Category Archives: Best Friends

Jensey Loves Oliver’s First Thanksgiving <3

3rd January 2018

I can’t believe this was our *7th*!!! annual Thanksgiving with the Stoners! <3

I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend Oliver’s first Thanksgiving than in a cabin with these dear friends. I was insistent on going somewhere COLD this year!! Oliver is always hot natured, but with his DOC Band helmet, he overheats really easily! I wanted to kick off the holiday somewhere cool where he could, you know, wear a jacket! <3

I love this little series of Titi Lisa giving Ollie his first cooking class. :)

We introduced him to Helen, Georgia, one of our favorite places to spend Thanksgiving! :)

And then we haaaaad to introduce him to the place where Cabbage Patch Kids are born! If you haven’t ever been here before, it’s… Interesting. ;)

Ollie in overalls is the best kind of Ollie! :)

You know Titi Lisa is around when this is the high chair setting we wake up to! ;)

She really outdid herself with this year’s tablescape. Inspired by Oliver, she had this table runner handmade with family and friends quotes from Disney movies written on it. The calligraphy was by Andi Mejia! It was such a work of art. :)

The annual bacon-weaving of the turkey!

I had to, ok?? You only get *one* first Thanksgiving, and rumor has it, sons reach a certain age where they’re *not* ok with their moms dressing them up in turkey costumes. I don’t believe Oliver will EVER let that happen, but juuuuust in case! ;)

Gobble gobble gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! <3

And just as quickly as the holiday began, it was over! Nate and I extended our trip one night to see Dahlonega’s lighting of their Christmas tree and downtown! They apparently film a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies here and I fell. in. love! Also, look at our little!!!!!!!!!!

Our Oliver tradition for roadtrips home- Stopping off in the Florida welcome center to say hi to their astronaut, get some orange juice, and take a photo with the Florida sign! :)

Ollie does Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party!

29th December 2017

Nate, Oliver, and I went to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party with our bests, Uncle Timmy and Uncle John David! We went the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and it kicked off our holiday season in the most over-the-top magical way. We left the park saying that if nothing else happened between then and Christmas, our holiday magic cup would already be full!

We happen to have friends with extraordinarily magical roles in the company and they gave us maybe a top 3 moment of 2017 : Santa not only giving a special message to Ollie DURING the Christmas parade (video below!!), but also a private Santa meet-and-greet after it was over.

While we still did the Santa mall photos later in December (I felt like it was a childhood rite of passage, like bad school photos!), I’m so, so happy that *this* was his first meeting with the real Santa. It was just us and him in a room and he held Oliver and talked to us forever and every one of us cried. Nate and I lost it a couple times in the park that night- We have wished to be parents for so, so long, and we spent more Christmases than not broken hearted, wondering if we’d ever get the chance. It was absolutely surreal holding him watching the parade, showing him the snow on Main Street, all of it. I can only imagine the magic to come when he knows what’s going on! :)

This night was truly the highlight of our entire holiday season, and I had to share some photos (and video!) before the month ended. My heart is so full. <3 I mean.. How are we supposed to top this life moment for Oliver?!

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Sid and Janie Doll : Halloween 2015

8th October 2016

Just because I’m not dressing up this year doesn’t mean I don’t love looking back at our past get ups. And last year was my favorite yet. <3

We knew we’d be going to spend Halloween trick-or-treating with our nephews in Jax, and we knew they were going as Buzz and Woody. So Jessie and I thought it’d be cute if we all went as Toy Story characters! We didn’t tell them who we’d decided on until the day of when I realized, oh crap! I may scare the bejeezus out of these boys! (I totally didn’t by the way. Henry was indifferent and Hall kept wanting to try on my mask himself or have me put it on and kiss my cheeks!)

When watching Toy Story as a kid, the “Janie Doll” scene stuck with me the most. (Can’t you just hear the “Mama! Mama!”) And who doesn’t love Sid?!

(I put affiliate links to all of our costume pieces at the bottom of this post if you wanna make a similar costume for yourself this year!)

This family portrait though. I. Mean. <3

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This felt a *tad* sacrilegious, but in true spirit of Sid, Nate cackled his way through! We bought poor Woody on eBay. <3

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Swooooooooooooooooooon! This Sid shirt is one of my favorites, and I love that he wears it at home now. You can go getcha’ one here! :)

 

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So, my blue dress ended up being the hardest piece to find, but Modcloth to the rescue!

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The biggest trooper of them ALL, my little green alien!! <3

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And now the costume details :

SID PHILLIPS COSTUME 
Skull Shirt from Amazon
Fake Braces from Amazon

JANIE DOLL COSTUME
Navy “Work to Play Dress” from Modcloth
Red and White Shirt from Amazon
Crocodile Mask from Amazon

LITTLE GREEN ALIEN
Green Polo Shirt from Amazon
Stick-on Wiggly Eyes from our kitchen drawer! :)

And our group shot before heading out for the evening. How’d we do?!

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Jensey Loves Snoqualmie

18th June 2016

If you’ve ever seen photos from our best friends getting married in Africa, you know Lorie and Jon. Lorie and I have known each other since kindergarten, been best friends since college, moved to Orlando to do the Walt Disney World College Program together, met our husbands, married our husbands, and all 4 of us moved to Nashville 5 years ago. Then Nate and I broke our parallel lives by moving back to Orlando, leaving our other-couple-half in Nashville!

Anyway, that’s our friendship in a nutshell with Lorie and Jon. Shortly after our move back to Orlando, they moved to Seattle! They’ll only be there a couple years, but I’m so glad that we were able to make the trip to see them in their new home. They’re living in downtown Seattle in a crazy fancy and cozy apartment, and while I’m longing for them to move back to Tennessee so we can be close(r) again, it was so fun seeing them in this new life!!

Now for photos from the next leg of our January snow trip! <3

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Of course, we got a cabin for the weekend with them because that’s what we do with Lorie and Jon! We visited the town of Snoqualmie, which was only ~45 minutes from Seattle. But what a difference that 45 minutes made! What was a mild, rainy day quickly turned into 30 degrees and feet of snow!

I loved our snowy cabin. <3

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She’s just being Lorie. <3

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I mean, we were living in a postcard!!

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It’s not Lorie and Jon time until the boys are doing puzzles. <3

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Down the street from our cabin was this GIIIIIIIIANT sledding hill! It was so scary but fun, and that hike back up the hill was NO joke!

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Don’t let the smiles fool you- We’re both completely out of breath here!

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HAND. SOME. <3

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Lorie had a quest all weekend to make the perfect snowball. :)

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THIS IS THE SECOND STORY WINDOW, Y’ALL. SECOND STORY. SECOND. STORY.

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Oh right! So we were leaving Snoqualmie around noon when we get to the freeway on-ramp in town and find this. UMMMMM. We were supposed to be flying out the next morning for a session in Canada and this had me and Nate mildly freaking out, but as always, I can’t imagine any better friends to have in this situation than Lorie and Jon.

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We learned there was only going to be one more convoy out that day and the only way to know when it was going to happen was the closed neighborhood Facebook page! They would post on there and give the residents 10 minutes. When we went back out to see if the convoy was going to go or not, they were about to leave, but we needed to run back to the cabin to grab our stuff and Mary-Kate, Lorie’s dog! We RACED back to the cabin, all of us having a specific plan of what to do and grab, came back, and the convoy had LEFT! We were told again that the cop was going to come back for one more run, so we loaded up on junk food at the gas station and prepared to wait in this line of cars for hours. Sure enough, our line of cars started moving and we were on our way!

Lorie and Jon, we love adventuring with y’all. Come visit soon! <3