Meet the Shaneyfelts

Archives for October 2025

Friday Favorites–Birthday Edition!!!

Happy Happy Friday, y’all!! I’m super excited today because not only is it Friday, BUT tomorrow is my birthday and I LOVE my birthdays!!!

Instead of my usual Friday Favorites post, I am going to do a 10 Things About Me post! If you’re a long time reader, you may know these or you may not 🙂

  1. I am very particular about my sleep at night. My bedding has to be lined up and even, and my pillow has to be perfectly cradled around my head, and I have a weighted eye mask I sleep with that I have to have!
  2. Backing in my car into a parking space makes mer nervous, so I haven’t even attempted to back in my new car yet–aka my car that I’ve had since mid-May LOL
  3. I have always loved reading. My mom taught me to read at age 3 using Hooked On Phonics and I’ve been a reader ever since!
  4. I have zero talents except that I can write really fast (and it’s still neat). My students are always amazed when I write on the board, but it’s my only flex haha
  5. I became a Christian at the age of 13 when my life really chaotic and hard. I am so grateful for God’s sovereignty because I did not grow up with Christian parents, so it’s only by the grace of God that I became a Believer. (My mom became a Christian much later, and that’s her story to tell 🙂 )
  6. I sometimes like to think about what kind of job I could do if I weren’t a teacher. I think I’d love to do something either with hair or as an esthetician doing facials because I think that is such a fascinating and fun job.
  7. I love going to bed early. I’ve always been like that. I lived with my best friend in college and it’d get to 11pm and I’d be going to bed and she’d be up until 2 or 3 am haha
  8. Dustin says I have champagne taste on a beer budget. ( My Gran also used to tell me that ha). I just like nice things and I can’t help it.
  9. I’ve been blogging since a few months after we got married, and we’ve been married for 11 years! I also had a blog back in college for maybe a year or two
  10. I’m currently watching The Kardashians while I type this and I’ve been watching them since season 1 when they lived in a “small” one story home all together. I could probably tell you every single thing about them–I have a wide variety of things I like–from The Kardashians to Hemingway to the British Royal Family 🙂

Friday Favorites!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!! Y’all, it’s been a great week! We had fall break Monday and Tuesday, so we’ve only had a 3 day school week–and I could definitely get used to that!

As always, today I’m sharing a few FAVORITES with. y’all!

one

I blogged about our Disney trip on Monday and Tuesday. You can read about our travel day, the first day of Magic Kingdom, and Animal Kingdom here. And you can read about our rest day, our second Magic Kingdom day, and our Hollywood Studios day here! It was the best trip!

two and three

This one has two favorites–first, we took the kids on a train ride to the pumpkin patch on Saturday morning and we had lots of fun! The boys are obsessed with trains so we surprised them with this and it was fun! Full disclosure though, Banks had gotten up super early that morning so he was over it by the time we rode the train back to the station…you can imagine how enjoyable that was 🙂

My second favorite is that I colored my hair!!! I went back to my natural hair color and I LOVE IT!! I was ready for a change and have wanted it brown for a couple of months, so I did it! My hair dresser did the best job giving me what I wanted. Dustin has only known me as blonde, so you can imagine his shock when I came home after I didn’t tell him what I was doing to my hair ha 🙂

four

I read Last Night Was Fun over the weekend and LOVED it! It’s so cute! The main character, Emmy, gets a text message from a random number and she starts texting with the stranger. They end up meeting and you’ll have to read it to find out what happens :). It reminded me of Lynn Painter’s book Mr. Wrong Number (which I also really, really loved), so apparently I love the wrong number trope.

That’s it for the week! I hope y’all have a great weekend! Alabama plays Tennessee and I can’t wait to go watch this game. Dustin has been to all home games this season, Harrison has been to most, and this will be my first game of the season–let’s hope it’s not too hot and that we win! Roll Tide!

Disney World 2025 Part 2 (Rest Day, Magic Kingdom 2, Hollywood Studios)

Today I’m back sharing part 2 of our Disney trip! To see my recap of Part 1, click here!

Traveling with young kids is always hard, but this trip was truly the best. I loved seeing them get so excited over things because it made me get so excited! We did a lot of Disney-themed family movie nights leading up to this trip, so the kids were more prepared to recognize characters and movie references–which upped their excitement! Harrison is still talking about all of the rides and Banks is still talking about the monorail ha!

I also want to give a shout out to our amazing Disney planner, Genny Slack. She was incredibly helpful–especially when I wanted to upgrade last minute–and gave us all the tips!

We slept in on Monday, September 22 and then drove over to Disney Springs to do some shopping. We went to the big Disney store first and let the kids pick out a toy! Toy Story is a huge favorite in our house, so Banks picked Buzz and Merritt picked Woody and then Harrison got his toy the previous day at Animal Kingdom (Simba). We walked around and explored and I ended up getting 2 new tops from Lululemon 🙂

We at lunch at Chicken Guy and then headed back to our resort to go to the splash pad!

All 5 of us had a great time playing in the splash pad! The pool area was great too, but we stuck to the splash pad since the babies were so young, and it was a good size too.

We cleaned up for dinner, hopped on the monorail, and went to the Polynesian to have dinner at O’Hana!

I took this after and Merritt was tired!

The next day we were going back to Magic Kingdom and we were all so excited about this day because…

OUR BEST FRIENDS WERE THERE!!!!!

Janie’s oldest daughter is exactly one year younger than Harrison, and her youngest daughter is 4 weeks younger than Merritt!

When we first started planning this trip, we originally had fall break week booked (this week haha!). But then Disney put out a discount for trips booked in September, so Genny ran the numbers and when we saw how much money we could save by moving our trip up a couple of weeks, we jumped on it! Then I casually mentioned to my best friend, Janie, how “cheap” our trip ended up being and how they should come, too. She talked to her husband that night and the next day said yes!!! Our dates didn’t line up perfectly due to work schedules, but we at least scheduled 2 parks days together–this MK day and then the next day at Hollywood Studios!!

We both signed up for Lightning Lanes for the trip and then an app that automatically booked the other LL for us, so we didn’t have to stay on our phones. We booked lots of rides to do together, and Harrison even rode Space Mountain with Abigail and Chris!

We were so happy to be back together! (Fun fact: We’ve been best friends since I was 15 and Janie was 14, and then we even lived together for 3 years in college!)

I’ll be using this picture on their wedding slideshow haha!

We were so excited to eat lunch at Be Our Guest! It was so good!

We like rides where we can all ride together, and Dustin finally got to ride Pirates!

This was the one character that didn’t make Merritt cry!

Banks wanted her to sign his autograph book after he finished writing in it himself haha!

We rode a TON of rides and then went back to our resort and ate quick service again there!

The next day…

We went to Hollywood Studios and since we had early entry, we rushed to Toy Story Land so the big kids could rope drop Slinky Dog Dash!!! The line looks super long, but it moved so fast once they opened the ride. And early entry was key for our family since we’re up early all the time anyway!

Harrison loved is despite the picture haha

The sun was bright!

Poor Eloise was a little too short for this ride, so she and Janie watched all of us.

They were so excited to see the Incredibles characters since our room was The Incredibles themed, and they had watched it in the car on the drive down.

We took an inside breat at the Disney Jr area on the last day it was open. If you saw my IG story of this, Merritt was getting down until she noticed Doc McStuffins dancing like her and that upset her lol

This was a dream come true for the boys! And Banks is showing us his teeth 🙂

Because of our family’s obsession with Toy Story, we were so excited about lunch at the Rodeo Roundup.

IT WAS SO GOOD!!!! We all talked and decided it might be our favorite food of the entire trip. And we loved the ambiance of the restaurant and how we had to “freeze” if we heard Andy was coming–the kids were really into that. I highly recommend this restaurant!

Merritt says the mac and cheese was her favorite hahaha

After this we parted ways with Janie’s family because they park hopped to AK and we had a few more LLs scheduled.

Disney theming is the best

We did a rider swap for Rise of the Resistance and WOW it was so good!!!!

This is what the babies did while we rider swapped

We did a few more rides and then went back to our resort to get quick service again for dinner because Banks was TIRED and over it

We checked out the next morning.

And this is how they rated their vacation!!!

We had a great time and can’t wait to go back in a few years when the babies are older!