Walk in THEIR Shoes 5k

Survivors

One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of eighteen.  Every two minutes someone in the United States is raped. That means that we all know someone who has been or will be sexually assaulted.  Terrifying.  Even more terrifying to me, after learning these statistics, is that I can recall fewer than 5 conversations with friends about sexual abuse or assault.  Not conversations about the fact that it exists.  I'm talking about conversations with people that were assaulted or abused.  In other words, this means no one is talking about something that is definitely happening.  I don't want this post to turn into some kind of political statement but I found this statistic personally alarming...and terrifying.  


A few years back, my husband was asked to be on the board of a local nonprofit.  At that time, it was called the Rape and Sexual Abuse Center (RASAC for short). He agreed.  I don't think he had a real idea at the time that the organization was the only place in Middle Tennessee that specializes in the treatment for sexual assault survivors.  Since that time, they have changed their name to the Nashville Sexual Assault Center.  The organization has been in existence since 1978 and provides 8,000 therapy sessions per year in addition to educating over 40,000 elementary-aged students per year in Tennessee about personal boundaries and assertivenes skills in a program called Safe@Last.  Recently, they also launched a program called Stewards of Children, designed to educate adults throughout the community on how to keep children safe.  Amazing that they can accomplish all this as a nonprofit organization, relying mostly on donations, fundraisers, and corporate gifts.

When they contacted me about bringing the bus to their annual 5k, Walk in THEIR Shoes, I was totally onboard.  What a great place for a happy, love bus to spend the day.  We loaded the bus up with water, juice boxes and candy for the kiddos, and a giant batch of love bus cookies.  The day turned out to be a bright, sun-filled, spring day in Tennessee, with near perfect conditions.  What a blessing to this celebration of survivors of sexual abuse and assault.

Along with the bus and the snacks, I took along some swag from EO Products new Love Everybody line.  Natural, plant based hand sanitizer with essential oils and scents like peppermint citrus and coconut lemon; love everybody buttons; dog tag necklaces; and hair bands.  What a fabulous place for their Love Everybody message.  A celebration of survivors.  I also used it as an opportunity to tell people all about the bus.

Throughtout the day we had several hundred people in and on and around the bus. Kids, adults, babies, and even dogs. The Big Love Bus was even used as the backdrop for the photobooth! See Exhibit A and B, below!

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

We got a lot of great feedback on the bus.  Everyone wanted to know what we were all about.  Premier transportation! A lot of folks had great ideas about the things that they would do and where they would go with the bus.

Graduation party came up more than once, bachelorette party, Christmas light tour, tailgating, and sightseeing were all mentioned.  We even had a sign up to win a free hour on the Big Love Bus opportunity.  Hopefully we will be able to tell you all about that party soon!

In the meantime, we were honored to #spreadthelove to a such a hardworking group of people who provide such a valuable service in our community.   

Jessica with Tim Tohill, NashvilleSAC President

If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual abuse or assault, call the Nashville Sexual Assault Center Crisis Hotline at 1-800-879-1999.

Cookie...bus?

Like a lot of folks, over the years, I’ve been given a few nicknames.  Different nicknames in different towns where I’ve lived. I’ve never been a Jessie.  Usually they were some derivation of: J, Jess, Miss Jackson if you’re nasty, or even Martha Macgyver.  That last one is a doozy.  It was given to me by a good friend - a gal that I spent a lot of really early mornings (read 5 am) with a few years back.  These therapy sessions typically involved running, spinning, or weight lifting.  On one of these runs, she came up with the nickname.  Not sure if we were suffering from delirium or on some type of runners high, but we thought it was hilarious.  Martha Macgyver.

If you are under the age of thirty, you probably have no idea who Macgyver is, who Martha refers to, or much less why you’d combine those too names as a term of endearment.  For those younger readers, Martha refers to the iconic Martha Stewart…pre-prison, natch.  The Martha Stewart of gardening; entertainment; home decorating; cooking; the you-name-it-she-can-do-it-or-has-done-it gal.  Macgyver(played by the 80s hunk Richard Dean Anderson) was a television show about a secret agent who could solve complex problems and get out of terrifying situations with a ball point pen, some duct tape, and a swiss army knife.  As a side note, I didn’t know until writing this post that Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz, was one of the executive producers of Macgyver.  

You are probably wondering where this is going.  I guess the nickname arose because this one particular friend thought I could make a grapevine wreath for any holiday out of some twigs, a ball point pen, some duct tape, and some leftover ribbon, then walk into the kitchen whip up something gourmet sounding out of the leftovers in the fridge.  I’m not quite sure if this so-called talent arrived out of resourcefulness, thriftiness, or as an attempt to proscrastinate from doing things like cleaning house or laundry. 

Ok, back to where is this going and how does it involve Big Love Bus or Martha Macgyver.  It does involve cookies and duct tape. I thought I would share the recipe for the Big Love Bus Cookies.  No, there is no duct tape IN the cookies. Sorry to disappoint. I was in the midst of planning the 10^th birthday party for our oldest daughter. Up to that point I had racked my brain for the easiest, most portable birthday treat for the birthday party onboard the bus.  I wanted something with minimal mess, portability, and something that still had the cuteness factor. Cake seemed to involve too many accessories.  We would have had to take a knife, a serving piece, plates, forks, napkins, and the obligatory ice cream.  Transporting all that on the bus seemed to be a pain. Cupcakes are, well, in my opinion, getting to be overdone. I wanted something different and frankly easier.  Despite my great love of baking and all things sweet, I’ve never been able to master the perfect sugar cookie.  Why would I try to do it for a party?  Like Macgyver, I love a good challenge.  I wondered if there was such a thing as a bus shaped cookie cutter.  Enter Amazon Prime.  Of course there is a bus shaped cookie cutter.  There were actually several to choose from, but I went with this one. 

Now, I needed a recipe. I happened to have a friend that had wowed me with her cookies in the past, whipping up adorable onsies decorated in white and blue for a baby shower, fancy cookies at Christmas, and celebratory cookies at July Fourth. I wasn’t sure she would share her recipe but she said it was no big deal. I was still skeptical. The recipe looked really simple. When I made the dough and let it chill for at least twenty-four hours like the recipe suggested I REALLY wasn’t sure about it. I took the dough out of the fridge and it was hard as a rock. Uh oh. Sugar cookie fail…again. I sent a quick text to my friend, who ASSURED me that they would be just fine. I let the dough warm a bit, rolled out a batch, and stuck the first cookies in the oven. She was right! They looked perfect (and I was just about to run to the store and buy the premade sugar cookie dough filled with chemicals and preservatives).Several hours later, I had a nice batch of about fifty, unbroken, perfectly baked bus shaped cookies!  On to the icing.

I had never iced a sugar cookie with royal icing.  To this point, my sugar cookies had been such a failure that I hadn’t even ever made it to the icing step! I don’t even own a piping kit. I mixed up the icing, simple enough, and proceeded to try to make just the right neon green color to match the Big Love Bus logo. I thought I’d paint the bus green, slap some black tires on it, and call it a day.  Mixing the green was pretty easy…a dab of this color, a dab of that color, stir and thin to the right consistency.The black on the other hand, was a different animal.  Let’s just say that mixing all the colors together kind of resulted in a grayish purple.  After a bit, I finally got a deep, dark purple that I thought would pass for black…in the dark…to an audience of ten-year-olds.   

I used my Martha Macgyver skills to load the icing into a Ziploc bag, snipped off the end, and got started with my homemade piping kit. Who needs Wilton decorating classes?  I’ll be honest, it was not as easy as it looked.  I ended up with icing all over my hands, the countertop, and the toaster (I know, right?). I did, however, manage to use a combination of the homemade piping bag, a toothpick, and a butter knife, to spread the icing out on the cookies.  It looked pretty good.I let the icing dry and then got the purplely blackish wheels on there. Again, a mess, but I got it done.  By that point, it was probably eleven at night. I was exhausted and, frankly, over it.  I let the cookies set overnight to dry.  At some point during the night I had the great idea that the love bus cookies needed some “love.” As a result, I mixed up some pink and plastered a big fat heart on each one the next morning.  At this point I was getting excited! Martha Macgyver might actually pull this one off in the nick of time. 

I still had no idea how I was going to get the cookies on the bus until I happened to be in Paper Source one day and noticed these great plastic bags with a sticky closure. They looked fancy (read expensive). Surprisingly, they were pretty cheap for a bag of 100.  I snatched them up, hoping that the bus cookies would fit inside.  When I got home, I gingerly placed the cookies in the bags and was really pleased with the results. I put the cookies on a large melamine tray and thought I’d use it to display the cookies on the counter in the bus but I was worried about the tray slipping and sliding because it wasn’t very heavy, even when loaded with fifty cookies. This is where the duct tape comes in!  And you didn’t think I’d tie it all together in a neat little package, did ya?  I waded up a bit of duct tape on each corner of the bottom of the tray and voila! Martha Macgyver. 

The cookies were a HIT.  All the kids loved them and I’m told they even tasted good (I don’t eat gluten any more so I didn’t even try them!). I will say, I now know and appreciate why bakeries charge upwards of $3.00/cookie for these jewels.  The recipe might not be difficult, but the process is certainly time consuming!  We won’t be including bus shaped cookies in any party packages (at least from my kitchen) but I do have at least one local baker could make them in a pinch should the desire arise. Just another way we are trying to #spreadthelove. 

No Fail Sugar Cookies

* This recipe makes up to 8 dozen 3" cookies so feel free to half the recipe.  The cookies freeze great, though, if you want to make lots.

6 cups flour

3 tsp. baking powder

2 cups sugar

2 cups butter (4 sticks)

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. salt

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs and flavoring.  Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to butter mixture.  Mix well.  Chill for two hours or overnight.  Roll to desired thickness and cut with your favorite cookie cutters.  Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until cookies just begin to turn tan around the edges.  Remove from oven and allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for several minutes before transferring to cooling rack.  Cookies can then be stored in an airtight container and frozen until you are ready to decorate.  

(These cookies hold their shape great while in the oven - better than other sugar cookie recipes I have tried.)

Party till ya hang out the windows...an amazing 10th birthday!

I have always loved birthday parties.  Well, except the all-mighty, seemingly mandatory goody bag.  That's a topic for another day though.  The timing of the launch of big love bus happened to coincide with our oldest daughter's 10th birthday. Like most kids her age, she had talked about her birthday for what seemed like months.  First she wanted a skating party, then a cooking party, then a giant sleepover, then it was back to skating.  I would always just nod and smile and say, "ok sweetheart, let's just wait until we get closer to make a real decision."  Then it dawned on me.  We could use the bus for her party! It would be a great way to see if kids liked the bus, would give us an opportunity to drive it around town and really test it out, and it would be fun.  Seemed like a natural fit for a 10-year old who sings and dances ALL. THE. TIME.

She invited her entire basketball team along with a few other girls from school, her younger sister (and a friend), and her two young cousins (one of whom brought a friend).  I think in total we had 18 girls and 7 adults.  The birthday girls' Daddy and Uncle C were the only men involved.  

We met at a central location, loaded up the bus, and took off with the tunes pumping.  The birthday girl took the time to create her own party playlist with songs from One Direction, Katy Perry, Pharell, Lorde, and others.  

 

Daddy and Daughter stop for a squeeze.

We cruised around for a bit before heading into Green Hills to the Sugar Dive, literally a sweet little store smack dab in the middle of shopping central.  Before we just showed up with twenty or so guests, we called ahead and talked to one of the owners, Carissa Pereira.  She was MORE than happy to accomodate the Big Love Bus and even offered to put out cones to assure we had a place to land! 

Gift card "goody" bags.

Sugar Dive & Big Love Parking only!

Each party goer got a $5 gift card to get good and sugared up. This was plenty of money to spend...most girls actually walked away with money left on their cards!  (The staff was especially patient as nearly every girl calculated exactly how much they could buy with their money).  

Everybody all sugared up!

Once the girls were good and sugared up, most with ice cream and at least one other kind of candy, we hopped back into the bus for a short ride to Dragon Park near Vanderbilt.  The perfect spot for a lot of cute pictures and a great way to run off that sugar high...for free. Here, the girls donned fuzzy pink mustaches, supplied by always cool Aunt C, and spent some time running up and down a hill and climbing all over the cool dragon. 

After about thirty minutes of blowing off steam, and practicing "fierce" poses (I had no idea what this was and had to ask the kids), we rounded all the girls up for the ride back to the meeting spot.  

Once they boarded the bus, they helped themselves to fizzy lemonade, ate love-bus shaped sugar cookies, and took turns singing their favorite songs.  I was totally amazed at how they each took turns being the center of attention.  They really listened to each other sing.  It was a really sweet moment during the party.  



After wearing out their vocal chords they finally asked why there were several boxes of chalk on the bus.  The ENTIRE ceiling is covered with chalkboard paint! So, of course they broke out the sidewalk chalk to write all over the ceiling!  

As we rounded the corner into the parking lot, the girls were hanging out the window screaming about what fun they'd had to all the parents and siblings there to pick up their girls.  

According to the birthday girl, "This [was] the BEST DAY of my life!"  I said, "no, this was great fun, but the BEST is yet to come."  Happy birthday darling! 

"There's no where you can be that isn't where you're meant to be." - John Lennon

I mentioned before, and I'll probably mention it another hundred times, but we've been SO blessed in the short time we've been on this journey to build and launch the love bus business.

For almost 13 years, I've spent my days in a windowless office, pouring over the Tennessee Code Annotated and criminal trial transcripts.  A far cry from hawking a love bus.  Just when I wondered what I was going to be when I grew up, this opportunity came along and landed in my lap.  

I didn't know the first thing about buses, the transportation industry, or business.  Was I crazy? Probably.  But it sounded so fun, and frankly, so "me."

When we finally got ready to hire some drivers, I had no clue where to look.  One day, as I was pouring over a 3000+ page transcript, a coworker came into my office and asked me if I had a minute to chat.  I had casually mentioned the bus to him one day in the office kitchen as he heated his sandwich.  He proceeded to tell me about a friend of his, a local school bus driver, who just might be a natural fit for the big love bus.  I had no idea how right he was!

He contacted his friend, via facebook, and we were quickly connected in cyberspace.  Not only did this guy drive a school bus, but he was a city councilman, perpetual community volunteer, purveyor of natural health, beauty aid, herbal, and other alternative health products (Nature's Glen), and he was raised on The Farm.  He even writes a blog about his Buscapades...talk about fate!  I couldn't imagine a person more suited to drive this hippy dippy, funky love bus!

Well, if possible, he's even better in person.  He's knowledgeable, funny, can rock a tie dyed tshirt, knows a TON of friendly folks, and manuveres the bus throughout Nashville with ease. Meet Nashville's first driver - Glenn Remick!  

Big Love Manifesto

What is Big Love Bus all about? Take a gander at our Manifesto. Words to live by...and spread the love.

Designed by Bone Dust Designs

all you need is love...

Right?  Isn't that what we've heard? Love, love, love, da da duh duh duh....  I'd love to tell you it was just that easy! Have a neat idea, plant it in some soil like a plant, care for it, and watch it grow.  Truth is, big love bus has been cultivatin' for a few years.  I think we've actually gone pretty quickly from concept to reality but it has been much more a labor of love than any of us ever imagined.  

What did we have in mind? A platform for Sprouse and Neuhoff to expand their love of fun and great photography to Tennessee, a fun way to spend time with friends, a blank canvas for a young artist, a new way to see the great state of Tennessee, a vehicle, literally, that would allow us to give back to the community, oh, and a way to make a little spendin' money in the process.  Sounds great, right? Well, it is not quite as easy as getting a bunch 'o folks together, throwing them on a bus with a driver, and having a ball.  We've had to learn all about licensing and regulations and compliance, and...well, no reason to bore you with all the legal stuff....

What we never anticipated was the outpouring of support and love from nearly everyone we met along the way from concept to reality.  You see, its hard to talk to people about the big love bus without them gettin' a smile on their face.  It either totally takes them by surprise or slowly creeps across their face as they realize how cool this whole thing is going to be.  

What do we want out of this? We really do want to spread the love.  We want big love bus to be fun and funky, but we are super passionate about giving back to our communities and the people that have helped us along the way.  We're all in this great big world together, after all.  We will share more cool stories about the creation of the big love bus along the way.  Stay tuned, but in the mean time #spreadthelove.