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March 23, 2023 11 mins

Every Friday Justin and Kylie look back on the week that was, reflecting on the wins and losses from family life.

 

Topics discussed in today's episode:

  • Justin & Kylie share about their anniversary getaway
  • Justin's been away all week
  • When you can't be with your kids, make sure you connect
  • Kylie's been drawing with the girls
  • Kylie received a nice email from her daughter living abroad

 

Get in touch with your questions and feedback to podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au

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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 wants answers.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now that don't need you to be perfect. They're not
expecting you to be perfect. All they need to know
is that they're loved and that we'll carry them through
all of the other stuff, all of the other junk.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
And now here's the stars of our show, my mom
and dad.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Well, Kylie, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do.
I'll do better tomorrow. Today in our Happy Families podcast
episode that's all about how we're learning from our parenting
and there's a really good reason for it, which I'm
going to explain in just a sec. But before we
do that, we promised our podcast listeners that we would
fill them in just briefly on our wedding anniversary getaway,

(00:48):
which we are now four days back from. And I
don't know about you, but I'm still tired from the
time zone difference and from the late nights and everything.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
Else that's happened since we've gotten back.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It never ceases to amaze me that sitting in a
car or a plane tiring, so tiring, but all of
the commute it really really takes it out of you.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Yeah. So for those of you who missed it, Kylie
and I celebrated our.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Twenty fifth wedding anniversary at the start of the week
and we've kind of created this, I don't know, unwritten,
weird tradition thing where Kylie looks after Valentine's and I
look after our wedding anniversary. And I loved to surprise Kylie.
So this year we did something we've never done it before.
It was inspired by mister Beast walking across the university campus.

(01:34):
For those of you who are not familiar, Miss to
Beast is a YouTube the number one YouTube video producer
in the world, walking across the university campus and saying, hey,
I'll give you some money if you'll fly to Paris
and pick me up a baguette and bring it home.
So some guy said, yeah, I'll do it for three
hundred bucks. And I just thought, got to do something
crazy like that with Kylie for our anniversary. So we

(01:57):
organized for a weekend. Well, I organized a surprise weekend
in Queenstown where we went and we walked on a glacier,
the Tasmin Glacier at Mount Cook. Mountaint Cook's at New
Zealand's highest mountain.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
What else did we do?

Speaker 3 (02:12):
We went in the super fastold you call it.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
The Shotover jet boat.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Crazy drive fast through the ravines in the jet boat.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Those things were awesome, But I think the thing that
was probably the biggest highlight for.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Me spending a weekend uninterrupted with me, is that what
it was?

Speaker 4 (02:30):
No kids, no kids. No.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
We tried riverboarding, yes, yes. A few weeks ago on
the podcast we talked about the fact that I wanted
to do things that challenged me. Yeah, you did, and
when you go to touristy places, there's always you know,
bungee jumping or crazy canyon swings and things like that.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
They tried to convince you to do that.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, but I don't enjoy. It's actually less about the
fear and more about the the massive shot of adrenaline
that goes through my body and it just doesn't feel
good to me. Even when I get to the other end,
I actually feel sick. So I didn't want to do
something like that. But I'm all about kind of pushing
myself and pushing boundaries. And we were going to go

(03:14):
whitewater rafting, but the guy the counter said, if you
really want to thrill, you need to try riverboarding. Riverboarding
is literally wet suit, flip is, helmet and a boogie
board in the rapids, And it was.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
Just awes was so much fun, wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I was so scared. I thought for sure I was
going to not drown because we had life jackets on,
but just get lost in it all. And once you
understand the movement of water, it's actually quite easy to navigate.
But going through the rapids with nothing more than just
your being was a little bit nerve wracking. And you
hit the water fast, you're in the water, you're in

(03:54):
the flow, and the next thing, like what we were
in the water for maybe ten fifteen seconds and we'd
hit our first set of rapids.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
Yeah, but it was so much fun. It really was.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
So we and of course we got to spend a
whole lot of time together with my mum looking after
the kids, my mom and dad looking after the kids.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
It was great, I have to.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Say, probably outside of the time that we spent together,
the other highlight was just how much attention your parents
gave to our children while we were gone.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
They have been, like us, very busy with their life
and sometimes kind of just get caught up in their life.
But this time they really slowed down and they just
made sure that every child got time with them and
did something they wanted to do. And I just loved it.
Your mum was in the pool playing Marco polo with
the kids, and that was the highlight. I don't actually

(04:42):
ever remember her doing something like that with them, She
never did it with me. It was just it was
so I was just so excited to hear the kids'
stories and the things that they did.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Yeah together, really nice stuff.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
So we know that's a little bit indulgent, but we
wanted to let you know that we do love each other,
celebrate our anniversary together, and now it's time for us
to dive into our old do better tomorrow for this week.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
If you're new to the Happy Families.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Podcast, first of all, welcome, thank you for joining us.
What we do on a Friday as we reflect on
the week that was, we consider our parenting, our child
wearing practices and try to work out are we doing okay,
where are we going right, where are we going wrong?
How can we do better as parents tomorrow? Because we
really want to be intentional great parents. And I'm going
to go first today, Kylie, because I know you've got

(05:28):
a little bit of a story whereas I don't. Because
we got back on Monday night, Hud the kids fell
asleep because we were exhausted. Tuesday, I flew to Sydney
and I did a parenting presentation to about one hundred
and twenty parents in Watson's Bay on the Upper East Side,
I guess of Sydney. It was just such a great

(05:49):
night talking about carrots and sticks and how we can
create discipline strategies that work with our kids. Then I
managed to get home briefly on Wednesday. Thursday, I as
an adelaide. Today Friday, I'm off to Darwin. I'll be
back again tomorrow. Feel like I really haven't seen the
kids this week, and so my older better tomorrow is
when you can't be with them, make sure that you connect.

(06:11):
And my big priority each day while I've been away
this week, literally traveling all over the countryside, has been
those FaceTime calls, those really quick touch base in the
morning or touch base in the evening, have a great day,
how is your day? Just checking in with the kids,
and it's actually been really nice to do it. But
boy a boy, I can't wait for tomorrow when I

(06:33):
get back from Darwin, so that I get to hang
out with the kids that they've been begging you to
take them surfing, and I'm just itching to get in
the water with them. So that's it, the importance of connection,
even when you can't be there being an absent parenting expert, sorry,
an absent parent because you're so busy helping other people
have happier families and being the parenting ex But that's
my older Better Tomorrow, really short, really simple. Connect even

(06:55):
if you can't be there in person. Connect, Connect, Connect,
make sure those kids feel seen and heard and valued.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Last week on I'll Do Better Tomorrow, we talked about
me finding a new outlet and I've started drawing, and
obviously we've been away and so I haven't had a
chance to do it. And the other day I actually
pulled them out and I had the two big girls
at home. I said, you want to come and do
some drawing with me, and Chanelle has again never tapped
into that.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
So when you said the two big girls, you're talking
about our eldest who's moved in around the corner. So
she's in her twenties, she's very been married for nearly
four years now.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
And who was the other big girl?

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Ella?

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Ella. So she's a three, she's at university now, a
third daughter. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Well, she was actually doing some Uni work. She's doing
some beautiful architectural drawings.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
So she was sitting down doing that and sheell was like, ah,
do you have a coloring in book? So she sat
down and colored next to me, and I got so
absorbed that I almost miss cross country. It was so
nice to just be in space and just draw. So
I just wanted to follow up, because.

Speaker 4 (08:04):
You're fulfilling your commitments. I am, Yeah, I am.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
But my story today is actually about a conversation that
I had with baby number two, who's over in England
at the moment and has been gone for a few
weeks now. Well, it was Mother's Day over there last week,
so she'd had some time to think about me and
her relationship with me, and she actually just sent me
this beautiful little message about obviously how much she loved

(08:30):
me and how grateful she was. And she remembers going
to church one Sunday as a young girl, and they
did a lesson and they asked the girls which Disney
princess would best represent their mum, and most of the
girls were like Cinderella. Everybody loved Cinderella. And Abby acknowledged
that she said the same, but Chanelle, being a little

(08:52):
bit older, had actually broken the mold a little bit,
and she said, no, I think, my mum, if I
was to pinpoint one princess, it would be Tiana.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Who's Tiana.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
She's from the Frog and the Prince.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
I don't know it. I haven't seen it. I have
to watch it.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
So she starts off really poor. She's working a couple
of jobs so that she can save it because she
wants to own her own restaurant one day, and so
she works really really hard and finally gets there and
you know, kind of fulfills her dreams. And so Abby
was actually reflecting on that conversation that she'd had all
those years ago, and she said, I realized, Mum, that

(09:28):
I think Chanel was actually right. She said, because when
I think about you, she said, you've always set an
example of working hard towards your goals, and you've done
some amazing things as a result of that. She talked about,
you know, just the way she felt about me, and
how grateful she was for all of the sacrifices that
I'd made for her. It's so interesting to me when

(09:50):
I hear my kids say things like that. In my mind,
I've got this big, long list of misdemeanors, all of
these things that I got wrong, I wished I could
have done differently, all of these regrets about who I
was and who I wanted to be, or the fact
that I'm so different now and I wish I could
have had my time over again, knowing what I know now,

(10:11):
and yet to hear my children share the feelings that
they have, I'm just so overwhelmingly grateful that their list
is so different from mine. So my message today for
anyone who feels like it's just all too hard, they're
getting everything wrong, and that the kids.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Are judging them forward.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Is that your kids probably aren't. Yeah, your kids are
seeing the hard, but what they're actually seeing is the
love that you put into everything. They don't need you
to be perfect, they're not expecting you to be perfect.
All they need to know is that they're loved and
that will carry them through all of the other stuff,
all of the other junk. We're so hard on ourselves,

(10:50):
and so today, just be a little bit kinder. A
little bit softer on yourself and recognize that you're doing
the best you can and your kids probably see that.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
We really hope that the Older Better Tomorrow episode that
we've just shared with you is useful in helping you
as you navigate the ups and downs of the daily
challenges of parenting.

Speaker 4 (11:07):
Kylie, thanks for sharing. It's a really beautiful story.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Craig Bruce is our executive producer. Hey, next Thursday, we've
got our Raising Resilient Kids Summit. If you haven't grabbed
your ticket already, times running out, It's going to be
an amazing summit. You can consume it however you like
via podcast, one episode at a time, one video at
a time, one talk at a time, or you can

(11:32):
binge the entire thing on Thursday as it drops live.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
The Raising Resilient Kids Summit.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Tickets are available online at Happyfamilies dot com dot A.
You have a great weekend and we'll be back on
Monday with maybe the biggest news of our year on
the Happy Families Podcast.
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