[MUSIC]
Mostly skiing backwards.
What could go wrong?
Our kids are just bobbing and weaving.
We're doing the best we can.
It's a sunk cost at this point.
It was a home alone moment.
That's it, that's the big one.
The big one.
Don't come near me.
And then other skiers
are also other drivers.
Your drivers.
Your level of happiness is always the
difference between your expectations and
how it actually turns out.
Or Voltron who's been
making a lot of cameos lately.
Christmas vacation like, "Ding, dong."
And, "Man, I'm excited for 26."
What doesn't kill you
only makes you stronger.
It was the toughest year of our lives.
And we recorded every week through it.
Yeah.
Could you see the paint on our face?
This isn't blonde people, it is gray.
I let people get to their new year.
Alright, well, happy
new year to everyone.
Happy new year.
And they were like, "No."
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.
That's obviously not
going to make any of it.
It doesn't need to make it.
Or maybe it should.
You should start each one with a song.
Yeah, I'm so... I can feel it.
I'm like nasally right now already.
I've been nasally since we were skiing.
I know.
My morning serios are all really short.
And I can just hear it in my voice.
Not only is the background from 1970,
really nice VRB over there.
That little room I shot in
is like very 1970s feeling.
And then I'm like, I sound
a little bit more nasally.
Even like I do now.
All of a sudden I've
gotten even more nasally.
It just sounds deeper.
Like you can tell you're a little stuffy.
Yeah.
It felt so low
production the whole thing did.
We're doing the best we can.
It's allergy season. It's destroying one
of our kids for sure.
For sure.
And I haven't been right since we came
back to the lower altitudes.
I mean, I've not been able to breathe out
of the right side of my
nose for five days now.
Is it always the right side of your nose?
No.
Oh, okay.
No.
So that switches up sometimes.
Yeah.
Do you always get like
one side versus the other?
No, I don't think I ever
get one individual side.
That's why it's funny that yours is a
side that's individual.
Sorry, I'm trying to figure out how
blocked I am right now.
That's funny.
No, because usually mine switches.
Like if I'm really stuffy and sick, this
is probably really gross.
Like if I lay on one side and then I
switch to the other,
I feel like everything's shifting and
like, oh no, I can't
breathe out of that side.
Yeah.
Well, let's pivot from that discussion.
Geez.
Let's pivot from sinus congestion.
Yeah.
To, wow, we just made it through.
We're the hardest
weeks in parenting, right?
Yes.
We just got through Christmas.
You did.
Every parent knows.
We're the hardest months,
we're the hardest weeks.
Yes.
Yeah.
Santa may have a list and check it twice,
but I swear every parent has a list and
checks it like 40,000 times.
I think our list is probably longer.
It might be.
Than all the children in the world.
All the children in the world.
Even though his squirrel goes down to the
ground and out the door.
I sometimes feel like our squirrel goes
all the way down to the
ground and out the door.
Yeah, just a little bit further than his.
His comes down and ours is like two, two,
two, two, two more unrolls.
Two more unrolls, yep.
I think every parent feels that way.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, for sure.
It's just a crazy time of the year, the
chaos train, like we always say.
Oh yeah.
And this one is, luckily for us, and we
talked about it,
actually we shot at Mr. and Mrs.
maybe a week and a half ago.
And we forgot to get off the chaos train
long enough to actually get that one
edited and published, I guess.
Hey, that may have been one of our best.
Who knows?
Yeah, but nobody will
ever know at this point.
No one will ever know.
But it was taken from Sadie, the van.
We shot it in the van.
Yeah, we actually shot it so it wasn't
even in the studio
because we weren't home long
enough to be in the studio.
That's right, that's right.
And our daughter got back in the car like
15 minutes into shooting it.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, that was fantastic.
Anyways, but we're doing it so
we're back from ski vacation.
You skied on your knee.
I did.
It was, you know,
mentally, like it was hard.
It was hard to get back up,
probably more so than physically.
I just had to figure out how to ski, like
with a knee that
wasn't like the, yeah, it
was just a little bit different.
So I just had to change
up my ski a little bit.
Well, you kept saying things like, it's
just not strong, I'm not strong enough.
I'm like, you are.
I was like, you're actually, that knee is
actually stronger than your other one is.
And I just kept telling
you, like, you know how to ski.
I understand there's reservation there.
It's got to be scary.
And you made the point several times.
It's not like you, it's not like you tore
your ACL playing football.
Right.
I tore it skiing.
Like, so there's just that whole trauma
is probably too strong of a word.
But I mean, it's a whole negative feeling
of all of it, you
know, of like, oh my God.
Six months from the day that happened to
you really felt kind of normal.
Kind of normal.
Yeah.
And you're just like, I can't go back.
I can't go back.
That's pretty traumatic.
I don't want to do
that six months for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, it was, oh man.
I mean, I kept thinking about it this
Christmas, like as I was
moving around the kitchen or
whatever and I was like, last year I had
to do all of this on crutches.
How in the world did I even do that?
Yeah.
Well, I have a lot easier.
Next two months.
Because when you were down to, you can,
there's not a lot you could
do on your own for a while.
No.
And the whole family stepped up.
Oh yeah.
We all had a lot more
titties, which was fine.
No big deal.
But back to, it was great.
You got on.
You know, the first, first off, Mother
Nature did not help.
One thing we talked about in the last
podcast that never even made it to air.
Yeah.
Was the fact that we're like, it was, I
think it was Thursday,
Wednesday or Thursday we
shot it.
And usually we put out
the highlights on Thursday.
It was Thursday.
Oh, we shot it when I
usually put out the highlights.
Yeah.
So we were way behind.
And then the next day when we were
supposed, when I usually
publish the actual episode,
that was the day we were actually,
everybody had school and I
had a meeting all morning.
You actually had the day off to catch up
on packing and get ready
to go, but we're leaving.
For the ski trip on Friday.
So that next day.
Yeah.
And on that podcast that we had never
made it to air, we were
talking about it like,
well, there's no snow where we're
supposed to be going.
Then.
Like.
We were supposed, we
were going to go to Tahoe.
We'd never been to Tahoe before.
Right.
And we were watching the snowfall and
probably way too late to watch it.
I know.
Because we always kind of push it with
these early season ski
vacations, but we've done
it every year and it's worked.
It has.
Yeah.
Not that we've had the
best snow every time.
No.
And very rarely are all the runs open,
but there's always
enough that maybe the lines
are a little longer, maybe
not, but it's always okay.
It's always expanding though.
It's like last year we went to Keystone,
you know, where that's
not, you know, we don't
talk about.
We don't talk about Keystone.
Yeah.
When we were first watching it, like the
day, like the week we
were going, it was like 30
runs were open.
Yeah.
48 runs were open.
Two runs were open.
Yeah.
And, you know, they're
opening more and more lifts.
So you could see the
mountain was getting snow.
Yeah.
And it was opening up and opening up.
Yeah.
Well, that's a good kind of a checkpoint
for we were going to
Tahoe and the night we were
doing, the night we were looking at it,
the night before, I
guess, four runs were open.
Four.
Which was really just one run.
Yeah.
For the record.
I looked it up to see on the map, like
what are these runs?
So it was basically one lift.
I went to the top.
It was a blue at the top that turned into
a green, like an upper green.
If you're familiar with skiing, it's
usually like upper
Megan or upper Christmas.
Yeah.
You know, and then and then there's lower
Christmas, which is still the same run.
It's just lower and upper.
Right.
Maybe like something else
joined it or, you know, yeah.
And so those were the
four ones that were open.
So it was one run down
the middle of the ski slope.
And then by the next morning, it had
already gone down to
three out of like one hundred
and forty.
Right.
It's not like this is a twelve, you know,
twelve runs, you know.
Right.
This is not like Midwest.
So it's actually
shrinking and you can see it.
They actually have webcams there.
So I kept looking at the webcams and just
saying there's no way.
Yeah.
I just know our
family well enough to that.
Sure.
We can go.
We can enjoy Tahoe.
I'm sure it's beautiful there.
I'm sure it's.
I'm like, we're going to be mad because
one thing we did this
year is a few of us.
We actually finally got
invested in our own ski equipment.
Right.
We have our own boots, our own skis.
We've been putting it off for a while.
Our oldest is big enough.
He stopped growing and
he's been wanting it forever.
So badly.
By the way, he's got the
nicest skis out of all of us.
Of course he does.
But it means more to
him, which is rightfully so.
Yes.
And he's a better
skier than both of us do.
Right.
So he's fast.
Holy cow. Yeah.
They all are.
So we're like, we're going to take our
new skis to this place.
It's going to be melting because it was
supposed to rain all weekend.
Not just rain.
Oh, thunderstorms.
Thunderstorms.
That's right.
Which does not feel safe on a mountain
where there's, you know,
you're holding metal poles
quite literally.
You're holding lightning rods.
Yeah.
Sitting on metal ski lifts.
Right.
Going past huge metal poles.
Right.
I mean, like, what could go wrong?
What could go wrong?
So when we were recording this Thursday
night, literally flying
out the next day, 16 hours
later, it was like 16 hours later, we
were highlighting like,
well, by the time this
comes out, we'll have
had to make a decision.
And we did make a decision that night
because I was like, I know our family.
We're going to get there.
It's going to be slushy.
Rain is going to melt even
more, make it even more slushy.
It was supposed to be like a low 42,
which is terrible skiing weather.
Way too warm.
It's melting snow.
And we're going to, it's going to be
horrible conditions.
Skiing and slush.
We're all going to be mad about it.
Then we're going to be back in the VRBO,
mad that we're not skiing.
I was like, and we're all just going to
be mad for four days.
Not worth it.
No.
So.
So we switched.
We stayed up to like 11
that night, switching it.
Actually, we stayed up much, much, much
later, but it was
probably about 11 when actually
all the switching was done.
When I finished that part.
And then I moved on to
other things, but yeah.
We had to have almost like a home alone
moment because we get
home because again, we were
recording Mr. and Mrs. on the road while
kids were at practice.
But now we had a flight that was quite a
few hours earlier in the day.
Laundry wasn't done.
Like none of this because I had mentally
prepared like, hey, we
have all this time tomorrow.
And it's like, oh, no, no, no.
Like by the time the kids get off of
school, we have to be
headed to the airport.
And so I am not kidding.
I mean, there are clothes flying there.
Yeah. You know, hats and boots and scarves.
We lost five hours the next day.
Yeah.
Because the fight was earlier.
Earlier.
Yeah.
I mean, so that night was it
was it was a home alone moment.
Like literally bags were
kind of being tossed and like.
It was a long night.
It was an early morning.
The next four mornings are early because
we had to get out of bed to go skiing.
Right.
But that's what's that's
the beauty that vacation is.
We all love it.
We all love skiing.
We love getting out
there into the mountain.
It really sets and begins our Christmas
atmosphere because it's snowy.
It's a winter wonderland.
You know, all these mountain villages or
towns all have like lights on the trees.
It's gorgeous.
It is.
It sets our moods.
Not that we're not having the Christmas
mood, but work's done by that point.
School's done by that point.
It is just downhill.
Literally.
Pun intended.
Yes.
Pun intended.
Christmas Eve and Christmas.
Yep.
So we love it.
But but it's crazy while we're there.
Oh my gosh.
It really is.
And this year, I don't
know how much you enjoyed it.
I really liked the fact that it wasn't
like get up and go like
the kids slept in a little
bit.
I mean, they were
waking up at like eight.
You know, so we were on the
slopes by nine, nine, thirty.
Yeah.
Which I enjoy a little bit more.
It's like, I don't have to
be the first chair lift up.
That's changed in like
the last year or two, maybe.
I was trying to think why that's changed.
For the kids, maybe it's changed.
It's never changed for me.
Yeah.
No, I mean, I guess we used to for the
first, I don't know,
eight years we did this.
We've been doing it quite a long time
now, but we would be on
the chair lift very near
within 15 minutes of it.
Yeah.
Starting with the mountain opening.
Yeah.
And we would close it.
I mean, maybe a handful of two or three
of us would go in, but
the remaining two or three
would take would be one of
the last ones off the mountain.
Yeah.
And I think it's because back then we did
a lot of blues, like,
you know, greens and
blues with the kids
while they were learning.
I mean, you could ski all
day on greens and blues.
Now we do blues, still mostly blues.
The boys and I would do
blacks every now and again.
We didn't hit any this time, but they're
doing those blues and
the harder blues hardcore.
Hardcore.
I mean, they are ripping them.
Yeah.
Just, I mean, they are all three of our
kids are very good for
only skiing twice a year
for the first five years and really only
once a year, the last
three, because you just can't
fit it in anymore.
No.
Our oldest is just flying down there
under incredible control.
You know, for someone that skis, you
know, he's only skied
30 times in his life.
Right.
He's really good at it.
Yeah.
But because they're working so hard, I
think they're getting more tired.
Yeah.
So that's my point.
Like six hours on the mountain.
Yeah.
Is enough.
Right.
And that's, I mean,
and I'm okay with that.
Yeah.
Because I was always like, okay, we
almost, you know, and I
think I gave the feedback.
That's why we started getting on the
lifts a little bit
later was because I gave the
feedback of like, guys, can we just slow
it down a little bit in the morning?
Like it's so hard.
It takes some of that enjoyment.
I don't want to say it ruins it, but it
took some of the enjoyment
out because it was always
like, we got to go, we
got to go, we got to go.
Like make breakfast, clean the kitchen,
you know, because I want
to give everyone a good
breakfast.
And then mom's always late.
It's like, oh my gosh,
please just give me a moment.
I know.
You kind of put that on you though.
I don't think any of us have to have, I
mean, you do kick great
eggs and bacon most mornings,
like sausage or whatever.
I mean, it's not a, I mean, it's cooked,
but honestly, we could
have cereal most mornings,
I think, and we'd be fine.
I mean, just to throw that out there, not
that we need to get on there any earlier.
Now I was pretty good with it.
A lot of times it was me because it was
like, I want to make sure
we get our money's worth.
We're only here for three days.
I want to get as much skiing as we can.
You know, and this one was different too,
because you were, you
were relearning to trust
yourself on skis again.
Trust that your knee was indeed strong
enough and that you could
catch a tip here or there
and still, you know, recover.
Yeah.
And not tear any CEL and
MCL and everything else.
Yeah.
All that stuff.
Yeah.
And I think I realized
like I can trust myself.
I don't like other skiers still.
That was the hardest thing.
That is still the hardest thing.
I was like, if someone even comes near
me, I'm freaking out.
Like don't come near me.
And that's what our kids were doing, like
on the blues, because
there were so many people
that aren't blues that
shouldn't be on blues.
If you're learning.
I might have been one of
those this year, but yeah.
And I get it.
There weren't enough really open that we
could go further into the mountains.
And because we're all trying
to kind of stay closer to you.
Yeah.
I spent half a day each day just on
greens, mostly skiing
backwards, trying to make sure,
well, working on my backwards skiing and
making sure people didn't run into you.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I was being your
bodyguard for some of that.
But yeah, gosh, there are so many people
on blues shouldn't be.
Yeah.
And because of that, our kids are just
bobbing and weaving.
I mean, there was one time, like I
actually thought it was kind of fun.
I was just like, like
bobbing and weaving between people.
You know, I mean, hopefully not close
enough that I was ever in danger.
They were all stationary, but and
everybody knows that doesn't,
you know, like snowboarders,
you're always looking
up for snowboarders.
They just, you know, like,
OK, this is a good spot to stop.
They just lay down anywhere they want to.
Yeah.
Middle, four cross.
Right.
You know, so I always spray them as much
as I can as I make a turn.
You should.
My bad.
You should.
And one of them had the nerve.
So last year when I had fallen and I made
it over to the side.
So I was out of everybody's way.
And I had a snowboarder like get mad at
me because I was down
on the ground and I was
so frustrated with it.
After you had already torn your ACL.
Oh, yeah.
Like I'm literally sitting.
You're waiting on the sled.
I'm waiting.
He's yelling at you
because you're on the very edge.
And I'm like, wow.
Maybe it was because he's like, you
should be sitting more in the middle.
You're not blocking enough people.
Yeah.
I'm sure that's what it was.
Because that's awesome.
The borders do.
And I boarded before too.
So I get it, but I mean, like because I'm
a skier mostly and I
boarded before when I
was boarding, it was like, I'm not going
to just plop down right in the middle.
You never did.
No, I go to the side.
I mean, good Lord.
Yeah, I know.
I was like, I am quite
literally in no one's way.
So the ski vacation was saved other than
VRBOs don't give you
refunds when you don't make
it.
And then like once we decided, okay,
we're going to take it's
a sunk cost at this point.
We're going to let's just save the
vacation and enjoy it.
We did.
So we made it out to the cool, you know,
perfect mountaineer of Colorado.
We did.
And it was fantastic.
Yeah, it was great.
Our ski and ski are the VRBO.
It must have been the
last you made the comment.
It must have been the last second
cancellation because I loved it.
Yeah.
And it was one of our nicest.
And it was ski and ski out.
It was it was a true.
They all say ski and ski out.
And that's what I'm always trying to
like, you know, Google Earth.
Like, let's just see if
this really is just see.
And you're like, oh, no, this one up to
the bus stop and take
the bus four miles and then
ski out.
You know, then you can ski the remainder
of the five miles
somewhat misleading at times.
Right.
And this, I mean, what you popped your
skis off, walked across
the bridge and you're at
the backside of the complex.
You were at the backside of the complex.
Like it was beautiful.
It was perfect.
Yeah.
I was like, I couldn't
ask for anything more.
No more snow would have been good because
it was warm the last two days.
We were there and it
was quickly losing snow.
Yeah, I would say the days after probably
weren't like after we left.
I don't know that it was
probably melted quite a bit.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm sure they got four inches or four
feet of snow as soon as we left.
Made for driving out easier too though.
I did.
I mean, we've had those
white knuckle trips back.
I mean, yeah, the one that I always think
of and we had left
like three in the morning
to beat the snowfall.
I mean, it was, it was some ungodly hour
that nobody should
actually be awake that we left
and it was just you and I, kids all
sleeping in the back and
there was no way I was going
to go back to sleep.
Like the adrenaline probably lasted me
six hours because as
you're going over that veil
pass and you're like, "Hun, if we stop,
we're going backwards.
I cannot go forwards."
I was like, "We're going
to die on the mountain."
Yeah, we had a two-wheel drive car.
That was the only thing
that Hertz gave us, sedan.
I mean, they should know better than that
during ski season, but
there was no upgrades.
There was nothing else
to get out of that one.
So it was.
It was like if we stopped, it was slick
enough that I didn't think
we'd be able to keep going.
Yeah.
So that was a little white knuckler.
And you are a very accomplished snow, not
only just snowdriver,
but mountain snowdriver.
And I was just like, "Oh my gosh, if you
are nervous about this."
I have multiple medals,
which she's referring to.
Awards, accolades, certificates.
There's people who have lived in the
South their whole life
that like if they see snow,
they're going to freak out.
I'm accomplished by experience.
I've done a lot of it.
You've done a lot of it.
And I'm comfortable doing it, but I lived
in Texas long enough that I white knuck a
little bit.
It's done.
If it's slick at all, it scares me.
To your point, other
skiers are also other drivers.
And I don't trust them either.
You know what I mean?
Because they're flying down.
It's like if you catch that ice on a, I'm
on the outside of a
turn, you're on the inside
and you can take me
right off the road too.
Yep.
You know, so it's a little bit of a white
knuckle when it comes to that.
Yeah.
But none of that this time.
No, it was great.
It's like beautiful pictures of the sun
rises we drove home.
We did.
I got to make something out of all that
at some point, I think.
I know.
It was fun.
So it was great.
It was totally redeemed.
Totally redeemed.
You did incredibly well.
You made it to a blue the third day.
Did two or three runs
down the blue, I think?
I did two runs down the blue.
Two runs down the blue.
It would have been, I say I probably
could have done one
more, but it was getting to
the point that I'm like, I don't want to
be, get halfway down
and be like, because you
get the most dangerous part
is when your legs get tired.
Yeah.
And I was like, I felt my knee getting a
little tired and I was
like, I just don't want to
get stuck up there.
And now I have like half a run to go
because it was a long blue.
Yeah.
I don't want to get stuck with half a run
and not feeling like I'm in control.
Right.
I've skied enough to know that the ones
who are out of control
and tired are the most
dangerous skiers.
And our kids were even saying that too.
We're going to potentially go do a
different part of the
mountain and try to do some of
the blacks later that day.
Oh, I'm surprised we're in the open.
Yeah.
There's one lift all the way over to the
other side of the mountain.
All blacks, it would have
been tough to make it back.
I mean, hopefully we
could have made it back.
But they said their legs were probably
too tired to do that.
So they know, which was good.
Yeah.
And by that third day, I'm
always a little tired too.
I probably wasn't quite as tired this
time because I spent a
lot of time on the greens,
carving up the greens.
I mean, like we'll go
back to that another time.
You'll, after you get comfortable again,
because we were up
with a lot of people that
are like, oh, my wife had it.
She's 65 and it took her 14 months to get
used to it or three
months of skiing fairly
consistently to get comfortable again.
So by no means were we trying to push you
into doing something
you weren't ready for.
But knowing that we only have one or two
times mountains this
year, you know, it's like you
have to take a step, you know, to prove
to yourself or you're
going to have to redo
it all again next year.
Yeah.
So now you know you can do blues.
Yeah.
You have a whole other year or whatever
to strengthen your
knee and you'll be good.
That'll be fine.
Yeah.
It's just, it was that mental hurdle.
Like I got to move past those last few
hours on that run from last year.
Yeah.
But my point was going to be, if you go
on that, like similar
time, if we go back to
Breck, it's going to
be, you're going to laugh.
I mean, it was, it was that
green hill is like a bunny hill.
It's so flat and you're going to be like,
oh my gosh, I can't
believe this is what I
was going down like so slowly the first
time, which is totally understandable.
I'm not making fun of you, but you're
going to be like, wow,
like what a learning curve,
you know?
Yeah.
Compared to what you were, you're
accomplished 40 year skier.
Ski for 40 years.
Yeah.
And that, it was hard.
Yeah.
It was hard.
I think it was more mentally hard because
you, you're doing just fine.
Yeah.
Just trust in yourself on it.
So anyways, we did that.
We drove back this time because that was
the only way we could
make it work from a timing
perspective.
Was our first time
learning how to take skis flying.
So we had to get ski bags, which is fine
for our new skis, which
was great because then
we figured out like, oh my gosh, all this
stuff that we put into like one big, huge
suitcase fit in the ski bags with the
skis, which was fantastic.
As long as it was 50 pounds or less.
So that was great.
Great.
What we learned though was.
Well we just, you got to
get the right rental car.
You got to get the right rental car.
And Ford Broncos are considered an SUV.
However, they don't fit
two really big ski bags.
Because they upgraded to the largest SUV
that they had at the
time, which is a mid-size
and they gave us a Bronco.
Yeah.
They're in Colorado, I'm
sure, but they don't fit.
And we didn't unpack the
ski bags on the way there.
So the kids are like, you know, it was
just like, there's a
dude perfect ski stereotypes
if you've seen it.
It's just like that.
Exactly.
I mean, I literally was on my head like,
you know, it's not
safe for that to be on the
driver's head.
Yeah.
There was literally a pair of skis like
you're driving like this
because you know, you had
a pair of skis coming right here.
It was so bad.
How long have you been holding them up?
Yeah, that was the two hours, two and a
half hours from the
Colorado Springs Airport to
Breck.
And the kids were like, hey, by the way,
we're driving home for 12 hours.
Luckily, we didn't put
them in the ski bags.
We figured a different way of doing it.
So it wasn't great, but definitely
learning curve for us to
figure out how to get all
that stuff into a car
comfortably for all of us.
Yes.
If we had our own
vehicle, it would have been cake.
It would have been fine.
Roll up on the top of the roof.
Right.
It was it was the rental car situation.
I mean, I just don't want to drive to
Colorado there and back.
Oh, it's 12 hours.
I mean, unless we were going to be there
for if we were going
to be there for a week.
Sure.
Maybe that's just what we need to do.
We just need to go there for a week now.
For three days.
Yeah.
So let's we can't talk as school comes
right up to that Friday
along with our old soccer,
which is a requirement up to that day.
In fact, the last two years,
he's missed the alumni game.
Alumni games.
Yeah, there's like an exhibition type.
So that we could just get on the road to
squeeze in three days
before Christmas Eve.
Right.
Because then you come back.
I mean, we come back on the 23rd and it's
just like, yeah, then
that only leaves Christmas
Eve to get all the last
minute stuff done for Christmas.
And thank goodness we've got we've got
good house sitters that
take care of the house
during that time.
So it's not empty.
It's not, you know,
the dogs taken care of.
Yeah.
All that kind of stuff.
It makes it a good one.
But anywho, so that that was a long recap
of the of the ski
trip debacle that turned
out to be really fantastic.
A really great ski trip.
I think everyone had a blast.
Yeah.
Well, we always do.
But that one just turned
out we're really nervous.
It was going to be bad.
It turned out to be good.
Yeah.
Maybe that's why it seemed so like
awesome was because they
always say that your level
of happiness is always the difference
between your expectations
and how it actually turns
out.
Right.
Your level of
disappointment or happiness.
I feel like kind of low expectations.
Yeah.
And it turned out to be great.
And so we're all
like, yeah, it's amazing.
That's right.
So then Christmas was fantastic.
I'm sure everybody had great Christmases.
You know, it's always
nice when your kids are.
This is the great.
You know, the best Christmas yet.
Yes.
And I was telling somebody it's not
because we had more
presents under the tree.
In fact, we probably had less because
they're more expensive
presents as they get older.
Yeah.
But, you know, I think that's just part
of the family, you
know, of a hopefully some
good presents, but be, you know, just
having good times and
enjoying each other's, you
know, enjoying being together.
Yes.
And making the most of the holiday.
You know, hot chocolate and the music,
just all the things
that make it so special.
Right.
And I do love that.
I mean, even when the kids were little.
I mean, opening presents is
easily a half day affair for us.
And it's not that we have so many.
It's that one of the kids will open
something and then go play with that.
Or, you know, if it's a Lego, they'll go
put the Lego together
and then come back to the
presents.
And so it's not like, you know, you kind
of get that sense of
like, it's just rip everything
open.
And yeah, I love the fact that our
children really take the time.
And enjoy each one.
So when I was a kid, I want to hear from
you too, because I do
love that that we do that.
We enjoy it.
It doesn't go fast,
but we went pretty fast.
We took turns.
It was like your turn, your
turn, your turn, your turn.
But we were pretty quickly through it.
Like I don't remember.
Maybe when I got older, high school, I
did take a little bit more time.
I wasn't as concerned of ripping through.
But that's different than
you're not getting toys.
When you're young, you're getting toys.
You're like, oh my, like you can't even
believe you might get that toy.
For me, at least it was that way.
Like GI Joes or
whatever it might have been.
Or Voltron, who's been
making a lot of cameos lately.
He has.
I know.
You know, so I think I think I feel like
we went pretty fast when we were younger.
And while we are kids are still pretty
young, where they're
getting things that they want
to get into.
You know what I mean?
What about you guys?
You guys go fast?
Ah, definitely faster.
We all took turns for the most part.
But not, I mean, definitely faster than
like our kids would go.
But I don't know that
we did it super fast.
We would have been done by 10 a.m.
No doubt.
At my house.
Okay.
We would have been done by 10 of the a.m.
You started at what time?
Oh, probably 7 30, something like that.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So and we had eaten breakfast in that,
which is the worst, like,
because we had stockings,
then breakfast, then real presents.
Yeah.
Here, we'd only done one Christmas tree
under the Christmas
tree present this year.
By 10 o'clock.
That's crazy.
I wasn't even watching the time.
I looked at it because I was like,
because then they went and built that.
It was a little Lego, so it's easy.
I could never build one of the big ones
in that amount of time.
Right.
But I do love that
they enjoy it like that.
And ours was different because we opened
gifts from each other,
like gifts under the tree
that were from our parents and
grandparents the night before.
So we opened those on Christmas Eve and
then the Santa presents on Christmas Day.
So stockings and Santa
presents on Christmas Day.
We just did them all on Christmas Day.
And so that probably
slowed it down quite a bit.
Spent it up, though, too, because you
have less on Christmas morning.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess I never saw Santa's
deluge of presents at
your house in your growing
up.
But no, I mean, yeah, it made it on
Christmas morning, there
was less to open because mom
and dad and grandma and grandpa and all
of that had come the night before.
So yeah.
So I mean, we had two days of presents.
Yeah.
Well, we always would get I got we get
one present for on
Christmas Eve, which usually
a pair of pajamas, pajamas, which is
always fun, though,
because we kind of knew it was
coming anyway.
Yeah.
So we'd get that one.
And then we always get to open one right
before breakfast from under the tree.
We kind of do that same thing, too.
But now the kids only
want to pick the big ones.
They want to.
They just want like a regular one.
Just something that they'll pick
something that's like
there's a little taste.
They think it's closed
or something like that.
Yeah, they'll pick something that they're
like they know is not
one of the big ones.
Right.
So when you were a kid, would you always
go for the one big one
right before breakfast?
No.
You went for a small one, too?
Um, yeah, I don't really honestly, I
don't really remember.
But I mean, I don't think you're supposed
to go for the big one.
It's kind of an unspoken.
You know, that's it.
That's the big one.
The big one.
That's funny.
Yeah.
Because we would do all of ours and then
have breakfast because it
was just the Santa ones.
Yeah.
And then we would have breakfast and then
it was like all hands on deck.
When we were really little, we'd go to
church on Christmas morning.
Once we got to be about 10, we went to
the midnight service.
But yeah, and then by noon, it was like,
you know, the
Christmas vacation, like, ding,
dong.
Everybody showed up because my
grandmother, my grandparents hosted
everybody on Christmas
Day.
And so from noon on, I mean, there was a
house full of people.
Like everybody.
So.
That's the way your family did it.
Yeah.
So we kind of like having
a really long, prolonged
present opening
wouldn't have worked with.
Yeah.
I think things changed a
lot when I was younger.
At some point, at some point, we just got
older and it was just too much, I think,
because we used to go to my grandparents
house that lived in
Colorado Springs and then
like all the aunts and uncles, we'd all
do the exchange there,
you know, like aunts and
uncles and grandparents
gifts and stuff like that.
We do all that.
It was probably before
Christmas, I'm guessing.
Then there was a time where we went to
their house on Christmas.
I think that got to be too much.
It was like a divorced family.
We're going here and
then we're going here.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I think at some point we said, we're
just going to stay at our house.
And then my
grandparents came to our house.
Right.
A lot of Christmases to open up presents.
Yeah.
And when I was younger,
too, we went a couple of times.
We were in Denver for Christmas.
We went to Chicago maybe once, maybe
twice for Christmas.
Because that's where my grandparents were
before they retired.
Illinois.
Yeah.
But then really, I feel like once we got
maybe once I was nine and older, most of
it was at our house.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And then it was
pretty not a lot of people.
It wasn't like years where everybody in
their mom was coming over.
My grandparents come over for a little
while and then they leave.
Yeah.
They go to it because they had four kids
that I think three or
four kids living there.
So yeah.
And that's so different
because my mom was an only child.
And so we spent every
Christmas at her parents house.
I mean, we were the only grandkids.
So it was kind of like it was our own
house and they were skiing nearby.
So we'd always be skiing
the days before Christmas.
And you know, so it really was like
that's where we always spent Christmas.
But it wasn't like, okay, we're it was
different all the time.
Yeah.
And but yeah, then everybody by the
afternoon, everyone came.
That was just the thing is you always
come to Rondin Lois's house.
And so then what would
you do when everybody came?
Would you guys would you
go play with your toys?
Do you go play?
You go kind of do your own thing or you
were you expected to hang out?
Oh, no, we go play with our toys.
It depended on like, you know, usually
some of the older people got there first.
And so you'd have to
talk to them a little bit.
But then we kind of play with their toys
or we'd play with each other, you know.
And then once like my mom's cousins, kids
like made it, they were around our age.
Then we go play with them.
And, you know, it was a fun day.
I mean, yeah, I remember just.
Everyone just playing cards, having
beverages and there's snacks everywhere.
There's food everywhere.
And it was great.
Yeah.
I can still see my grandmother and all
her sisters and their
husbands, like, you know,
around different tables, having Euchre
games and things like that.
It was really, they're
really happy memories.
Yeah.
So that's good.
That's how it should be.
Yeah.
Hopefully we're doing the
same thing here with our kids.
And that's why I said, I feel like we are
like they had a good
day when they say the
best Christmas yet.
Christmas yet.
You feel like, you know, hopefully.
I hope so.
Some good traditions in there.
So well, we're staring down.
We're staring down a birthday.
Yes.
Tomorrow.
For us as we sit here to record this.
Yeah, I know.
I love it.
I always tell the story of like, you
know, when I found out
that I was pregnant with
that one and I was like, we
didn't want a holiday baby.
And my doctor looked at me and they're
like, how's that working out for you?
Yeah.
I'm not even sure how that worked out.
You know what?
We don't want a holiday
baby in December 28th.
December 28th.
Yep.
Last one.
Actually, he was early though.
He was supposed to be a
2013 sometime into January.
He was closer to our middle daughters.
He was due one 1414.
Yeah.
So could have been same birthday almost.
Yep.
But he was two weeks early.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So he was a little early.
So he's a late 2013 for sure.
Very late.
Go ahead.
I was joking with him.
I was like, hey, in a couple of days you
can like text your
soccer team and be like, I'm
finally as old as
every single one of you.
I know.
He was in there making fun of
him because he's still only 11.
I know.
I can't help it, buddy.
One day you can brag about that.
Yeah.
So we got that coming
tomorrow, which will be fun.
It's always a short straw a little bit
for people with
birthdays this close to December
or to Christmas in December, I suppose.
But I always felt, we've talked about it
before on this, where I
felt like mine was too close
in February.
So no doubt.
I'm sure people in January, but
definitely the 28th of December.
Yeah.
Too close.
Yeah.
You can't have, he just can't have like
birthday parties during that time.
Yeah.
That's why he should do.
He should just, when he gets older at
some point, just be like,
I'm going to have, we're
going to celebrate my
birthday over the summer.
Let's just do like a
fun little family thing.
It's about to eat.
Let's go watch a movie.
I'll do one present because I've already
got a thousand presents on Christmas.
You know, and then you guys can get me
family presents over the summer.
So then I break it up a little bit.
Yeah.
I would do that.
I want to still make it a special day.
It's my birthday, but let's
break up the presents as well.
That would be my ultimate point.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
One of the things that's really cool
though, is that his best
friend, his birthday is today.
And so it's like an
unspoken thing that they both know.
It's like, well, we have to
wait for our birthday parties.
And you know, but they can always kind of
celebrate together
because they're both in the same
situation.
Yeah.
They're almost literally 24 hours apart.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Which is interesting.
Yeah.
It's like, how did that happen?
I don't know.
Yeah.
But in same year, right?
Same year.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
He's so young too.
I keep forgetting that
he's so young as well.
Yeah.
He's big.
He's gonna be huge.
I mean, yeah.
His...
He's got bigger genes.
He does.
100%.
So he's gonna be...
Yeah.
Even though he outweighs...
Or like out, he's taller than every...
I mean, he'll be way
bigger than our kid, but...
Yeah, he already is, but he's about...
He's almost...
He's your size-ish.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Well, when your mom's six feet tall, like
your dad's CO6 4s...
Six fours, six five.
Like, yeah, you're gonna be tall.
I do need to apologize to our kids.
I don't think they're gonna be that tall.
No.
There's some genes out
there they could get.
They could get some hyphen.
And our youngest will
have some of that, I think.
Mm-hmm.
I don't think they're gonna...
They don't have too much more in them.
I don't think so.
I think our oldest is
a couple more inches.
In fact, I think he's grown a few.
I feel like he has just gotten way taller
in the last month or two.
Oh, that's good.
I'm like, "What?"
He's got a couple more.
That'll get him up to my height.
Yeah.
I have about six foot, give or take.
Give or take, an inch or two.
Two inches.
More take.
But, you know, hey.
It's a little more take.
Well, then we got 26 coming up.
25 was a tough year.
It was.
We could spend a
whole podcast on this one.
We got four minutes kind
of to wrap this one up.
I know.
We won't dive into it too long.
But it was a tough year.
In fact, we were playing a game just the
other night of like,
"How well do you know
your family members?"
And so I get this card.
And the question is, the person who gets
the card reads the question,
and then they think of an answer, and
then everyone needs to guess
what their answer would be.
And it was like, "What
has scared you the most?"
And I was thinking about it, my answer.
And I think we just settled on, "2025
scared me the most."
I was like, "I had a lot
of things to overcome."
Like, there was just not even me.
Like, every, I think it was
a lot of challenges in 2025.
Other than scares with our children.
Safety and health.
Right?
I think that aside, we didn't have that,
which thank God, knock on
wood, we never have that.
I think we checked every
other box of like, "Ooh!"
You know, of safety, health.
You know, every other box you could worry
about, and big thing we did.
Those things that really, you know, make
you lose sleep at night.
Yeah, yeah.
Question mortality,
all that kind of stuff.
We, in some way or form, between the two
of us, touched those.
And it was a trying year.
It was a trying year. Yeah.
We even had kid pain thrown in there.
Kid pain, a different kind of kid pain.
But kid pain, yeah.
It was just like, "Wow."
You know, career door slamming, and then
opening, and kid pain,
and our own health issues.
And I mean, it was just a year that
you're like, "Okay, we learned a lot.
We grew a lot.
But man, I'm excited for 26."
Yeah, that was, 2025 is literally, now we
can say it, now that we're past some of
those health concerns,
that, you know, like, what doesn't kill
you only makes you stronger.
Yeah.
Because a few, a month or two ago, I
couldn't say that, right?
Right, right.
Without being like, "That's a little too
close to home still."
Yeah.
And now it's like, "Wow, that's crazy."
But yeah, I mean, I guess
we feel stronger, maybe.
I mean, I feel exhausted from it.
This would be, I said it,
last podcast that never aired.
But it'll be interesting to
go back and watch this year.
Yeah.
Because this is the year we started.
2025, we've done almost a full year of
Mr. and Mrs. podcast, which
is crazy in and of itself.
I know.
But it was the
toughest year of our lives.
It was.
And we recorded every week through it.
Yep.
So I think as we get older, if we ever
watch that, because it's been recorded,
it'll be interesting to see it.
Yeah.
You know?
Like, could you see the pain on our face?
Like, I think we tried,
we try to keep this light.
We try to be real, but there's things
that we don't talk about that are just
too personal to put out there.
You know, if we're talking kid pain,
we're not going to talk
about that child's pain.
And, you know, so we
keep some of that back.
But it's like, are we going to see it?
Like, or were we smiling through it?
Like, did we look like we
were managing all of it well?
I don't know.
That's what we're taught to do.
But we'll know.
We'll know.
We'll be able to read between the lines.
Yeah.
We will be able to, you know, follow the
crumbs because we know the
piece of bread that it fell from.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So that'll be interesting one day.
One day.
If we ever, if we ever
see, we're old and more gray.
I know.
This isn't blonde people.
It is gray.
Watch this back and just see, you know,
how that went through.
Yeah.
Depending on how long we do this for,
it'll just be interesting.
I think that's one thing I had mentioned.
I don't know if it was last week or the
week before, you know, but just how long.
You know, this, you know, theoretically,
you know, is ageless.
Yeah.
You know, people that are offsprings,
offspring, offspring,
great, great, greats.
Yeah.
And watch and be like, you
know, that's interesting.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Think about your great, great, great
grandmother, your
great, great grandmother.
You know what I mean?
Like, we don't know much about it.
We've seen pictures of them.
We've seen descriptions of them.
Maybe we live in a time now where, you
know, a hundred years
from now, they'll be able
to flip this on and be like, that's my
great, great, great grandmother.
Yeah.
You know, wouldn't that be crazy?
Yeah.
Just in her prime of her life, just
talking through having a
diet cook before they realized
how horrible diet coke was for you.
I know.
He's like, this diet coke.
It's a time bomb.
He's like, yeah, what
cigarettes are now, right?
Like if we would have seen this in the
fifties, they would have been smoking.
All the lead that he was drinking out of
that Yeti cup that they
didn't know was leeching
into their system and killing them.
On that note, I might
have a sip of my diet coke.
You know what?
It's a guilty pleasure.
Diet coke is my own.
It's like my own guilty pleasure.
What doesn't kill you
or just kills you slowly?
All right.
Well, we should probably shut this down.
This is I mean, this will be a happy new
year when it comes out
if we do it on a regular
schedule.
This will be a happy new year.
So thanks for spending
twenty twenty five with us.
Those of you that joined in, it was quite
the I mean, it was it's been a bit of a I
don't know.
Well, this has just been like a test.
You know, it's been such a weird thing
that we would normally not do.
You know, I know experiment was the word
I was looking for the podcast.
The podcast.
It's been an experiment.
I personally enjoy it.
Like it's an hour of uninterrupted
uninterrupted time that I
get with you on a weekly basis,
which is really nice.
We don't always get it.
Well, we do always get it.
We do always get it.
But we got twenty twenty six coming up.
And so let's just keep it short.
We're already getting long here.
But have you thought of at all what your
what what your New
Year's resolution is going
to be?
Or do you want to
save that till next year?
Till next next week.
We're going to have to say I haven't
because we're already kind of long.
All right.
I haven't even thought of it.
All right.
Well, then let's let's just
wrap this one up with our word.
Our word of that sums up last week.
Okay.
He's out of it.
Yeah.
That was fast.
I have mine too.
I'm just kidding.
I don't.
I'm just kidding.
I don't.
I can cut that.
All right.
You ready? Yeah.
One, two, three.
Caught.
Yeah.
They're both good.
Yeah.
You conquered a mountain literally.
Literally.
I my initial thought was peace.
And I was like, wait a minute.
Hold on.
There are some times and there's some
times in the last week
that I don't know that I
was feeling real peace.
You know, but I don't know either.
In fact, I know I
wasn't feeling real peace.
I know I felt blessed.
And I know there were
times that I felt peace.
But I was like, I wonder if honker.
Yeah.
Because you've been just preparing for
Christmas and some
times in the mountains.
Well, that's what we were saying,
alluding to earlier just how much.
All the things you do.
Like we watch the same movie Love
Actually every night.
Every Christmas Eve night when we're
finishing up wrapping.
Yep.
And you're like, oh my gosh,
there's more presents to wrap.
Like, oh wow.
There's that bag that
needs to all be wrapped.
Right.
It keeps coming out of the woodwork.
I know.
But Love Actually does make it.
Yeah.
But it's just such a fun.
But those are all the little things, like
you said, we're just
conquering so many like
check boxes that we got to get done.
Some of them really enjoyable, but
doesn't mean it's still not tiring.
Right.
Exactly right.
And then above it all, we are blessed.
We are.
We've conquered the entire year.
Yep.
Honestly, as hard as a mountain this year
was to climb for us.
Yeah.
But in the end, we're still blessed.
And that's really all that counts.
Yeah.
It really is.
To be as sappy as possible.
I like the sappy, Sean.
Just to, I've got too much head cold
going on or too much allergies.
I know.
I'm sapping my energy a little bit.
I know.
And it's 80 degrees on Christmas.
Yeah.
And we were just in nine degrees.
Right.
So whether it's a cold or whether it's
allergies, I'm sure there's still
allergies going around
because nothing's been like frozen here.
No.
Because it's quite
literally 80 degrees outside.
Yeah.
Leaves just fell.
Yeah.
What a beautiful day.
We went for a walk yesterday.
Oh my gosh.
It's amazing outside.
I was checking on sprinklers today.
I know.
We had a broken...
In shorts.
I mean, geez.
You hardly wear shorts in the summertime.
Yeah.
I'm wearing shorts
right now in a t-shirt.
I know.
I had to put on a
sweater because I was like...
Well, stick around after the episode to
hear more about our
wardrobe and what we're wearing.
We're just going through
naming what we're wearing.
I let people get to their new year.
All right.
Well, happy new year to everyone.
Happy new year.
All right.
And ciao ciao.
We'll see you more this year.
[music]
Mostly skiing backwards.
What could go wrong?
Our kids are just bobbing and weaving.
But we're doing the best we can.
It's a sunk cost at this point.
Yeah.
It was a home alone moment.
That's it. That's the big one.
The big one.
Don't come near me.
And then other skiers
are also other drivers.
They're drivers.
[laughs] Your level of happiness is always the
difference between your expectations and
how it actually turns out, right?
Or Voltron, who's been
making a lot of cameos lately.
Christmas vacation, like,
"Oh, man, I'm excited for 26."
Yeah, like, "What doesn't kill you only
makes you stronger."
It was the toughest year of our lives.
It was.
And we recorded every week through it.
Yup.
Could you see the paint on our face?
Like, "This isn't
blonde people. It is gray."
All right, let us
people get to their new year.
All right. Well, happy
new year to everyone.
Happy new year.
And they were like, "No."