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All aboard the chaos express! If you’ve got a ticket for this ride, you already know it. It’s the one where there’s never enough time in the day—kids’ schedules outpace yours, work demands keep piling up, and oh yeah, the laundry, dishes, mowing the lawn, and bills aren’t going to handle themselves. Let’s not forget staying connected with friends and family, even though you planned to be in bed by 9 pm…but it’s now 11 pm, and tomorrow starts before the sun does. Sound familiar?
We’re right there with you. Welcome to The Mr. & Mrs. Inglis Podcast, hosted by Shaen and Meghan Inglis—a weekly show where we dive into real and honest conversations about the wild ride of raising kids, growing careers, and managing family and friendships in the middle of life’s beautiful chaos. So grab your ticket and join us for a weekly dose of camaraderie, connection, and a reminder that you’re never in this alone.
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(upbeat music)
It was just bacon men.
Oh, wow.
Shoo, shoo.
I think I can be a
professional vacationer.
We're a little tired.
Have had a lot of
facts, a lot of alcohol,
and a lot of steps, and a
lot of really cool memories.
Did I capture it?
A lot of food, too.
Oh, a lot of food.
It wasn't far.
See, if you're looking at it on a map,
it's about this far,
and the death was bad.
Did you know that?
No.
And now we're having a little rum punch?
I don't even know what this is.
This is what the
sunglasses make all the difference.
Do they?
For me, they do.
Yeah.
Do you wanna switch spots?
Welcome to the Mr. and
Mrs. English podcast.
I'm Megan.
And I'm Sean.
We're here to talk about
the wild ride of raising kids
and growing careers,
keeping life together
in the middle of all the chaos.
So buckle up, because we're all
in this crazy journey together.
Okay, I think we're good.
We just turned a little
bit, so we got the sun on us,
but welcome everybody.
Welcome, episode 26.
Episode 26, that's right.
That's right, and we're coming from you,
from our basement.
With an incredible background.
Is that where wings roller came from?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. That's a...
Shwing.
Shwing.
(both laughing)
I'm gonna get the monkey's fly out of my butt.
So funny.
But you can't really tell now.
These actually might
be some of the Santorini
Greece islands behind us.
Yes.
For sure they're part of the Greek isles.
Part of the 6,000 Greek isles.
Yes.
One of the many facts we learned.
Yes, 6,000 Greek islands.
Only 368 are inhabiting.
349-ish, 350, 368-ish.
A lot of facts being thrown at us
these last couple of days.
A lot of facts.
With a little sleep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we're a little tired.
Have had a lot of
facts, a lot of alcohol,
and a lot of steps, and a
lot of really cool memories.
Did I capture it?
A lot of foods here.
Oh, a lot of food.
So we're living in excess right now,
which I think is good.
The human body can't
do it for much longer
than we're gonna try and do.
Maybe we could.
I think I could be a
professional vacationer.
Oh, for sure, for sure.
Just get paid to do this.
Yeah, it's not bad,
but we work all year long
with a one nice vacation.
We are just like everybody else does.
Exactly.
And we're on it.
And we're on it.
We're in the middle of it.
Towards the beginning of it, still kinda.
We are still in the first third.
First third, I'm
trying not to count it down.
That's still, I'm really
gonna go to the bad things
about vacations,
because most things are great.
But the worst thing about vacation
is the countdown for it to be over.
I know.
I try to ignore it.
Right.
So like the last second
before it's just like,
we're halfway over.
I know.
I kinda wanna go.
I've got less nights
than we've already done.
I know, I know.
But this one's been so nice and long.
This is kind of one of
the first long vacations
that we've taken in a long time.
It's probably the
longest vacation we've taken.
Oh, for sure.
For sure.
For sure, yeah.
Yeah.
It's gonna be fantastic.
We're excited for, we've been talking
about it for a while.
So we landed in Rome, I
don't know, four days ago?
Five days ago, somewhere in there.
It's all kind of a blur.
Yeah.
And it's less a jet lag.
Like it kind of messes it up.
So about five days ago, we landed it.
And I heard people say
it's worse coming home.
We're in for a real treat then.
We're in for a real
treat because we were dying.
We knew that we had to
stay up that next week.
So we landed at 7.30 AM.
Yes.
We were leaving Chicago at like 5.30 PM.
Yes.
Thinking we can sleep
all night and be good
because we're landing at 7.30.
I don't think anybody slept on the plane.
Not one wink.
That's right.
Nobody.
And then we were trying to
stay up the whole next day
to get on local time.
Right.
And--
Which is seven hours
ahead of our regular time.
Like I just took note.
We were having some lunch in
Rome, a late lunch in Rome.
And I was just looking at our
table and everyone was like--
The first day we got there?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, we're a fun family.
We were dragging big time that first day.
I was taking a shot of cappuccino.
Yeah. Like we literally were feeding cappuccino
to the 11 year old.
Just trying to give you a,
you're gonna stay up, mister.
Oh my, here's caffeine
and you're gonna like it.
It's some sugar.
But we did.
We mostly made it to like
seven or eight o'clock that night.
We did.
Then we slept like 12 hours.
Yeah.
We didn't feel like it, honestly.
No.
I closed that for 15 more probably.
Yeah, but we pretty
much got up the next day
because we were at the
Colosseum the next day.
But we had the Parthenon the day before,
the day we got there.
Yes.
We actually tried to keep ourselves--
No, the Pantheon.
Oh, the Pantheon, sorry.
A lot of places.
A lot of places.
We've been to the
Parthenon that was here.
Now we have.
Check.
Check, check, check.
Pantheon, just to make
sure we're staying awake,
because we were sure we'd
be getting the VRBO by then.
Yeah, yeah.
We went to the Pantheon.
Pantheon that day.
And it was an ask.
It was a tough ask.
It was.
We'd already gotten in to the VRBO.
Yes.
I think we took a 30 minute nap
and we took it,
turned into an hour maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
Because we were exhausted just to close
our eyes for ourselves.
Just close them.
But gosh, and since then
we have been going nonstop.
It's been a dream.
It's been amazing.
I think things you
only see on the TV, books,
history classes.
Yeah, just to learn about it.
Just with your own eyes.
Yeah.
It's been incredible
just to look at them.
Yeah, I mean, the guided
tours that we've had so far
have been fantastic.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah.
Anyone need like a
guided tour of the Colosseum
or of Santorini?
We can hook you up now.
Yeah, shout out to Red Dew.
Oh, Red Dew was fantastic.
And Yannis was great in Santorini.
I mean, they've been fantastic.
Yeah.
I mean, and now we're
having a little rum punch.
I don't even know what this is.
I don't know what this one was.
Can't remember, but it's okay.
It's a good drink.
(laughing) So it's been
incredible from just checking
all these things out, but
we've been in a new city
every day now, a four day stream.
Yep.
A new island.
Islands.
It is a new city, but a couple of new,
one new country at least.
Yes.
So we were in Mykonos yesterday.
No Athens yesterday.
We were Athens yesterday.
Mykonos the day before that.
Today in Santorini,
you guys have just missed
having those cliffside whitewashed walls.
I mean, classic.
Classic Greece.
Greece.
Unbelievable.
And this quintessential
Greece with blue top domes.
I mean, incredible.
Yeah.
Maybe we'll put some
pictures up in here eventually.
Yeah.
And that so far, I mean,
I love seeing the cost.
See, we've seen, if you
look at the top 10 to dos
in all these cities that
we've been to, we did them all.
(laughing)
We're not coming back
for a long time probably.
It's true.
So we're making sure
we're getting them all.
We're working hard at it.
This was my favorite so far.
This was my favorite.
This is, no, I wanna go back to Rome.
For sure I wanna go back to Rome.
That one, there's just something about
the excitement in it and the Colosseum.
I would go on another tour of the
Colosseum in a heartbeat.
Yeah, and I don't
wanna leave Rome in any way
to never fall in love with it.
Right.
It had a very, because
it's such a big city.
Yep.
Clearly it's been around
for a long time, millennia.
But it had a very New York vibe to it.
It did.
You know, just before the
city's alive and bustling.
Yeah. There's just so much to happen.
It consumes people who are talking
as you get out of their way.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's very
New York, it's a need.
Very much so.
But very Rome to them.
Yes.
The difference is
it's cobblestone streets.
They're speaking Italian, I mean it's--
It does have just that classic,
something that I felt was
different than New York City,
is like you just go
and you just have lunch
on a cafe on the street, you know,
like literally it's right there.
Anywhere you go you can find food, wine.
Smell better. Smell better.
But even just the architecture,
not even the Colosseum piece,
but even just in the streets of Rome.
I thought was so quaint and cool,
for lack of a better term.
Yeah, and this is your
first time to Europe.
So I've been to Europe
before a couple times,
and I fell in love with
the architecture of the day.
Yes.
In the early 20s.
Yeah.
It's old, it's Greek,
it's Roman architecture.
It's French.
It was still the test of time.
We built our own home
with some of the faces
of what we've been
seeing this, 2,000 years old.
So we tried to do?
It's just such a romantic architecture.
So to your point, it's
different than New York
because it's so much older,
but it's that history
and intertwining with it
just adds that depth level.
For sure.
It's incredible.
For sure.
But I will, yeah, but
Santorini have to come back here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Biggest surprise so far.
There's a lot of them, a lot.
I did not know, first of all,
that there's an earthquake
every 45 minutes in Italy,
in Rome, specifically.
Did you know that?
No, but we were there, so
we encountered thousands
of them apparently.
Yeah.
Hundreds of them apparently.
About 100, yeah.
The 48 hours that we were there.
Yeah.
It was crazy.
I didn't tell, but
yeah, that's interesting.
Even in Santorini, they have earthquakes
because it's actually called Dara.
Yes.
He was saying that they had a 6.1
magnitude earthquake
just 17 days ago.
He kind of whispered it,
because I think we were,
we had a private tour, which we were
lucky to get, I guess.
Oh, it was incredible.
He was handing around
some of the tourists,
and he was trying to
keep another download.
It wouldn't scare anybody.
We are on all these things, cliff.
All these things are built on cliffs.
And if they'll shake, and those things
want to fall off the cliff,
which you think they would
in a big, because he even said,
if we get a big one, a
seven would destroy the whole.
Seven would destroy the whole thing.
Whole island.
Yeah, yeah.
So that one was interesting.
The other one, I thought it was so
interesting about that,
okay, going back to the Coliseum,
that gladiators did
not fight to the death.
Much to anyone's dismay who
fell in love with gladiator,
gladiator is not based on a true story.
Fantastic movie, one of our, well,
one of my personal
favorites, yours, I think, too.
But yeah, they don't fight to the death.
They were too expensive,
because they have been
trained for five years.
So no one wanted to lose a gladiator.
We're coming back much more educated,
we're gonna share the
wealth with you guys.
So this is not death, this is not death,
this is not death, they're all death.
They're all death.
When you come out as
death, you're showing no thumb,
then you live.
Then you live.
And the death was bad,
but most of the time,
you could quit, you
lived a fight another day.
If you won the crowd
over, but if you didn't win
the crowd over, which is
true, that is very gladiator.
That is, yes, yeah, but if
you got that, it meant that.
Yeah, he went into very,
Yeah, he went, that is.
He went into details on
how they actually did it,
gladiator's death was
excruciating and long.
It sounds horrible, but.
Yeah, sounds awful.
20 minutes.
Yeah.
From drowning in your own blood.
I'll tell you, my, the, I
think the most surprising thing
I had for me was in Mykonos.
Uh-huh.
When I was ready to
dive into the crystal blue,
turquoise water, just
the water here is so clear.
And we were talking to
the honest today, right?
Just about how clear it is.
The only thing that I've
had similar to it was Boroboa.
Right.
Just crystal clear, again,
another one in a caldera.
Yep.
Protected ecosystem that you
can see 15 feet straight down,
but the blues, I've talked about,
anybody that knows that, I just raved
about the water color
and the clearness in, hundreds of blues
that are just slushy
blues, incredible then.
This is the closest.
Yes.
To it.
Yes.
Crystal clear, you can see
through it, unbelievable.
I mean, just as, I mean,
Mykonos, we were in Little Venice.
Yes.
And like literally this is
one of those little harbors
where there's puzzles.
Yes.
That are pictured of it,
where you can see like
all the boats floating,
you can see the shadows
under the water of the boats.
And we ate dinner right there.
But we got in at another
beach on the other side
of the south side of the island.
And the water was freezing.
Freezing, people, freezing.
And it's hot, the sun is hot right now.
Yeah, you would think
that you could get hot enough
to make that water
acceptable temperature.
Yeah, yeah.
No.
No, you got in.
I got in, like I'm
from Minnesota, people.
Like I know what hypothermia is.
This was the closest I've
ever been to true hypothermia
all over my body.
Yeah, it took a while.
Like usually, you know, that
first dive is really tough.
You're like, once you're
in, you're in, you kind of,
it's a good minute, 10 minute and a half.
I told her, I was like,
literally it's a minute
of just pure excruciating pain.
You're gonna die, you know,
you're like, you're gonna
go straight into hypothermia.
Yeah, yeah.
After that, I think you're numb enough.
You're numb up.
All that kind of stuff.
So we stayed in it,
it was fun for a while.
After that, it was kind of fun.
Yes, but you had to get past.
But it was cold water.
It was 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Yes.
Is what it was.
And we don't get into
our pool towards over 90.
The kids will get in
it, maybe 75, maybe 80,
but that's freezing.
Yeah.
And this was 70.
70.
So we're in the, we're in the Aegean Sea.
Yeah.
And apparently the Aegean Sea is so deep
and because of some of the lids here,
that it just doesn't warm.
It doesn't warm, yeah.
And you get some currents,
I think, from the Black Sea,
wasn't it?
Oh yeah, the currents from the Black Sea.
Yeah.
Nope.
Yeah, so.
Which I don't know where that is.
The Black Sea North, I'm getting a really
good geography list.
Most people, Megan knows at least,
that school districts, 11,
upbringing,
education, it's not fantastic.
I don't remember taking
geography, I don't know,
or geography.
Is there a difference
between geography and geology?
I know there's, I'm kidding, but.
Geography, I'm terrible at it.
And it's because I wasn't
taught it well, I believe,
because I can learn if I'm taught.
Yes, yes.
So it's been really
interesting to get to know
just this side of the world
and this heart of the world.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think so.
It's just one of these facts.
It's true, yeah.
I think the Black Sea is
northeast of where we are.
Okay, okay.
But yeah, and it, I guess,
flows into the Aegean Sea,
maybe, I don't know.
I'm into the Dead Sea,
which is a little bit.
Or I guess east of here.
South-East, maybe, yeah.
Yeah.
Not too much Israel, but.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we're just
basically dead, well we were,
when we were in Nicanos,
we were almost dead north
of Cairo in Egypt by
about, I don't know how far.
I don't know how many
miles, but just north of it.
It wasn't far.
I'd say if you're looking at it on a map,
it's about this far.
So.
This way?
Yeah, centimeter or so.
It's just about centimeter, it's good.
Just about centimeter or so.
Anyways, so the other part of that too,
was that was our most,
there's two parts of this whole trip,
because we're out for a while,
we had a lot of
different excursions going,
but there's two parts that
I was really nervous about.
And Nicanos was one of the first ones.
Yes.
And thank God, I think we got through it
without any speed bumps.
Yeah, we got through me.
That was as well as possible.
Yeah, it was.
We got a great, you know, like,
cabana type thing right on the beach.
That was the biggest thing.
We didn't know what
beach we were going to.
Right, right, so we can't pre-plan.
We tried to call and see
if we can reserve a cabana,
because we've seen
most of the beaches there,
they have cabanas like with the--
Yeah, big--
Pics and the tiki's all over,
but they're all rented.
Yeah.
You have to pay for them.
And almost all the beaches are
almost all covered with them.
Yes.
If you can't pre-purchase one,
or be one of the first ones to the beach
to get one potentially,
you gotta look.
We're like, what are we gonna do?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it turns out they were
actually super easy to get to.
Well, I think because we
were like the second plus there.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's, I mean--
So we got one second row of expansion.
That was one of my biggest worries,
because then it was like,
we gotta go down to the--
Yeah.
There was a gay beach right next door.
Oh my goodness.
Which we walked through.
So--
Then we totally could
just walk that direction,
the other direction.
And it was because
there were just naked men.
There was some nudity there.
There was just naked men.
So, and it wasn't the good
and the shape ones, guys.
It was all the gold ones.
It's never.
All the gold.
I think it is never on a nude beach.
It is never like the young,
good-looking people, right?
It's always the one you're like,
I could do without seeing that.
We've got that one picture of that door
from "Robotage."
Oh my gosh.
No, yeah, Dominican Republic.
Dominican Republic.
Oh my gosh.
So that was such a, I will never forget
just taking a picture up the beach,
like one way and the other.
Didn't realize it until,
this was still the point, right?
When we had to like
get our film developed.
And we get the film back
and we see this picture
of this just naked woman,
just completely laid out.
And again, not the type of person
that you want to see.
She was a grandmother.
She was.
And she was just laid out in
all of her grandmother glory.
And I was like, oh, you looked
at me like great picture mags.
I was like, didn't even see it.
I was looking at the beach.
Yeah, yeah.
So how do you think the
kids are handling it so far?
Okay.
I think they're really enjoying it.
However, I think that
they were not expecting
the differences in
like culture and amenities
and all of that.
Yeah, the fact that
I'm quite as posh or--
A lot of walking.
I think that's what it is more.
They didn't, we tried to prepare them,
I think as much as we could.
This is not like a fun,
fun, where we're gonna go,
you know, I don't
know, what have we done?
Like going to Costa Rica, 6th Lion Age.
Did a hike up to a waterfall.
Like this is about, we're
gonna be hiking in the cities
to old archeological sites.
We're gonna be seeing history
or we're just gonna be seeing culture.
That was one of the things we did today.
Our local guy, he actually lives there.
Yes.
So there's seven guys, eight guys I think
that actually do these tour
buses, they had our own bus.
Three of them
actually live on the island,
the other three, the
other six I guess come in.
So this guy was actually local.
So he took us to his town.
Yes, which--
Which was incredibly beautiful,
but it was not touristy, it was real.
Medelajor.
Medelajor.
Something, yeah.
Yeah, it was real, he can't follow me.
This is one of real Santorini.
Yes, and real Santorini
is incredibly beautiful.
It was magical.
I think it was our oldest
looked at me and he was like,
this place is like magic.
It was, it was unbelievable.
Yeah.
I think he's getting it, hopefully,
I think our middle's
getting it, our youngest,
I don't know that he's quite getting it.
He probably likes playing
soccer upstairs on the spaceship,
most of all right now.
I think so.
All the free ice cream.
Yeah, you're welcome, Coach Joey,
he has been practicing.
Yeah, he has been playing.
But I mean, I don't
want it to be lost on him,
which I do remember,
we've talked about it
since we've been here.
When I first went across seas, I was 21,
for some I was overseas.
And you just don't
even know at that point,
you don't even go into
yourself, you're not comfortable,
at least I wasn't, a
lot of men aren't either,
so I'm sure most of our
younger sons aren't either.
So you're just so, you know,
you're expressing
expression list to some degree.
But as long as they're
actually taking something
and it's being, there's
an impression from it,
it's kind of what I care about,
understanding the culture.
Like today, we went
in, he showed us what,
what the origins of Santorinians,
I don't know what
they're, who live on Santorini,
how they used to live,
they even dug out caves.
Caves.
Literally caves, it was incredible.
Yeah.
But he's like, you guys are lucky,
he said it to our kids, like you're lucky
because you live in a house
that has whatever amenities,
and this is how we live here.
In fact, he lives in a
cave now, it's plaster,
it's a city, it has, you know,
you're running water and stuff in it now,
but it's still, he lives
there with his mom and dad still,
his wife and his two kids,
in a 150 square foot cave.
So I love that they get to
see outside of our culture.
Yes, yes.
I do too, because it's so
different from what we have,
and it's super important.
I think, there's actually a
famous saying about like how,
if you travel the
world, you can't be ignorant,
because you just, your eyes are open
to so many other things,
and it just stops that
judgment from happening.
And I'm so glad, it feels so blessed
that we've been able
to give our kids that.
Right.
So that they can see that.
But there's things that I don't think
they were mentally prepared for.
Like yesterday, when we
were taking the Metro,
we were in Athens, and we
decided to take the Metro.
And the walk was a little
further than we expected.
We will say that.
However, you and I,
having lived in a big city,
and had to rely on public transportation,
for us, it was not that
big of a deal to be like,
well, I have to walk 10
blocks to get onto this,
in this case, the Metro, you know,
like when we were in Chicago,
I was trying to explain to the kids,
we had to walk three
blocks to get onto the city bus,
which took us to the Brown Line,
which then we had to get
on the transfer station
to the Red Line, then we had to get off
and walk three blocks to our office.
Like, they were like,
it's a, for us, that was not a big deal.
It wasn't a shock, it's
what we were expecting.
They never lived like that.
They've always been suburban kids.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think they
might've been able to cover
in the Euro food coma that we were in.
Oh my gosh, I was one
of the best meals ever.
Yeah, it was incredible.
Yeah, the Euros that we
had yesterday, oh, wow.
Yeah, literally in
the shadows of Pantheon.
Yes, Parthenon.
I said it back, was that time?
I was actually thinking it in my head,
I think I'm saying it like.
Think I got it.
In the shadows of the Parthenon.
Yeah.
It was incredible.
It was incredible.
Yeah.
You could see the
Parthenon from where we were,
it was unbelievable.
But it's been magical and I'm excited.
I mean, we have some
really fun days coming up,
fun things planned.
Yeah, we'll do that on the next episode.
It was a great transition to close this
one up a little bit.
Yeah, exactly.
Hopefully we'll give
you guys a little bit
of a better background next time.
We had just left
Santorini and I'm so sorry.
It's incredible.
I mean, hopefully you
can see the Greek Isles.
We're kind of passing some.
I see a couple as they look back there.
But really just open water.
See open water.
Open water over my right shoulder.
So which is the way we're headed.
Yep, going to Olympia.
Olympia, also known as Kalamata.
According to Giannis today.
See, we learned so much.
Yeah.
I had an idea.
Yeah.
So all right.
It's been wonderful.
Anything you want to
say before we let them go?
No, I go.
Kala.
Learn the word Kala.
Kala.
Kala means how are you?
Or good morning.
Or good morning.
How are you?
Good morning.
Yeah, Kala.
A little bit of Greek either way.
Either way.
It's a nice thing to say, I don't know.
So greet your neighbor, tell them Kala.
Or ask them Kala.
All right, well, we'll
come back at you guys again
next week.
Thanks for waiting to get
these for this next episode.
Tell them the location here.
We'll try to tell you more
stories about the next one.
All right, take care everyone.
See you soon.
Ciao ciao.
Bye.
Ciao ciao.