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Ali Melia Jepson

@alijepson

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Storyteller and Food Enthusiast
“My love is bigger than a Cadillac.”
💀⚡️: Morning Dew > NFA 7/4/89

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✨18 YEARS✨ Tonight he took me dancing at The Troubadour. Let’s keep this train a rollin. 🚂💨💨💨 by @alijepson

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8 days ago

✨BILLY STRINGS APPRECIATION POST✨ Shake off the dust and the clay. We only get so many trips around the sun. Might as well dance our asses off while we’re here. 🪕🎻✨🌈 ⚡️💃🏽🪩🕺🏽 Thank you @billystrings for a real good time. by @alijepson

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11 days ago

✨IF YOU WANT TO SING OUT, SING OUT✨
One of the greatest gifts of raising my children in a village is that somehow, along the way, I’ve been invited back into childhood too.

Play doesn’t always come naturally to me. Teaching does. Creating does. Making things, imagining things, finding the meaning underneath things—that part I know. But getting on the swing? Being silly just for the sake of being silly? Letting go enough to simply play? I sometimes have to remind myself how.

And then there’s this place.

Life @gardenpatchplayschool has given our family a village, but it has given me something special too. A little safe, magical window where I get to meet my kiddos in their world. Where I can climb and swing and make messes and sing (badly) loudly. Where being a grown up doesn’t mean standing on the sidelines of childhood.

I get to teach here. I get to create here. I get to help protect childhood here. But maybe one of the sweetest gifts is that I get to play here, too. taken in Santa Clarita, California by @alijepson

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24 days ago

✨PINE MOUNTAIN CLUB✨ A family escape into the pines where the whole place was…eerily quiet. Like we were stranded in the “Twilight Zone” kind of quiet.

Where IS everyone? Are we the only family left on earth? Should we be concerned?!?

Whatever was going on, we kind of loved it. A weird, wonderful little mountain weekend with our spooky loving crew.

Note to self: come back when there’s snow. taken in Pine Mountain Club, California by @alijepson

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a month ago

✨FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL 2026✨ by @alijepson

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2 months ago

✨THIS IS 5✨ Your birthday falls on a Monday which means it’s a celebration weekend. It starts with a magical tea party with REAL China and lots of pink because you cannot emphasize enough how the cups must be real in order for it to be REALLY special. You will insist upon being part of every detail of your celebration including decorating your own cake, putting together the goodie bags, and determining the dress code for dinner. You will waltz into our room sharply at 6am the day after your party wearing a new crown and cape and ask that we go to the Tam O’ Shanter for dinner because they’ll make you the best Shirley temple “with extra-extra cherries on the side.” And you will not share a single said cherry with anyone else at the table—but it’s okay because you’re more than happy to split the giant hot fudge sundae with all of us after the meal so long as we agree to sing “Happy Birthday” to you. In fact, you will ask MANY people to sing “Happy Birthday” to you this weekend and we will all oblige because celebrating you comes easy. On the anniversary of your birth we will head to school together and you will wear yet another crown to alert everyone it’s your birthday. You will come visit me in the yard and pick a tomato from our garden and eat it like it’s an apple. I will let you pick the color of the day for the water station and you will go with red and pink because they’re your favorite colors. The result is a vibrant magenta that reflects the fire in your soul.

You are a whirling dervish of PURE love. A band-aid assassin. A frenetic, thumb-sucking, popsicle wielding, princess-dress twirling, aggressive hugger and cuddle bug. The cheekiest of smiles, the giggliest of giggles, the most thoughtful member of our family, and the one we can always count to help us remember a story or locate a misplaced an item. Our family would lose its sparkle without you. Happy birthday Noelani, you are the sprinkles and cherry on top of our sundae. by @alijepson

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3 months ago

✨THIS IS 11✨ Hyper-speeding thru Tween-dom. Despite sleeping in every day of summer break, today eagerly begins at 6:10 am…but your family will torture you by making you wait until your birth time of 6:41 am before officially recognizing your birthday. With tinsel in your hair and a fresh coat of mascara on, you will go out on a breakfast date with just your dad. You will order a classic eggs Benedict and a sparkling water knowing that a trip to Starbucks will soon follow.
Later, Mom will whisk you away to Sephora to agonize over which Sol de Janeiro body mist you want to spend your recently acquired loot on; and no birthday would be complete without a stop for boba (matching brown sugar early grey milk teas + cold foam) and then onto the local thrift where you proceed to tell me if it’s not a jersey embossed with a number or an oversized sweatshirt embroidered with a proper place name (Nashville! Santa Cruz!) you don’t want it. For dinner it’s Homestate- just like old times- and it’s just us which feels so special. Between bites of breakfast tacos and crispy fried potatoes dipped in queso, we tell stories starting from your first memory to present day. We come home so the rest of our family can sing you happy birthday, and you can make a wish over vanilla-bean pavlova topped with fresh nectarines, strawberries and passion fruit curd. It was a good day. It’s been a humbling, eye-opening, beautiful 11 years, #MontyMoon. May we keep growing, dreaming and singing along to “The Greatest Showman” soundtrack together forever. ❤️🌕♾️ by @alijepson

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3 months ago

✨44✨ Recipe for the perfect (birth)day:

1 cortado made by my favorite barista (E. Dohrmann).
1 passion fruit pie from Doubting Thomas.
1 pastrami breakfast burrito shared on a blanket beneath the trees.
Matching sun hats with my favorite person.
A handful of plumeria flowers rescued from the sidewalk.
A walk through the old stomping grounds.
A mint cookies & cream dipped cone, handed through a tiny window.
Birdsong.
A massage that made me forget what city I was in.
Uninterrupted conversation.
Space to daydream.
A steakhouse dinner, a loaded baked potato, and all four of my favorite little people around the table. by @alijepson

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3 months ago

✨THIS LAND WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME✨ You can’t convince me otherwise. 🇺🇸 by @alijepson

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3 months ago

✨HELP OUR GARDEN GROW✨ My sink is full of children’s clothes wet with sand. There is dried paint on a sleeve, mud caked onto the knees of tiny pants, and Redding still has yesterday’s face paint clinging to the edges of her cheeks. I’m smiling because this is what our afternoons look like every day.

When we left Portland, I grieved more than a city. I grieved the feeling of belonging. I wondered if we’d ever find that kind of community again. Then we found @gardenpatchplayschool. Three of my children have grown up here, and somewhere along the way, this place raised me, too.

To my children, it’s a place where the day is measured in muddy boots, climbing trees, treasure lined-pockets, messy masterpieces, bug discoveries, and stories invented from nothing more than a stick and a patch of dirt. They don’t know they’re building confidence, empathy, resilience, and lifelong friendships. They just think they’re playing.

And honestly... they’re right. Play is childhood.

Seeing the Patch as both a parent and a teacher has shown me that this magic doesn’t happen by accident. It exists because of extraordinary educators who pour their creativity, intention, and hearts into protecting childhood every single day. I’ve never worked with teachers like these before. They are artists. Problem-solvers. Storytellers. Scientists. Gardeners. Builders of forts and confidence. They see children not for what they should become someday, but for exactly who they are today. Christie created something truly rare, and I don’t know where our family would be without her vision or this incredible community.

This season marks an exciting new chapter as the Garden Patch continues to grow, expanding to serve children from infancy through 3rd grade. More families will get to experience the kind of childhood that every child deserves.

If you’re local, I’d love to see you there. If you’re far away but this story resonates with you, would you consider making a donation? No gift is too small. Every contribution helps us continue this work.

The link is in my bio. Here’s to more muddy knees, paint-covered sleeves, and sinks full of sand. taken in Santa Clarita, California by @alijepson

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3 months ago

✨26 YEARS✨ Twenty-six years of choosing you.
We’ve been together so long our stories finish each other’s sentences. The first time you called my house you were 13 year old. But we wouldn’t share a kiss until four years later.

In one lifetime, we’ve somehow lived a thousand.
We’ve been kids, dreamers, world travelers, newlyweds, business owners, exhausted parents, and partners through every season in between. I didn’t need that Witch you met in line at the post office to tell you that our souls have been connected in many lifetimes before because I already felt it. But I’m grateful she confirmed it.

We spent the day celebrating our son, then shared Reuben sandwiches, curly fries, bottomless iced teas, black coffee and carrot cake at our favorite Jewish deli with our newly anointed two-year-old daughter in tow.
And honestly, it was perfect.

Because loving you has always been easy.

You have given me trust, security, tenderness, unconditional love, beautiful children, and the incredible privilege of walking through life beside someone who is intelligent, committed, humble, hilarious, thoughtful, dependable, trustworthy, and kind.

The older I get, the more I understand that love isn’t found in the big moments. It’s found in a thousand small choices made over and over again. And after twenty-six years, choosing you remains the best decision I’ve ever made.

I love you, E. Dohrmann. Here’s to every lifetime before this one, and every lifetime after. ♾️ by @alijepson

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4 months ago

✨PEARL GIRL TURNS TWO✨ At two years old, you stand at the refrigerator, and declare with great authority, “I WANT A (s)NACK!”

What you really want is a(nother) frozen yogurt tube.

And when we tell you you’ve already had one today, you scrunch up your little nose, pout your perfect lips, and look at us as if we’re the most unreasonable people you’ve ever met. All while rolling your eyes and groaning “UGHHH” (I have no idea where you got that 🫣).

At two, you’re the undisputed queen of snacks, the reigning champion of water play (eczema be damned!), and somehow still the queen of sleep. 15+ hour nights are not uncommon around here. By morning you’ve usually pulled every elastic out of your pigtails and wake up looking a little like Ace Ventura after a windstorm. Alrighty then!

At two, you wear shorts on your head as a hat and think this is pure comedy gold. You’re damn cute. I’ll give you that.

You blow out your own birthday candles, and you want the candles in the cake while you eat it or there will be hell to pay. Your weakness is cupcakes. The greener the frosting the better.

You love painting, though preferably not on paper. Your arms, legs, belly, and occasionally the table are your favorite canvases. Your favorite songs are “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Kiss the Baby Goodnight.” If someone looks upset, you walk right over, place your hand on their back, tilt your head, and ask, “You okay?” with genuine concern written all over your face—this gives me daily assurance that I must be doing something right.

Lately you’ve started greeting me by saying “Hi Mom”—not mama or mommy, because that’s what your older siblings call me. Every time you say it, my heart breaks just a little. Not because I don’t love hearing it, but because it’s evidence that you’re growing up.

But no matter how many candles end up on your cake, no matter how tall you get or how independent you become, there is one thing that will never change:

You are adored.

By your sisters. By your brother. By your dad. By me.
And while we all know you’re two now, we’ll keep telling you anyway: You’ll ALWAYS be our baby. 💜

Happy Birthday, Pendleton. You’re the shiniest of them all. 🦪✨ by @alijepson

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4 months ago