we are on now, but that was another mistake; thinking we had not fanned a flame.

We have a good friend who lives on the complete other side of town from us. He showed up at our house one fine December day with tank tops for himself and two other good friends of ours, insisting that we help him put #WiebengaLife on THOSE shirts so they could wear them on their trip the following week. We told him we thought he was off his rocker wanting OUR name on his shirts, but we complied because we knew he had traveled far and we like spending time with him. Mark and I had a good laugh after he left, about how anyone else would actually want to wear our name on their shirt, but we thought that was the end of that. As it turns out, from that point in time to the next week, those same guys ended up convincing us to join them on their trip! We, apparently, are easily convinced to go on epic trips with great friends. ; ) The only stipulation to us coming with them, was that we bring OUR #WiebengaLife shirts too.

Mark and I threw caution to the wind, threw our shirts in our bags, and headed back to Mexico. We were ridiculous with our wearing of our shirts together and even went so far as taking several pictures together all over the resort, family style, as true goofballs would.

We joked about how epic we looked in our awesome #WiebengaLife gear and posted all of our pics on social media. Another mistake, as it turns out.

To Be Continued on Episode 4. . .

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**To Read This Story From The Beginning, Click The Graphic Below.**

Episode 2

Hey everyone! As Thanksgiving Day winds down, we didn’t want to leave you hangin’ for too long, because there is much, MUCH more to be told about how this crazy WiebengaLife thing came to, well. . . be a thing! Here is our next Episode and as I think back, this is really where we made a turn that we just couldn’t take back. . . Happy Thanksgiving Guys!!!

So, now our name became a verb and was synonymous with all kinds of things including ‘Killing It’, ‘Being Awesome’, or ‘Rockin’ it” (as in, “I’m Rockin’/Wiebengin’ the shirt I’m wearing). Mark and I would walk through a room at any company event and crack up at everyone verbing up our last name; even having some people use it and then get very excited when they found out WE actually were the Wiebenga’s they were referring to! It was a blast, but the fun didn’t stop there.

At some point in the mix of the Wiebenga verb flying around, someone commented “#WiebengaLife” on one of our photos from one of our adventures on social media. This, BTW, is the moment Mark and I finally understood the purpose of hash-tagging things. That #WiebengaLife looked pretty good and if we just added that little hashtag to all of our adventure pics, we would be able to see all of them side by side. We thought, “That would be pretty cool, to see them right next to each other and be able to look them up that way at any time!” So we started to hashtag it. That was mistake #1. ; )

Our second mistake, was thinking we would be funny. You see, we were headed to Cancun with about 300 of our friends, all from our vacation club, and we thought we would get everyone to laugh if we showed up with tank tops that had #WiebengaLife written really big and in neon lettering on them. No offense to the people who take their family on a vacation and make them all wear shirts with their last name on them, but we thought it was a ridiculous idea and our friends would all bust a gut if they saw us strutting around in them. We got the shirts made, super secretly. . . at a kiosk at the mall before we left, and made sure they were on tank tops that we would be OK just going to the gym in, after we wore them once for the laughs.

Our plan was flawless. We picked a day that we knew everyone would be hanging out at the main pool at the Hard Rock Resort in Cancun and we started our strutting. To this day, we don’t clearly understand what happened. . .

To Be Continued on Episode 3. . .

Click below to Learn More about how you can be a part of the same Lifestyle Club we  rely on for all of our Peak Life Experiences!