February 2009

February was a busy month, as usual. One thing I realized this month, is that we didn't really take too many pictures...it's been a trend so far for 2009 - usually we're ALWAYS the ones with our camera out - so hopefully we get back into the swing of that in March.

Justin threw out his back somehow on the 12th. He was bending over looking for a lost key in the office and all of a sudden he fell to the ground. I thought he was joking so I was like "get up already" and then I saw his face...oh goodness. He laid on the floor a while until we got him to finally sit on a chair. Correa came down and we ended up finding him a stick to walk around with and get into the car. We took him to the doctors the next day, and he was smart enough to stay home from work. It feels better now, he has some medication and will be starting physical therapy soon.

We spent Valentine's Day at work, we have our usual General Manager's meeting at noon on Saturdays, then Jus and I work till around 11 pm or so. But we celebrated the next day after Mass by going to Clinkerdaggers! Clinks is supposed to be a higher end restaurant, and Jus has never been there, so I was excited to take him. The food was okay, but they had really hard rice. Even when we asked them for another bowl - they brought more hard rice. Other than that we enjoyed a wonderful meal talking about the last 5 years together. Then we headed over to Quest Casino for some gambling action. Just spent his entire time at the craps table, and I wandered around as usual on the slots. We wound up lucky to go home with more than we walked in there with - so it was a good field trip.

On the 16th we went to WWE RAW at the Spokane Arena. Jay bought a bunch of us tickets for Christmas. Now I'm SO not a fan of this type of stuff, so it was really hard for them to get me to go - I wanted to work instead. Once we got there, it was very interesting. Jus brought a Hawaiian flag from the restaurant and each time we went live on the air we'd hold it up. Everything was so drama filled, and I guess it made sense when one of the guys told me that it's like a soap opera for guys. But the fighting looked so real! I couldn't take some of it. I almost started to cry when this one guy's head was being bashed against the metal stairs and when he was being put on the stretcher. Jus kept telling me "it's ok hun, it's only fake" but I was like "then why did I hear his head bang and why is he bleeding?" Jus said Jordan and Jonah watched and saw us waving the flag, and my sister tuned in as well so that was fun to be on TV at least.

Thank You Jay Xiong for the experience.

Red Lion Update:


We finally wrapped up SOX for the 2008 fiscal year! WTF is SOX Rae, might you say? Sarbanes-Oxley dude. Basically it's government regulations to ensure that the business doesn't have any areas that could lead to a material financial misstatement. To get to that final conclusion, it's a year long process of walking through business processes, identifying controls, documenting them, testing their effectiveness, reporting, remediated findings, etc etc etc. So being done with 2008 is awesome! So now I'm stoked to get started with the improvements for the 2009 process.

Restaurant Update:

We went live on a new Aloha POS system on 2/25 at Aqua. Thank goodness! Now I have 3 locations running on the same systems and I can access all of them off site from my office without having to go there to fix things. The only lone ranger still on our elaborate paper system of guest checks and tickets is Okane, but since their sales volume isn't as high, I can deal with that.

Noel has worked really hard updating the look and feel of our Online 'Ohana Update. If you want to be on the email list and keep tabs on our cuisine and happenings let us know. Many of you may not be in the Spokane area, but it is fun to hear what's new, and each week he writes a lovely blog on some random topic. Reading the update makes me take a step back to realize, that while each day feels like the same old crap...we do make progress and we are fortunate to still be open and expanding as much as we are.

Noel also put together a few slideshows of pictures of us over the past few years. I shouldn't say "few", because really it's been like the past 8 years since we first met him in college I think. But one night I sat down in front of it while I ate my sushi dinner and a vanilla sundae...and I was almost brought to tears. It's weird how your whole life can be summed up in a few minutes worth of pictures. I relived all those house parties, all the HPIC activities, the photo shoot Justin & I did for our senior Lu'au ads, and the very beginnings of the restaurants. I realized how much we have all been through together. It's really crazy. No one will truly understand what we have all endured and experienced except for these people...all the long nights of working, all the weekly meetings, all the fights, all the laughs, all the drinks, all the girlfriends and boyfriends that came and left, all the employees who have worked for us and how each one brought something special to our family, and all the times we pinch ourselves to think "is this real? are we really running our own business?." For a split moment there I got really sentimental about everyone and our friendships. Haha, then reality struck and I had to get back to running payroll, balancing our daily cash, and reviewing the day's activity.

Wedding Update:


I'm counting down the days. And I think it might drive some people crazy...but who cares, you only get married once right? Well, at least I know I'll only get married once.

We're thinking we're going to cancel our 4 day honeymoon to Kaua'i after the wedding and just stay on O'ahu. At first I was bummed that Justin didn't want to go originally, I really wanted to take some time off and relax after all these days of working and planning. But as more of our friends are purchasing their tickets for the trip in August and we're sitting around talking about when we should meet up and what we should do, and then knowing that we should spend as much time with family as we can...I realized perhaps we should spend those days on Oahu and plan some fun things with everyone. So I'm going to cancel BEAUTIFUL private cottage, flight to Kaua'i, and car rental...and book an additional few nights for us at the Ihilani...and then start the planning of activities for those few days while everyone is still in town.

Check out our wedding website, if you haven't. We'll update it soon with more information on activities, especially since we're going to be on O'ahu for a longer period of time. It's going to be so wonderful! Our families together, plus all of our friends here from Spokane!


www.mywedding.com/rachelandjustin

Easter Egg Hunt

I'm having a hard time during this whole wedding process. I think the feeling can be explained through the analogy of doing yard work, or just doing house chores. There's going to be an Easter egg hunt in my back yard, but my grass is long, hedges overgrown, trees need to be trimmed, pine cones need to be picked up and disposed of before the eager kiddies make their way to find hidden treasures in holiday plastic. Although the goal of holding the easter egg hunt is ultimately my responsibility, I call a few trustworthy, reliable individuals, liken to friends and family to ask for their assistance in cutting the grass, hunting for the pine cones, lining up the hedges and trimming the shrubbery. Everyone is excited to help, one person says they can bring over their weedwacker because mines isn't that new anymore, another person wants to bring their black and decker tree trimmer with the motorized saw on the end of it, making tree trimming a breeze. These people are the people that I am thankful for. They know how they can help and they do it. Now that I got my lawn lined up and my trees trimmed, I need to get my grass cut. My really good friend has a riding mower, and if we double team the lawn, it'll be done in half the time, plus the lawn will get a closer cut and we'd have share the day together, since we haven't had time to spend for a while now. Well, needless to say, my friend is pretty much against the whole Easter egg hunt at my house and would've liked it better if he had gotten to coordinate the activities or at least planned the pot-luck. So, he drags his feet on getting back to me about the mower saying, "I think it's outta gas" or "I don't think I can make it to your place" or "Why are you cutting the grass anyway? Aren't we supposed to be hiding the eggs?"

The facts are, we will be having the Easter egg hunt at our house this year, we will be planning the activities and the potluck, we will have a good time because we'll be sharing time with people that we haven't seen in years. Easter is right around the corner and it'll be here soon enough. I see a few options: 1. We can put our personal feelings and qualms aside and make this the best Easter egg hunt ever. 2. We can continue disagreeing on why we're having mac salad instead of potato salad and not get anywhere. 3. My friend can disagree all he wants, but he'll just have to be upset at his own house, celebrating Easter without our friends.

The bottom line is, the grass still needs to get cut and the pine cones need to be picked up...I can do it myself, but it'll take longer and it won't be as fun...or we can help out and enjoy the experience and time together. Because in the end we're all here to live and spend time with each other, little snibbits of time that we're blessed with.

That's how I'm feeling...reply if you feel me.

Jus

January 2009

So...the newsletter thing we started last year, didn't really work out, it too a lot more effort than we had time for. So, we've decided to use this blog site as a way to keep you up to date on what's new with us!

We hope you visit us monthly to see what's, and heck, join too so we can follow your lives as well!

January 2009! Happy New Year, a year of BIG and EXCITING things!

The year started off slow. We spent New Year's Eve at RAW, where else would we be, right? Jus was on the floor, and I was in and out of the office. When the clock hit midnight we shared a kiss and a brief hug and rushed back to work as I helped our promotions manager pour free sake shots for everyone and Jus assumed his role on the floor managing the employees. At the end of the night we found ourselves alone in the empty dark restaurant recapping the events of the night and just decompressing. It's the first time we didn't even take a picture together - so pathetic.

We went to see the broadway production "The Color Purple"! Growing up I remember watching this a lot. We got like 3rd row center seats from my friends in TicketsWest at Red Lion...and it was so awesome to sit that close. Usually we get the seats up on the highest terrace. But this time we could actually see the sweat on their foreheads :) I don't think the Spokane community was prepared for this show, there are so many very conservative people here, and the reviews from those I spoke with were mixed. They weren't aware of the content and many said ... "it was so sad." But we loved it. It was real and it the singing was awesome. And anything Oprah related hooks me in.

We took a mini vacation trip to Seattle for Pat and Bree's wedding on January 10th. Congrats to those love birds. It was a traditional Latin mass held in West Seattle, followed by a lovely reception at the Knights of Columbus in downtown Seattle. Their theme was schoolish, and they drove off to the reception site in a small school bus! Pat and I were very close in college where we served together as Co-Captians of the Cheer Team. I am so happy for him that he's found the love of his life! Bree is amazing.

The first Kiss after the ceremony

A pic with the newlyweds, while Pat talks on the phone with Leah!

This is a pic of the guys before Pat swept his bride away for his "Wedding Night Festivities".

We are still going faithfully to RCIA classes, Jus comes with me too, for support since the class if fairly small. Matt is also going through the program to get confirmed...and Mark and Jessie attend for moral support too.

We joined OZ fitness this month too. We both decided that we need to make more time to take care of ourselves. So we scheduled at least 2 - 3 times a week to go to the gym. It's super fun to workout together...and we need to keep one another motivated to do this.

Restaurant Happenings

We had a soft opening of Uno (at the Artisan Room) in Mid January. Uno is a new addition to the restaurant profile our group has going on in Spokane. It's nich is Lation/Mexian cuisine with specials on tequila. It's kind of weird because it's in the lobby area of the old Ridpath Hotel - which has shut down for a while due to owner/operator issues. But the nightclub space is still rockin! We've enclosed it off so the space is completely seperate from the old hotel lobby unlike how it was before. Super exciting!

So this marked the first month when we officially had 4 locations at once. I'm serving as the Operations Manager for all locations, and while the hours are long, I'm learning so much! I can't pass up the opportunity. Jus is still the steadfast GM of RAW, carrying the rest of the locations that are still trying to find their way operationally in the early stages of being open.

Red Lion Update

I organized a Sweet Treat reception for Red Lion Coporate associates in January. We had to cancel our usual annual big event awards banquet this year to due budget cuts, so we opted for a smaller intimate gathering where all the VP's and big wigs brought homemade desserts and treats for our associates! It was fun, we went with a Candyland theme with colored balloons everywhere, and even a surprise Bananas Foster station operated by our two Regional Vice Presidents.

I got a new window office at Red Lion - I just moved in on Jan 30th. That's a huge thing, you know office policitics and all. I'm out of the cubicle world and I moved up into a space with nice mahogony furniture, a doorway, some plexi glass, and a window view of our hotel across the parking lot.

Wedding Update

Wedding wise, we're counting down the days. We are so excited about this wedding! Not only are we stoked about becoming husband and wive and starting our family together, we are so excited to be able to have the opportunity to bring our families together. We've been away from Oahu for so long now...so it will feel like a family reunion almost.

Remember to checkout our wedding website for more details and updates!

http://www.mywedding.com/rachelandjustin/