Your Hosts: John and Deanna Morauski and family

Hello! I’m Deanna Morauski, and I’d like to personally welcome you to The Old Hen Bed & Breakfast. I thought you might be interested in knowing something about our family.

If my husband John and I had met as teenagers in 1985, we would have passed each other on the street without taking a second look. Our styles—John’s rock band-feathered hair, and me with my Dorothy Hamill haircut—were outward reflections of our individual upbringings. We came from two very different worlds.

In 1985, John had just moved to Washington State from the small town of Portage, Wisconsin, where much of his large family still resides. As a child in Portage, his main form of transportation had been his bicycle, and he traveled all around town with his buddies…stopping by Hotch’s popcorn stand for a snack and Silver Lake for a swim. One time, John and his friends even hopped on a train and snacked on cheese they found in a refrigerated car.

John has fond memories of big family gatherings. (His grandma and grandpa had 11 children, though we were told by Grandma herself that she had wanted only one in the beginning.) When we can, we still visit Portage for the fun family reunions in Uncle Tom and Aunt Phyllis’s big yard on the lake…complete with cards, beer, and German brats.

My mom worked as a professional cake decorator from the time I was five years old. I spent many hours in the back rooms of bakeries watching my mentors (unbeknownst to me), whose passion for their work would spark the flame in me of one day having a business of my own. While I was growing up, my hard-working father taught me his strong work ethic by example, and my mother passed down her creative knack to me. Once out of high school, I worked in banking as a teller and then in a corporate branch where we handled the business accounts of large corporations. I was fired just once, and it was for choosing the wrong pre-filled forms which led me to accidentally send 60-million dollar wire transfers to Korea instead of to Japan. Clearly, banking was not my thing…but customer service was! Today, I use what I learned—the business skills from my mentors, the creativity from my mother, and the strong work ethic of my father—at The Old Hen.

One thing John and I did have in common when we met was our love for God, family, and friends, and our desire to heal from past mistakes and the various wounds that life brings. We wanted to have a clear perspective on family, friends, and life in general. We began our relationship on this common ground and were married on May 30, 1992. We even started talking about opening our future bed and breakfast when we were still dating.

John and I now have two amazing kids: Brittany and Josiah. They’re also experiencing entrepreneurial sparks of their own by helping with the family business. On their way to achieving their dreams, they will find many other adventures, I’m sure!

Through our years together as a family, we have learned the value of relaxing, refreshing, and meeting new people…so our dream has never faded. We hope that you will stay awhile to visit, reflect, and follow your dreams at The Old Hen!

Sincerely,

Deanna

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