As I pull up to the Fernandez household in Tumwater their intense love for the Seattle Seahawks is obvious before I eventually walk through the door. For Jen Fernandez, football has been a way of life and now she’s making sure the tradition is carried on. “Football was always on growing up. My dad would play the television as loud as it would go,” she tells me as we sit down on her couch.
She recalls a memory from when she was about six-years-old of her mother jumping up and screaming during a game. Jen says this reaction is now hers during the football season. “I’m the same way watching football. You just can’t help getting so absorbed,” she says.
Jen’s husband, Devin, is not as much of a football fanatic, but she says he’s learned to live with it and even joins in the fun now. When the couple found out they were expecting twins they announced their pregnancy by saying the “12th man is about to get two times louder.” And during her pregnancy Jen said she had to control her energy because it caused contractions during the games. After an obvious Seahawks themed baby shower, twins Mila and Drake were born, the newest generation of football fans.
Jen’s mother, Susan Jeffries, has been a season ticket holder since 1998. She received an email just after Christmas about a Super Bowl 50 babies commercial being filmed. The commercial would feature small groups of people born approximately 9 months after a Super Bowl win.
With Mila and Drake now almost 16 months old they fit the ticket, so to speak, for what was needed. After a gentle nudge from her mother, Jen decided to take a leap of faith. “Something just told me we need to do it, jump outside our comfort zone and let go,” she tells me while smiling at her mom next to her.
With Mila and Drake in tow, Jen and Devin took the chance of a lifetime and made the trek from Tumwater to CenturyLink field in early January. She says they didn’t put on any frills and just went as themselves to see what might happen. “Just being at the stadium was my dream,” Jen adds.
Her mother chimes in about watching her daughter’s experience that day. “To see her that excited, as excited as I am, it was just like full circle. I’ve done my job,” Susan tells me.
After a series of interviews with the NFL and a tour of the stadium, the Fernandez family headed home to wait. And after only five days they got the call that set everything else in motion. Mila and Drake had been selected to represent Seattle Seahawks babies and the NFL commercial producers wanted to fly the family to New York in just two days. “Something was just telling me – everything is going to be great,” Jen tells me as I drop my mouth in shock at the timeframe.
Devin says it was a whirlwind of a trip to New York and he was very nervous to fly with the twins, but they lucked out and had an easy time. “We managed to have an almost perfect flight in both directions,” he says. While in New York, the family spent an eight hour day filming with other kids. Jen says Mila and Drake were perfect the whole time, but that she had “more meltdowns than a toddler during the experience.”
Even after all the work to keep twins occupied in a new place, Jen and Devin knew there was a chance Mila and Drake still wouldn’t be selected. Again, they waited.
As the family sat watching Super Bowl 50 they saw a promo for the commercial and there they were, Mila and Drake front and center, representing babies of 2014 Super Bowl champions. “I don’t know if she was more excited then or when the Seahawks actually won the Super Bowl,” Jen’s mom says laughing.
Today as Jen turns on a recording of the NFL Super Bowl Babies commercial, Mila squeals when she sees herself and Drake claps, and even tries to sing along. This is their new anthem which Jen says the twins insist on watching at least once a day.
And it’s obvious how proud Susan is to see the next generation of fans she helped create. “It was written in the stars,” she says. Devin tells me they created lifelong memories by participating in the commercial. “I couldn’t have asked for a better experience with them. The whole trip made me feel so much closer to my wife and kids,” he says in reflection.
In the end the commercial featured kids and young adults from around the nation in support of different teams, but in my mind the Seahawk babies stole the show. Watch Mila and Drake in action during the NFL Super Bowl Babies commercial.
