January 26, 2023 • 13 mins
Justin & Kylie reflect on their week and determine what they can do better next time
Topics included in this episode -
- First week back at school
- School fees
- Justin didn't holiday very well
- Kylie's on a health journey
- A Coulson birthday party
Find us on Facebook at Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families
Email us your questions and comments at podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just once answers. Now.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I thought, because we live on the Sunshine Coast and
we've only been here for a year, I thought a
staycation would be heaven.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I thought it would be absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
But I think the importance of a holiday, the importance
of stopping getting away, changing up the routine, because those.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Three or four nights on tanglomer Island. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
and dad.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson, the founder of Happy
Families dot com dot you dad to six children who
I share with, the wonderful, the incredible, the magnificent co
host of the Happy Families podcast. Missus Happy Families, Kylie.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
I feel like there should be some clapping and sharing.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, the fanfare, you deserve it all. This is the
end of our first week of podcasting. As per normal,
the summer series is over. The kids are back at school.
At least they have been in Queensland for a week week.
Pretty much the rest of the country toddles off back
to classrooms.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
How good has it been?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
How good has it been to have like six hours
every day where the kids are at school.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
I remember thinking six hours a day would just be
such a magical treat. Yeah, yeah, it goes way too things.
As much as I love having the kids home during
the holidays, there gets a point where it just all
of us, not even just the adults, the kids in
the room. We're ready for the next phase. We're ready
(01:33):
to get back into things and the time purpose We
probably could have gone back a week or two earlier
this time, right part, But it's good to have everybody back.
And for the most part, it's been a pretty good
first week back.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Extracurriculars have kicked off, kids have actually felt good about
moving upper grade and moving along.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
We're down to three well, not so much good.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I think there's just a quiet confidence that has come.
You know, we did a big move last year. The
kids have been at the same school now for a
whole year, amazing, and we're going into a new year
at the same school, and there's just this quiet sense
of confidence. I know what to.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Expect, security, predictability, Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
And they're going in, you know, kind of knowing who
their friends are.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And we've got three kids that are now finished school.
We're out of our last three. How easy in mornings
with just three kids to get ready.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
It definitely is a case.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I know anyone with one or two children who's hating
it is just going.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
What are you talking about? It's horrible.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
But when you've had to do it for six kids
to get them all off to school at once, three.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Kids, I know you were winging complaining about the back
to school fees that are involved school shoes, show books,
all of that kind of stuff, But I can tell
you right now, when I stood at the register and
they told me how much it was for the three kids,
I was like.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Is that all these smakes?
Speaker 4 (02:51):
That's amazing? I felt like I was getting a bargain
after buying for six kids for so many years.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, I've been to get down to.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Three and to have kids who were just like, yeah,
I've got pencils from last year, Mom, I don't need
any extra. It's made such a difference.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Those back to school costs over the last handful of
years with so many kids at school have been just crippling.
I mean, it's still a lot with three kids, but
I guess it's all relative, right, When you've been paying
more than double what we what we're up for now,
it feels like.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Well, in the early days, we even used to have
envelopes and we actually had to budget, yes, back to
school expenses the whole year.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Every week we'd put another ten or twenty bucks in
getting ready for or for thirty or forty dollars whatever
it was. Yeah, I remember those days, so Kylie. For
anyone who's new to the podcast, every Friday, we do
a segment called I'll Do Better Tomorrow. The idea is
that if we're going to become better at parenting, if
in fact, if we're going to become better at anything,
we want to review, we want to analyze, consider, and
(03:49):
when I go to hardcore, it's not like we're going
to get caught up in paralysis by analysis, and we're
not going to judge ourselves and feel awful when we
get things wrong, although we do we do get things wrong,
not feel awful, because well sometimes.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
We do that as well.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But the power of regret is that we get to change.
And the whole idea of I'll do Better Tomorrow. Our
Friday episode of the podcast every week is you and
I get to review. And I thought that, well, we
could just do the last week. As the kids have
gone back to school this week, and we can review
how that's gone. I thought it might be more beneficial
to consider what we'll do better next holidays, next Christmas holidays, specifically,
(04:23):
because what we've just had six weeks off and I
don't know about you, but I don't think that.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
We holidayed particularly well this year. I don't think it
really worked all that well at all. What do you think.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
It's definitely not a holiday we'd probably want to write
home about.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
No, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And I think the reason for that, so I'm going
to go first for our older better tomorrow today is
these holidays. I really didn't switch off. We've got a
lot going on with work at the moment, and I
just had this feeling that I needed to remain attentive
to emails and to I don't know, I mean, we
kept the Happy Families podcast going with a summer series.
(05:02):
We did a whole lot of stuff that required lower
levels of work than normal, but still we had to
be attentive. We had to be switched on, and it
just felt like having a staycation. We didn't go anywhere
except for three nights at the end of the holidays.
It just felt like it wasn't that great of a break.
In fact, it didn't feel like a break in any way.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
At all for me. I kind of finished.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It was like except for the three days that we
had on Morton Island. So we went across to Tangaloom,
the island resort, and we had three fantastic nights over there,
four days, three nights just off Brisbane. I would say this,
we had one of the best holidays we've had there
for those few nights that we've.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Had in years.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
But in.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
The interest of letting everyone know, if you're planning on
going there, you really want to take your own food.
There is food available at the resort, but it is
extremely expensive and it's such poor quality food that I
threw mine in the bat even though.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I paid an arm and a leg for it. But
all the rest of the time we took our own
food and that was great. So had a ball. We
switched off.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
We spent really focused time with the kids and my
old do better Tomorrow is next year. At Christmas time,
we've got to take a couple of weeks and go away,
even if it means we drive to the in laws
and we hang out with them for a week.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
To keep costs down, we need we just need to
get away and have a break.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
So you just read what I wrote, because as you
were talking, I literally wrote, three days is not enough.
We need to book a longer time away because the
reality is, and this is the conversation we've had, is
that a staycasion is only good if you're committed to
actually stopping. Yes, But the problem with parents in general,
I'm going to suggest we're all pretty similar like this.
(06:49):
You're in the place where you work, you're in the
place where life happens, and so you still got to
get up and clean the house. You still got to
get up and you know, do the grocery shopping and
all of those kinds of things where you go on
holidays and everything that's kind of taken care of, and
it just forces you to stop.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, or you've got you've got a different priority set,
a different routine, a different agenda. Bear in mind that
there are financial constraints, but I think that we actually
need to have a holiday, a proper holiday, for probably
a couple of weeks over Christmas next year. Just it
wasn't good to not switch off. So that's my odd
better tomorrow it's actually a bit of a learning. I thought,
because we live on the Sunshine Coast and we've only
been here for a year, I thought a staycation would
(07:26):
be heaven. I thought it would be absolutely perfect. And
don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the opportunity to
get some.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Extra surfing in.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
My hair actually got a little bit sun bleached blonde,
like when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I mean, I felt like I'm reliving my youth in
some ways.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
But that doesn't have any picture with the length of
your hair at the moment, does it.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I have grown my hair a little bit as well.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, But I think the importance of a holiday, the
importance of stopping getting away, changing up the routine. Because
those three or four nights on Tanglomer Island, Wow, that
was so good. Like I'm really excited to get back
there with an eski full of our own food.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
It'll be great.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Kids are already planning the annual patch up at Tangling,
aren't they.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's so well worth it, all right, Kylie, missus, Happy families.
I'll do better tomorrow. Over to you, what did you
learn these holidays? What would you like to do better?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Well?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
These holidays were actually really really tricky for me. Without
going into a huge amount of detail, I've been on
a little bit of a health journey of my own journey.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I love that word.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
It's a journey, it really is, and it's been a
long one. And I decided I ran out of some
medication that I've been taking, just spidermins and minerals, and
I decided that I'm spending a motzter on these things
every week, and so maybe I don't really need them,
and so I decided to take myself off them.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Now, you did that about three or four months ago, that's.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Right, And I didn't notice anything so much in you know,
first up and over the next little while, I started
to notice I was a little bit more irritable than normal,
a little bit more frustrated at life in general. But
come New Year's Day, I was hit with just how
exhausted I was, to the point that I got up
and a few hours later I was back in bed asleep.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
You went back to sleep at about nine point thirty
that morning and slept for a good two hours.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
And I'd been feeling it over those three months. I'd
been feeling this gradual sense of exhaustion and I just
thought it was We've had a really big year, there's
been lots of change in our lives, and I just
thought that that's what it was. But we got to
New Year's and I realized just how my body just
wasn't functioning, and I realized that maybe I needed to
take some action and go back on to my medication,
(09:36):
which I have done that in the process of doing that,
realized that there are some areas in my diet that
needed some consideration and attention. And it was amazing. The
doctor actually said to me, she said, tell me about
your alcohol, your caffeine, and your sugar intake. Well, I
don't drink alcohol or caffeine, So I was really proud
of myself. But then I kind of looked at her
and I suggested that maybe the sugar intake doubled up
(09:59):
all of of the alcohol and caffeine intake that I
was missing out on. And so as a result of that,
she's actually put me on a ridiculously strict diet and
that's been really, really hard, and it's changed the way
I interacted with the kids because I just have struggled
so much to just deal with day to day life,
(10:20):
let alone be the energetic, happy, let's go exploring mum
who loves to have an adventure every now and again.
So holidays have been really hard for me. You didn't
switch off, and I was physically struggling. And I would
love to say that the new year hit and everything,
you know, kind of picked up and there was this
new sense of energy, but it hasn't. It's been really
(10:40):
quite difficult for me. But there was a couple of
highlights through the holidays which I just loved, and I
was so grateful that, in spite of the hard that
I was able to push myself a little bit to
create some experiences for the kids. It's baby number three
turned eighteen last January.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Oh sorry last year year.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yeah, and it was a bit of a hard year
for her and she didn't really feel like she wanted
to celebrate, and so we just kind of let it go.
But this year she was like, Mum, I'd really like
to have a party for my nineteenth birthday. I was
so excited because she's actually a kid who's had very
few parties because she's just not that inclined. She's just
not that kid. But she wanted to go all out.
(11:21):
She wanted to have a sit down meal with ten
or so friends, and you know, we hired a photo booth,
and she just wanted it to be a really pretty
night of all my kids. Who would ask me for
a pretty elegant evening. She's not the child I would
have thought would have gone for this, But we went
and brought a table of marketplaces for fifty bucks, a
(11:44):
dining table, and I had my neighbor cut the legs
off and they sat. I don't know what it's called,
but they basically sat on a picnic table. It was
just like a little coffee table, cushions on the floor,
and I served them up a beautiful meal, and she
was just radiating. Loved about that experience, was watching her
fill other people's cups. She took the time to write
(12:07):
a letter to each of her friends and tell them
why she loved them, and while she was grateful for
having them in her life, I was just such a
beautiful evening. And then she decided that she wanted to
sing some songs with them with her guitar, and there
was just this beautiful feeling of unity and love. And
(12:27):
to think that twelve months ago she didn't even know
these kids, and yet they have come into her life
at a time where she really needed friends, but she
has been such an instrumental part in lifting them as
much as they've lifted her. And it was just such
a beautiful celebration. I was so grateful I could be
a part of it. And even now while we're a
(12:49):
month and a half down the road, and every now
and again, she just pops up and she's like, thanks
so much for that party.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
It was the best.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
So holidays were hard, they were really hard, but to
have a little moment events like that was just, you know, magical,
really magical moments. And I'm hopeful that in spite of
the fact that I am not switched on all the
time and I'm not the perfect amum, that those memories
will be the things that will help them to remember
the love that exists and my desire to do the
(13:20):
things that will live and elevate them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I love that story, and I love how this kid
is so attentive to others.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
It's beautiful. I love what you shared.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
We hope that there's some inspiration, some ideas, or just
some high quality entertainment in today's podcast that helps you
feel better about parenting and gives you some inspoth for
the weak Ahead. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
With Craig Bruce as our executive producer.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
If you'd like more information about making your family happier,
please visit us at happy families dot com.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Do au
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just once answers. Now.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I thought, because we live on the Sunshine Coast and
we've only been here for a year, I thought a
staycation would be heaven.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I thought it would be absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
But I think the importance of a holiday, the importance
of stopping getting away, changing up the routine, because those.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Three or four nights on tanglomer Island. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
and dad.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson, the founder of Happy
Families dot com dot you dad to six children who
I share with, the wonderful, the incredible, the magnificent co
host of the Happy Families podcast. Missus Happy Families, Kylie.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
I feel like there should be some clapping and sharing.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, the fanfare, you deserve it all. This is the
end of our first week of podcasting. As per normal,
the summer series is over. The kids are back at school.
At least they have been in Queensland for a week week.
Pretty much the rest of the country toddles off back
to classrooms.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
How good has it been?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
How good has it been to have like six hours
every day where the kids are at school.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
I remember thinking six hours a day would just be
such a magical treat. Yeah, yeah, it goes way too things.
As much as I love having the kids home during
the holidays, there gets a point where it just all
of us, not even just the adults, the kids in
the room. We're ready for the next phase. We're ready
(01:33):
to get back into things and the time purpose We
probably could have gone back a week or two earlier
this time, right part, But it's good to have everybody back.
And for the most part, it's been a pretty good
first week back.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Extracurriculars have kicked off, kids have actually felt good about
moving upper grade and moving along.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
We're down to three well, not so much good.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I think there's just a quiet confidence that has come.
You know, we did a big move last year. The
kids have been at the same school now for a
whole year, amazing, and we're going into a new year
at the same school, and there's just this quiet sense
of confidence. I know what to.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Expect, security, predictability, Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
And they're going in, you know, kind of knowing who
their friends are.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And we've got three kids that are now finished school.
We're out of our last three. How easy in mornings
with just three kids to get ready.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
It definitely is a case.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I know anyone with one or two children who's hating
it is just going.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
What are you talking about? It's horrible.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
But when you've had to do it for six kids
to get them all off to school at once, three.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Kids, I know you were winging complaining about the back
to school fees that are involved school shoes, show books,
all of that kind of stuff, But I can tell
you right now, when I stood at the register and
they told me how much it was for the three kids,
I was like.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Is that all these smakes?
Speaker 4 (02:51):
That's amazing? I felt like I was getting a bargain
after buying for six kids for so many years.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, I've been to get down to.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Three and to have kids who were just like, yeah,
I've got pencils from last year, Mom, I don't need
any extra. It's made such a difference.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Those back to school costs over the last handful of
years with so many kids at school have been just crippling.
I mean, it's still a lot with three kids, but
I guess it's all relative, right, When you've been paying
more than double what we what we're up for now,
it feels like.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Well, in the early days, we even used to have
envelopes and we actually had to budget, yes, back to
school expenses the whole year.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Every week we'd put another ten or twenty bucks in
getting ready for or for thirty or forty dollars whatever
it was. Yeah, I remember those days, so Kylie. For
anyone who's new to the podcast, every Friday, we do
a segment called I'll Do Better Tomorrow. The idea is
that if we're going to become better at parenting, if
in fact, if we're going to become better at anything,
we want to review, we want to analyze, consider, and
(03:49):
when I go to hardcore, it's not like we're going
to get caught up in paralysis by analysis, and we're
not going to judge ourselves and feel awful when we
get things wrong, although we do we do get things wrong,
not feel awful, because well sometimes.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
We do that as well.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But the power of regret is that we get to change.
And the whole idea of I'll do Better Tomorrow. Our
Friday episode of the podcast every week is you and
I get to review. And I thought that, well, we
could just do the last week. As the kids have
gone back to school this week, and we can review
how that's gone. I thought it might be more beneficial
to consider what we'll do better next holidays, next Christmas holidays, specifically,
(04:23):
because what we've just had six weeks off and I
don't know about you, but I don't think that.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
We holidayed particularly well this year. I don't think it
really worked all that well at all. What do you think.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
It's definitely not a holiday we'd probably want to write
home about.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
No, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And I think the reason for that, so I'm going
to go first for our older better tomorrow today is
these holidays. I really didn't switch off. We've got a
lot going on with work at the moment, and I
just had this feeling that I needed to remain attentive
to emails and to I don't know, I mean, we
kept the Happy Families podcast going with a summer series.
(05:02):
We did a whole lot of stuff that required lower
levels of work than normal, but still we had to
be attentive. We had to be switched on, and it
just felt like having a staycation. We didn't go anywhere
except for three nights at the end of the holidays.
It just felt like it wasn't that great of a break.
In fact, it didn't feel like a break in any way.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
At all for me. I kind of finished.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It was like except for the three days that we
had on Morton Island. So we went across to Tangaloom,
the island resort, and we had three fantastic nights over there,
four days, three nights just off Brisbane. I would say this,
we had one of the best holidays we've had there
for those few nights that we've.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Had in years.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
But in.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
The interest of letting everyone know, if you're planning on
going there, you really want to take your own food.
There is food available at the resort, but it is
extremely expensive and it's such poor quality food that I
threw mine in the bat even though.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I paid an arm and a leg for it. But
all the rest of the time we took our own
food and that was great. So had a ball. We
switched off.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
We spent really focused time with the kids and my
old do better Tomorrow is next year. At Christmas time,
we've got to take a couple of weeks and go away,
even if it means we drive to the in laws
and we hang out with them for a week.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
To keep costs down, we need we just need to
get away and have a break.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
So you just read what I wrote, because as you
were talking, I literally wrote, three days is not enough.
We need to book a longer time away because the
reality is, and this is the conversation we've had, is
that a staycasion is only good if you're committed to
actually stopping. Yes, But the problem with parents in general,
I'm going to suggest we're all pretty similar like this.
(06:49):
You're in the place where you work, you're in the
place where life happens, and so you still got to
get up and clean the house. You still got to
get up and you know, do the grocery shopping and
all of those kinds of things where you go on
holidays and everything that's kind of taken care of, and
it just forces you to stop.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, or you've got you've got a different priority set,
a different routine, a different agenda. Bear in mind that
there are financial constraints, but I think that we actually
need to have a holiday, a proper holiday, for probably
a couple of weeks over Christmas next year. Just it
wasn't good to not switch off. So that's my odd
better tomorrow it's actually a bit of a learning. I thought,
because we live on the Sunshine Coast and we've only
been here for a year, I thought a staycation would
(07:26):
be heaven. I thought it would be absolutely perfect. And
don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the opportunity to
get some.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Extra surfing in.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
My hair actually got a little bit sun bleached blonde,
like when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I mean, I felt like I'm reliving my youth in
some ways.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
But that doesn't have any picture with the length of
your hair at the moment, does it.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I have grown my hair a little bit as well.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, But I think the importance of a holiday, the
importance of stopping getting away, changing up the routine. Because
those three or four nights on Tanglomer Island, Wow, that
was so good. Like I'm really excited to get back
there with an eski full of our own food.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
It'll be great.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Kids are already planning the annual patch up at Tangling,
aren't they.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's so well worth it, all right, Kylie, missus, Happy families.
I'll do better tomorrow. Over to you, what did you
learn these holidays? What would you like to do better?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Well?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
These holidays were actually really really tricky for me. Without
going into a huge amount of detail, I've been on
a little bit of a health journey of my own journey.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I love that word.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
It's a journey, it really is, and it's been a
long one. And I decided I ran out of some
medication that I've been taking, just spidermins and minerals, and
I decided that I'm spending a motzter on these things
every week, and so maybe I don't really need them,
and so I decided to take myself off them.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Now, you did that about three or four months ago, that's.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Right, And I didn't notice anything so much in you know,
first up and over the next little while, I started
to notice I was a little bit more irritable than normal,
a little bit more frustrated at life in general. But
come New Year's Day, I was hit with just how
exhausted I was, to the point that I got up
and a few hours later I was back in bed asleep.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
You went back to sleep at about nine point thirty
that morning and slept for a good two hours.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
And I'd been feeling it over those three months. I'd
been feeling this gradual sense of exhaustion and I just
thought it was We've had a really big year, there's
been lots of change in our lives, and I just
thought that that's what it was. But we got to
New Year's and I realized just how my body just
wasn't functioning, and I realized that maybe I needed to
take some action and go back on to my medication,
(09:36):
which I have done that in the process of doing that,
realized that there are some areas in my diet that
needed some consideration and attention. And it was amazing. The
doctor actually said to me, she said, tell me about
your alcohol, your caffeine, and your sugar intake. Well, I
don't drink alcohol or caffeine, So I was really proud
of myself. But then I kind of looked at her
and I suggested that maybe the sugar intake doubled up
(09:59):
all of of the alcohol and caffeine intake that I
was missing out on. And so as a result of that,
she's actually put me on a ridiculously strict diet and
that's been really, really hard, and it's changed the way
I interacted with the kids because I just have struggled
so much to just deal with day to day life,
(10:20):
let alone be the energetic, happy, let's go exploring mum
who loves to have an adventure every now and again.
So holidays have been really hard for me. You didn't
switch off, and I was physically struggling. And I would
love to say that the new year hit and everything,
you know, kind of picked up and there was this
new sense of energy, but it hasn't. It's been really
(10:40):
quite difficult for me. But there was a couple of
highlights through the holidays which I just loved, and I
was so grateful that, in spite of the hard that
I was able to push myself a little bit to
create some experiences for the kids. It's baby number three
turned eighteen last January.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Oh sorry last year year.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yeah, and it was a bit of a hard year
for her and she didn't really feel like she wanted
to celebrate, and so we just kind of let it go.
But this year she was like, Mum, I'd really like
to have a party for my nineteenth birthday. I was
so excited because she's actually a kid who's had very
few parties because she's just not that inclined. She's just
not that kid. But she wanted to go all out.
(11:21):
She wanted to have a sit down meal with ten
or so friends, and you know, we hired a photo booth,
and she just wanted it to be a really pretty
night of all my kids. Who would ask me for
a pretty elegant evening. She's not the child I would
have thought would have gone for this, But we went
and brought a table of marketplaces for fifty bucks, a
(11:44):
dining table, and I had my neighbor cut the legs
off and they sat. I don't know what it's called,
but they basically sat on a picnic table. It was
just like a little coffee table, cushions on the floor,
and I served them up a beautiful meal, and she
was just radiating. Loved about that experience, was watching her
fill other people's cups. She took the time to write
(12:07):
a letter to each of her friends and tell them
why she loved them, and while she was grateful for
having them in her life, I was just such a
beautiful evening. And then she decided that she wanted to
sing some songs with them with her guitar, and there
was just this beautiful feeling of unity and love. And
(12:27):
to think that twelve months ago she didn't even know
these kids, and yet they have come into her life
at a time where she really needed friends, but she
has been such an instrumental part in lifting them as
much as they've lifted her. And it was just such
a beautiful celebration. I was so grateful I could be
a part of it. And even now while we're a
(12:49):
month and a half down the road, and every now
and again, she just pops up and she's like, thanks
so much for that party.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
It was the best.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
So holidays were hard, they were really hard, but to
have a little moment events like that was just, you know, magical,
really magical moments. And I'm hopeful that in spite of
the fact that I am not switched on all the
time and I'm not the perfect amum, that those memories
will be the things that will help them to remember
the love that exists and my desire to do the
(13:20):
things that will live and elevate them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I love that story, and I love how this kid
is so attentive to others.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
It's beautiful. I love what you shared.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
We hope that there's some inspiration, some ideas, or just
some high quality entertainment in today's podcast that helps you
feel better about parenting and gives you some inspoth for
the weak Ahead. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
With Craig Bruce as our executive producer.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
If you'd like more information about making your family happier,
please visit us at happy families dot com.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Do au
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