Jinger And Jessa Duggar Secretly Joined By Jana And Female Friend During ‘Counting On’ Trip
Jinger and Jessa Duggar weren’t the only Duggar sisters who visited San Antonio during the season premiere of Counting On. It’s been revealed that Jana also joined them on the trip, raising questions about why she wasn’t filmed interacting with them for the episode.
The season premiere of Counting On followed Jessa Duggar and Ben Seewald as they took their two young sons to San Antonio to visit Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo. The adults and the two tots ate lunch on the River Walk, where spunky Spurgeon chunked his baby bottle into the San Antonio River. Jessa and Jinger had to fish the bottle out of the water using an umbrella.
The group ended their adventurous afternoon by heading to Paleteria San Antonio for dessert. They sampled a few different paletas, Mexican ice pops that come in a wide variety of flavors. Jessa and Jinger were fans of the pickle paleta, which is similar to a frozen treat that they used to eat when they were children. According to Jill Duggar, she and her siblings used to slurp on popsicles made from pickle juice.
“We’re born with that,” Jessa Duggar said of her family’s love of the sour snacks. “My mom craves pickles, and eats a whole lot of pickles when she’s pregnant. It just kind of seeps in, I guess, in the womb, and we all come out crazy about pickles.”
After the Counting On season premiere aired, one of the paleta shop’s employees took to Instagram to share a photo of the Duggar girls and their husbands that was snapped during their visit.
As you can see, Jana Duggar and a female friend were also with the group, but they were not filmed for Counting On. One fan who saw the image was furious that Jana was left out of the San Antonio segment.
“Why would they edit out one of their most popular cast members?” read a comment on the Duggars’ Tumblr page. “And why wouldn’t the Duggars want to take advantage of the chance to show that Jana isn’t being excluded by her married siblings?”
However, Jana Duggar wasn’t completely edited out of the episode; she played a role in Joseph Duggar’s courtship proposal. Some fans speculated that she and her friend remained off-camera during the San Antonio trip because the Duggars or the Counting On producers didn’t want viewers to know that the two pals were there to help babysit Jessa Duggar’s kids.
As OK! Magazine reports, Jana was intentionally left out of a 19 Kids and Counting episode in 2014. She drove the RV when Josh and Anna Duggar took their children on a road trip, but a show insider said that the oldest Duggar daughter’s presence was kept under wraps because “the producers wanted to showcase the way Josh and Anna interact with their kids.”
However, Jessa Duggar and Ben Seewald didn’t take the family RV to San Antonio for the Counting On season premiere. Instead, they were filmed struggling to get Spurgeon to sit still on a flight from Arkansas to Texas. It has not been revealed whether Jana Duggar and her friend were sitting somewhere nearby to help Jessa deal with her squirmy son.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Jana Duggar has stated that her married siblings often exclude her from activities because she’s the only adult Duggar sister who is still single. However, in recent months, Jessa has made an effort to make her feel less left out. Before bringing Jana to San Antonio with her, Jessa invited her older sister and the same female friend pictured at the paleta shop to accompany her on a trip to Waco, Texas. As People reports, the group visited Magnolia Market at the Silos, the tourist destination owned by Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines.
[Featured Image by Duggar Family/Facebook]
