**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.**

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!