Team Juloa: Seattle

Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

05 February 2014

Super Weekend

It really was a super weekend. First, some of my local friends threw me a sweet little "sprinkle" for the upcoming baby. It was held at a local coffee shop and we had the most amazing strawberry cake, fancy coffees, and laughing about name ideas. The ladies even voted on their favorite name as a group (shhh…I'm not telling yet…since we are still undecided). Baby girl and I received some very thoughtful gifts and I felt so loved by my friends. This little one is lucky to be born into such a welcoming community of people!

Oh, and if you are wondering what we are all holding, they are chocolate bar favors that say "she." They were super cute and lately I'll take as much chocolate as I can.

The next day was Sunday, but not just any Sunday….SUPERBOWL Sunday and the hometown heroes, the Seattle Seahawks, were playing the Denver Broncos in NY. We hosted some (and by "some" I mean around 25) of our friends at our house. Everyone arrived decked out in Seahawks gear…the 12th man* was in our living room for sure. This wasn't a typical Sunday, for sure.

I didn't get a ton of photos, since I was watching the game and wrangling Ruby, but here are a few I collected throughout the event.

We had a halftime football game outside:

Ruby got into the spirit, even if she isn't smiling for the camera.

There was a surprise birthday cake at halftime too. Mmmm..cake….

Most, but not all, of the crowd represented here:

Sorry for the blur on some of these photos…they are iPhone pics, so the quality isn't great, but you get the idea. The Hawks ended up winning by a landslide, which kept everyone's spirits high throughout the day. I'm glad we got to share the momentous occasion with some of our local besties. Oh, and no, we aren't forgetting our Patriots (who are still #1 for Team Juloa), but the hometown team comes second in our books. What a treat to be here when they won and won big. Go Hawks!

*for those of you unfamiliar with this term, read all about it here

25 May 2013

Random Pics (Family Visit)

During Grandma's recent visit, she gifted Ruby with a special book she's been working on for quite some time. It's called a busy book and each page has an activity to do, like matching numbers, buttoning buttons, etc. Each page is different and HANDMADE. It's amazing and Ruby loves it. This is her favorite page. It has a barn on it, which a latch on the doors. When you open those barn doors, there are different farm animals inside that can be pulled out. The whole book is just simply adorable. I know that Ruby will cherish it.

Noa had a Navy event one night while his family was here and I took the opportunity to snap a picture of him in his dress blues.

Also, we celebrated a birthday....Sadie's! She turned 10 years old (wow!) and so we celebrated with doggy doughnuts. I told Sadie she had to share with Gunnar. They were a hit.

Ruby got involved in the doughnut action. She loves giving the dogs treats.

While Grandma spent some one-on-one time with Ruby, the rest of us snuck away to Seattle.

Of course, we headed to Pike Place Market. We stocked up on some food from a few of the vendors and visited the original Starbucks store. We also enjoyed lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Purple, and walked through Nordstroms (it's the flagship store).

And this photo doesn't really fit into the rest of this post, but it happened during the family's visit and I just thought it was cute. My little, feisty girl just loves being outside!

02 September 2012

Kyle

This post has been a long time coming. Mostly because there was a lot to say and because we've been busy, busy, busy! I can't believe the last post I wrote was back at the beginning of August. And, it's now September. Yikes. Let's just back up a little, shall we....back to, say mid-August. That's when our friend Kyle came to visit us here in the great northwest.

But first, some background...sorry, it's kinda long...

When I was a sophomore in college, I came across an opportunity to work as a summer camp counselor in Connecticut. The camp, called Camp Harkness, was for adults and children with cerebral palsy. During a camp session, campers would spend their days doing typical camp activities like boating, horseback riding, crafts, etc. and then also some non-traditional camp activities like shopping, dining out, visiting amusement parks, etc. For the campers, it was simply a vacation. For the counselors, it was a pretty rigorus job. My duties would consist of caring for the campers' daily needs (which included personal care, transfers in and out of wheelchairs, feeding, etc), assist with camp activities, drive the large camp vans (I actually loved this part of the job for some reason), and just hanging out with some really fun, unique people. My sister and I both signed up for the job. Soon after, I was able to talk to my friend (yup, this was a long time ago and we were just friends back then), Noa, about it and he joined the team as well.

After our initial training as camp counselors, it wasn't long before Noa and I began officially dating. But, since we were working almost 24/7, and since we weren't technically supposed to in a relationship while working as counselors, we had to keep things on the down low. So, our relationship developed as we worked alongside each other and spent time with other people, especially our campers.

One of those campers was Kyle. Kyle was in Noa's cabin and the two of them hit it off right away. He was a fun kid, who laughed and joked easily, and had a charming southern accent.

Kyle's story is pretty remarkable. He has two brothers, one of which is his twin, but he is the only one with cerebral palsy. He is in a wheelchair and has limited physical ability, although it didn't slow him down at camp. He participated in pretty much every activity and was always having a good time wherever he went. Since we was so easy to get to know, we bonded with Kyle and promised to stay in touch after camp.

Kyle visited Boston and got to see Noa in med school. Later, Kyle attended our wedding and luau-themed rehearsal dinner (oh and that's his dad in the photo with us).

Later, we visited Kyle in his hometown where he took us to some of his favorite places and we got to meet the rest of his family.

Since then, we've kept in touch with Kyle, but not as well as we should have. Naturally we're all friends on Facebook and we write occasional e-mails or call, but it had been sporadic at best. We've all had busy lives, but I think Kyle has us beat on that. In addition to working as a motivational speaker, Kyle works two other jobs and is one of the founders of The Kyle Pease Foundation. He also races with his brothers in triathalons and half marathons. Basically, he's a busy guy. So, we were pretty excited to hear that Kyle would be headed to the Seattle area for a weekend in August and we would get to see him.

Having Kyle come out was pretty funny because he stayed at our house and Noa took on the role primary caretaker, like at camp. However, it's been many years since camp and Kyle's grown bigger and Noa's gotten older (ha, ha...I just called Noa old), so there was a bit of a learning curve of how to best transfer Kyle in and out of the house and car, but eventually Noa mastered the skills once again. As expected, there was lots of joking and reminiscing and of course, Kyle got to meet Ruby and the dogs.

We didn't spend a lot of time at the house, though. Most of the weekend was spent in Seattle, where we got to hang out with one of Kyle's former caretakers, Carla. We also met (again, since apparently we had met him a long time ago), Kyle's friend and travel buddy, Ben, and another friend Hannah. We all met up at Gasworks Park in Seattle, where we'd never been before. It was awesome and a perfect day to be outside! Check out the view:

The reason for the name "gasworks" park are the old machines that used to convert gas from coal back in the early 1900s are still on the property. The property is now a large park that includes a large hill that overlooks Lake Union and downtown Seattle.

Here are Noa, Kyle, Ruby, Ben and Hannah in front of Lake Union. Did you notice how Kyle is sporting the Team Juloa shirt? Long story short, Kyle made it to our home late on Friday night, but his bag didn't make it with him, so he got to wear some of Noa's clothes. Way to represent, Kyle!

Ruby was a pretty happy camper getting passed around and enjoying all the new sights and people.

Carla, Kyle's former caretaker, met us at Gasworks Park but we soon parted ways with Ben and Hannah, who were going to visit some other Seattle sights while we headed to the ballpark.

After a speedy lunch (read: cramming food down our throats on the sidewalk), we headed inside Safeco Field for a tour. Since there weren't any games scheduled, there are tours of the facility open to the public. It was pretty interesting and we got to see quite a bit (read: it was a LONG tour), including the roof, the visiting team's locker room, the press box, owners box, and of course, the field! Going on the field was definitely the highlight of the tour.

After our tour, we visited the Space Needle, but I don't have too many photos from that part of our day, since Ruby had about had it with sightseeing at that point.

On Sunday, the last day that Kyle was here, we rode the ferry into the city, which is always a fun way to travel. And again, the day was gorgeous!

Our mission was to ride the new ferris wheel, located right in downtown Seattle. Although the line was long, it was worth the wait. The views were pretty good, although Mt. Rainier wasn't "out" which was a little disappointing, but didn't take away from the experience.

I think Ruby had the most fun trying to grab Carl's colorful necklace!

Afterwards, we headed to Pike Place Market. You can't visit Seattle without seeing the flying fish and the original Starbucks, of course!

Sadly, we had to say good-bye shortly after this photo was taken. We are so glad that Kyle was able to come out and we had the opportunity to meet his friends. Kyle is an inspiration to both of us through his drive to be independent, friendly, and help others in spite of his physical obstacles. I'm already excited for the next time we all get together and hang out again. As all our times together have been, this too was lots of fun.

*Thanks to Carla for sharing her photo!
**For more information on Kyle's foundation, his public speaking, or other adventures, simply visit the following pages:
http://www.kylepease.org
http://kpeasey.blogspot.com
http://race.kylepease.org (check out the news stories on this one!)
http://www.facebook.com/WalkingWithKPeasey

14 July 2012

Seattle Oki Reunion 2012

It's not often you find friends who can just pick up where they left off. Even with the span of days, months, even years, these friends can still laugh, cry, and go along the journey of life with you. We often think of our Okinawa friends as family and this weekend, some of our "family" came together to spend time together in beautiful Seattle. There were four families total: the Scherdens, Grubbs, Andrews, and us. For some, it had been years since seeing each other. Children have grown, new children have been born, and we've all gotten a little older, but being back together again was like bringing the gang back together as if we hadn't even left Okinawa.

Thanks to Emily, who found this gem, we stayed in a rental house in the University District of Seattle. It was perfect for our group of four families. It was at the end of a dead end street and next to a walking trail that connected to a local park. Driving to downtown was easy and we all seemed to have plenty of space. It was ideal and look at how cute the house was (this picture was from the rental listing since I forgot to take a photo of it when I was there - whoops!):

Our family was the last to arrive late Tuesday night. All the kids were already running around the property and we introduced everyone to Ruby. She wasn't the only baby there. The Andrews welcomed a little girl, Lily, to their family on Valentine's day, so Ruby had a baby buddy throughout the trip. The two babies were really cute together and Lily kept reminding me of Ruby at that age.

Me holding Lily (just turned 5 months) and MaryAnn holding Ruby (just about 8 months) on our first night. The two girls are almost the same size!

For our first full day, we decided to do some sightseeing in Seattle. The gang headed to the Space Needle first. We arrived a little later, since Ruby was still taking her morning nap, and didn't make it up to the top but scouted out the area instead.

Once we all met up at the bottom, we grabbed lunch and then walked to Pike Place Market. The ladies had to get the obligatory market group shot. Don't we look like a happy bunch?

The girls, from left to right: Emily, MaryAnn, me, and Tritia

Although crowded, the market proved to be a great stop. We did stop at watch the fish throwers, which is always entertaining. At one point, one of the fish stand workers asked the crowd if there were any questions and Jackson, Emily's son piped in with, "how do you catch the fish?" The worker was super nice and pulled Jackson out of the crowd to give him a lesson on fish catching. It was pretty cute and Jackson was able to catch one of the famous Seattle fish. Yay, Jackson!

Jackson talking to the fish stand worker.

Practice makes perfect!

And catch!

The kids put money in the bronze pig (Rachel the Pig) at the entrance to Pike Place Market, which funds various social services.

We sampled various food items from the food stands and purchased a bouquet to bring back to our house. Sophia helped pick it out.

And we just HAD to go get some coffee from the very first Starbucks.

We were just a little excited....can you tell?

Then, we hit the park.

The kids: Jackson, Sophia, Grace, Jayce, and Kai

Me and Ruby (love those teeth on her little smile!)

Lily and Ruby sharing toys

After that, we trekked back to the cars by riding the Seattle monorail, which is pretty small (only two stops). We had to take a couple of trips in order to get everyone to the house with only three cars, so Emily, Tritia, and I stayed behind and sampled some local beer before heading back home. Ruby was there too, but she decided to take a little snooze.

That evening, we hung out at the house, eating grilled food, applying temporary tattoos and playing games.

The next day was our "local" day. There was a park pretty close to the house, so we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and hang out there for the day. There was a playground for the little kids...

And lots of open space for the "big kids" to throw around the disc (back in Oki they all played Ultimate Frisbee on Sunday afternoons and played a few tournaments on the island). We brought the disc that was sent to Noa, for his birthday, from his Oki buddies while he was deployed to Kuwait years ago.

Tritia had picked up matching outfits for the kids so that we could get some nice photos of all the kids together. Although the outfits looked great, it was quite an ordeal trying to round up a bunch of kids all under the age of 9. We were able to wrangle them together, although not everyone was happy about it. Poor Jayce didn't want anything to do with the kids photo.

We were, however, able to get a great group photo. This is my favorite photo of the entire trip.

You may have spotted a new family in the bunch. Angie, who used to teach and live in Okinawa, knew everyone in the group (except us; we met her for the first time this trip, even though she now lives in WA!) and joined us for the day. She had her two beautiful children with her and she has one on the way!

After photos, we pulled out the bubbles. The kids competed on making the biggest bubble, the most bubbles, and popping the most (Jayce, who is two, won this category hands down. He is now dubbed, "the bubble slayer").

This was Ruby's first time with bubbles and I think she is still not sure what they are.

That night, we had a Mexican feast and an impromptu dance party in the living room.

After the kids went to bed, the adults stayed up to play card games and visit. It was the perfect way to end the night.

Yesterday was our last day at the house and it mostly involved packing things up and getting out on time. The Andrews had to leave on an early morning flight and the rest of us were headed back over to the other side of Puget Sound. We stopped at Red Mill Burgers for lunch (yum!) and then rode the ferry home.

The Scherdens spent a night at our place. Grace just adored the dogs and wanted to be with them 24/7. She was finally able to get them to stay still when she coaxed them onto the chair with her.