Hi.
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
This episode is airing in late October of twenty twenty five. We are going to be talking about creating great weekends. We feel that weekends are an important part of life. They can also be a complicated part of life if you have little kids, and so we want to start this episode with a bit of a caveat here, which is that, to be totally transparent, I am so much happier with my weekends now than when my kids were very little, because it is actually possible to relax when
no one has to be watched every minute. When I have older kids who can do quick babysitting so I don't have to like load three kids in the car to go anywhere. When they are capable of entertaining themselves for big chunks of time, there's just so much more opportunity to relax and not have to think through absolutely every single minute and who is on top of the
two year old and all that good stuff. So I almost feel like weekends need to be two separate topics depending on whether you have little kids versus older kids. I mean, if you are in the little kid stage, though, I want to start by saying, it probably will get better in a few years and pretty soon you don't have five kids over twelve years, right, right, Sarah.
I just did the math for myself. I'm like, okay, so I had eleven years of that since my kids are a six year spread.
Yeah, yeah, I had.
A seventeen years of having a kid under age five. But yes, we're out of it now.
Yeah, and I guess, I mean, we're going to get to this later. But the only real way to recreate the feeling of having not having a little kid that you are following around keeping safe is to have somebody else help you with that in an air tight and very fully reliable way, so you're not like half there and we'll talk about strategies for that later. But I do feel like that's the only thing that can really
allow for the same kind of relaxed feeling. And even even that is even still stressful because you're like, but what if they get a cold and then it doesn't actually happen, And I've been looking forward to my little rest but all week and then I have to cancel it. So I get it, like there's almost no way around it.
But I do agree with Laura that things do get better, and I do agree with you that like when the youngest one is around, it helps, although both of us, I think are influenced by our current situations, which also involves having maybe some older helpers around, so you know, have more kids, you have.
To get through them.
But yeah, I mean, there was definitely a point where your weekends got more relaxing one hundred percent.
Like I feel like I even did wake up one day and be like, huh, I used to be so excited sometimes on Monday morning when the help would arrive to rescue me, because the weeks truly felt easier because I had this extra person around who could really absorb a lot of the parenting responsibilities. That felt so twenty four to seven versus the weekend, when even if my husband was helping, I felt like I was very much
in it. And then one day it was like, oh, actually, the weekends are something that I am finding to be the more relaxing piece. Although Laura, I was thinking about this and I'm like, one other sort of angle to that is, I think the weeks have gotten harder. So
I mean harder in some ways and easier in some ways. Yes, it's true out like rocking and screaming maybe to sleep and worrying about pumping during the day, but like our nights are later, we're doing sports picks ups at nine o'clock, and so the weeks in some ways feel more hectic, and then the weekends are like ah yeah.
But with that, we would like to note that there's a lot of literature out there that talks about the idea that they start with is that the work week is stressful and the work the weekend is relaxing. And I feel like all of that needs to have an asterisk by it being like if you don't have small kids, or given that some of this seems to be written
for men who probably do have small kids. The assumption is that somebody else is fully responsible for them, so that you can relax on the weekend, even if you are helping, to put in quotes, your spouse is the one who is making sure that the two year old is constantly being supervised. You just walk away, Like you want to brush your teeth after dinner, you just go do it. You want to go deal with something in the yard, you just go do it, which which is.
Not really fair.
And so yeah, absolutely, I'm not going to like name the specific planner, but there was some planner that talked about like weekend rejuvenation rituals, and I had it when my kids were little, and I used to be like, uh, yeah, yeah, this was not designed for me.
So yeah, well, and so if you believe that your spouse is the one who's going to keep your toddler from sticking a fork in the eye, then yeah, of course you can relax.
You can.
You know, it feels like I think you and I have felt when we had our nannies.
There.
Yeah, so keep in mind that many men seem to have that all the time, and we can have a whole separate discussion about that. But anyway, we will just say that as the beginning of our weekend discussion.
Moving on and save that for another fun soapbox episode.
So, yes, the soapbox we get on occasionally.
Anyway we want to talk about I think it was a five part formula for a great weekend in this episode. The first one, of course, you will not be surprised to hear that both Sarah and I believe in planning your weekends.
And I think sometimes people think.
Planning gets a bad reputation because they think you are planning things that you don't want to do. But here's the thing, you are going to do the things that you have to do. My guess is that if you are a responsible parent, you're going to make sure your eight year old gets to a soccer tournament. You are going to make sure that the laundry gets done. You are going to make sure that you know if somebody was supposed to practice the piano twice, they do it.
Planning the weekends is not about making sure those things happen. It's about making sure you still have time for things that you want to do, and that there are things in the weekend that you are genuinely looking forward to that you have thought through your downtime to make it more enjoyable for you. So my strategy for that is
to double plan my weekends. And this is a function of when I do my weekly planning, I tend to do it on Thursday or Friday looking forward to the next Monday to Sunday week And so as I am planning on Thursday or Friday, I am lightly planning the weekend that is eight to nine days in the future. But because I am then planning on Thursday and Friday, I can also look at the weekend that is immediately coming up and tighten the plan based on has the
weather changed, has something else come up? Is there open space we'd like to do something in. Does it look like this kid isn't doing anything this weekend, Maybe I should see if they could meet up with a friend. But it allows you to plan a little bit more tightly having planned lightly for the weekend.
Eight to nine days in the future.
So this is where I am going to confess this is an episode that I need as much as one that I am participating in now, because I haven't done a great job with this in the past, because there was a time I was very very on it. I think, especially when my kids were little, and I had the necessity of like very intentionally protecting part of my time in order to fit things in. But I will say in recent years, I have gotten more lax with this, and I'm in a little bit of a transitional phase.
In that last year, so many of our weekends were anchored by sports events for Cameron because he was just on a soccer team that played constantly, and now we don't have that, so because he's taking a year off or maybe forever off, but definitely this year off from doing that. And so I just feel like I'm faced
with a lot of new weekend planning challenges. And the school year is still fairly young as we're recording this, and I don't feel like I have my planning groove back on to the point where I was actually talking about it with the kids in the car that like, hey remember our weekends when we used to like do more fun stuff. What happened to that? So this is a work in progress. But I will say my planning
ritual is generally to do my planning on Sunday. That is my like I sit there, I do what I call the week on the board, you know, I fill in the whole board for next week, figure out where the activities are, and I do include the following weekend. So I am starting to think through like do we have a birthday party? Do we have something fun? But I haven't done a lot of what you were just
talking about, and I absolutely miss it. Whether that is my own stuff, and sometimes that's already in there, which is great, and I put it on the board and I get to think about it and it's fun or stuff that involves me and the kids, but it's still fun for maybe everyone, like visiting some local farm or something like that that, like I know, will be have some elements of pleasantness, even if, of course every moment
isn't going to be bliss. So yeah, my method is to do it on Sunday, and that gives me enough. You know, I have about six days in advance to plan up to the next weekend. Although I love your double planning method, I just don't tend to do a lot of my home type of planning during the week these days, just because of the way my work calendar flows. And so I think I could do what you're doing, I just need to do more of it. When I do that Sunday planning.
Well, when do you tighten up the weekend r I mean because I assume that like stuff comes up in the course of the week that will need to then happen on the weekend.
Every once in a while it does. It's more like stuff will just get slotted into where there's already blank space, and you know, I'll write it on the board and talk about it with the kids. But that's much more like what falls into my lap, like oh, a kid gets invited to this more impromptu thing, and much less of like let's all do this thing. And again, I think that's what we're missing, but I don't know that that has happened later. I think we could even have
things tentatively done by the Sunday. We can always move them, but having some ideas in place would be good. I do tend to plan my like pilates, so like anything that needs to be reserved in advance that would be like fun for me or that I enjoy. I'm still doing that.
Yeah, well you know this, we're pivoting.
And they said, this discussion of the things you plan in which you know, I like to talk about anchor events for your weekend or one big adventure and one little adventure.
But all of this is something to adjust.
As your kids get older, because they're not going to want to do all of these things with you, right, But you could start to revisit this, like, oh wait, I can choose things for myself, right, And especially if you have older kids who probably will be around and taking care of your younger kids isn't a huge ask. And especially you know, if your youngest kid is maybe eight or nine, and you have a thirteen year old, a fifteen year old whatever, they're not having to do
hands on babysitting for that person. You can start putting in your own stuff even if other people don't want to do things. But we'll talk about that in a minute when we come back from our first ad break. Well, we are back talking all things weekends. We've been talking about anchor events, and I think when we have little kids, we think about, Okay, we're going to put in a trip to the zoo today, we are going to put
in a trip to the aquarium today. Now there becomes a point where the kids absolutely do not want to go to the zoo or the aquarium with you. This sounds like the worst possible thing in the world. Sometimes they would have a good time if they went. We have certainly convinced some children to do things like this, but you have to sort of keep your expectations in check for that. But generally you want to ask yourself going into the weekend, what do I want to remember
from this weekend? Is there something I'm going to do this weekend that if people were saying, hey, Sarah, how is your weekend, you would say on Monday morning, you know, oh, yeah, this is what we did this weekend, or this is what I did this weekend. So what is that thing going to be? And you can plan in a small number of those things over the course of the weekend that you would be excited about. So, what are some recent anchor events or adventures.
That you have had, Sarah?
Recent anchor events? Well, last weekend, we actually had a fun work event and it was on a Friday night, which is not my typical evening of going out, but they threw this sizeable party and I was determined to do it and I did. I actually went straight from work. I brought an outfit with me so I could change out of my scrubs, and that is that did turn out to be like a really memorable part of the weekend.
I guess amusing last weekend as an example. My other bink anchor was impromptu and I did not plan it. But on Sunday morning, I realized that it was Taylor Swift's release movie, and why would I not go to that? So I just said to the kids, like, who would like to come with me? And I got one taker and I took her with me and we had a great time. So that was an example of one where
I didn't do a ton of planning ahead. I mean, obviously I had that invitation for a while sitting there, but I was able to carve out some fun things. So I guess that's my best example of a recent weekend.
Yeah, maybe that the work event was your like big Adventure in the Taylor Swift movie is like your Little Adventure or something like that, if we're going.
To look at that rubric.
Yeah, I would say that the work event was at a totally new venue and it was not something we do all the time, So I think I get Big Adventure for that one. Yeah.
Well, I was thinking back to some previous weekends I did. Oh a couple WEEKDS ago, I went to a Phillies game on Friday. It was actually some friends had rented out a suite for a birthday party, so that was a lot of fun. And then biked Valley Forage with some of my kids on one of the days. Another recent weekend, I went to Longwood Gardens, you know, on a solo trip. Actually again because you could do your
own solo adventures. You don't have to get people to come with you, if you don't have to not do things even if nobody else wants to do anything. And went out to dinner with a friend. Another weekend, I went apple picking with Ruth. That required some bribery to get her to do with me, but we had a good time. And then I went to Chanticlare, which is another botanical garden. This past weekend I sang in a concert,
so that was kind of a big adventure. We did family brunch with all seven of us because Jasper was home visiting for the weekend. So lots of little things that are fun to do. But you know, those are examples of things you would say you remembered from the weekend, right Like I could look back and say, oh, yeah, that's what I did that weekend, And if you were going to have this conversation on Monday totally.
And I like your thought about the time slots, and I think there was a time. So the timeslots that you've had done on the weekend or like Friday night, Saturday day, Saturday after an internight, Sunday day, Sunday night, you don't have to have something huge planned for all of those. In fact, I would argue that for most people that would be too much to have like five
big slotted things. But maybe if you have two of them, like one's a big adventure, one's a little adventure, and a lot of the rest is purposeful down time and maybe a little bit of depending on when you do your kind of household rejuvenation stuff, one block of like okay at grocery shop, I get ready for the week, confine it to a block so it's not taking over
your entire weekend. But there can be a balance there, And I think taking the intimidation out of I have to plan every minute or have every single one of them have something big and memorable in them will take the pressure off of some people who might just find this to seem like a lot.
Yeah, yeah, but it could.
Be little things and I think I had originally started thinking of this because you know, when you have little kids, you have the nap, So when you have to do something before the nap, right, get out and do your adventure for the day, then come on minutes. Then you always want to have a little something for after the nap because otherwise, when the beltdown happens, it's only four
o'clock and you've got hours till bedtime. So if you can push that forward a little bit and have something that's distracting everyone, that that can be great.
But yeah, that's the worst slot. I agree with you with the post map pre dinner. Oh, especially if you have a partner that's like working that day and is maybe not going to come home for dinner or is going to be late, Like oh my gosh, you need something.
Yeah yeah, but you know, Friday night, even having an intention for Friday night, if if that's like a fun dinner with your family, you're going to make or a special dessert, something to welcome the weekend in.
And then I would also be Nightriday.
Yeah, careful about actually thinking of if there is something you would like to do on Sunday evening.
And now I know that Sunday evening is like a work night, right.
You know, it's a school night, as we say, so it won't be late, and it probably won't be elaborate. But having something you are looking forward to on Sunday evening can actually help with those Sunday scaries that sometimes people get because instead of spending all of Sunday afternoon thinking about Monday morning, you're spending Sunday afternoon.
Thinking about whatever fun thing you are doing on Sunday evening.
So that can be a way to make your weekends a little bit more enjoyable too.
Another idea we.
Talked about adventures, and these can be your own adventures too, But make sure you plan in some me time. So what do you want to do for you this weekend, and specifically, are there are times you're going to exercise, like what sort of exercise do you think you are going to do? Is there a hobby you want to make space for? And also do you have things that
you are consciously choosing to do during any downtime? And I think it helps to go into your weekend with a little bit of intention about this, because otherwise it's
very easy to just read headlines half heartedly. Check email, scroll around on social media, put her around the house half heartedly picking things up, but not really because you know, you kind of go to another room and then there's something that needs to be put away, and then you go to another room and there's something that you never really relax. So you want something compelling to do during
your downtime, you know, good idea. Maybe too, if you go to the library, do this sort of late in the week so you have your new books ready for the weekend.
You're a bookstore if you're doing that.
Or maybe it's that if you like to do puzzles, you're sure you have one going for the weekend, or whatever it is. You've laid in a good stack of magazines, how about you, Sarah.
Yeah, reading is a huge one. I feel like if I have a fiction book that I'm into, I often look forward to just having a block of time or I'm going to be in my bed with that book and maybe like finish it or read forty percent of it or something like that. And that usually happens while my kids are playing video games, let's be real, that's what, or doing homework depending on what people have do the next day, So that tends to be one of my
sort of big defaults. Another thing which I'm experimenting with that is new is I just got a print subscription to the New York Times, so that kind of like it's there. And then on Sunday mornings, if you want to have a relaxed morning, you bring the print thing to the table, you have your coffee, and I mean for me, I mostly like read book reviews, but that's fun.
Yeah, well then you know what books you're gonna read.
And again, this is something that would just not work if you have an eighteen month old, right, like, yeah, you know, you're trying to sit there and read your coffee and they're screaming.
You have to get up and get something for them.
And then you know, it's just aggravating to the nth degree to like want to relax and not be able to. And so again we have to have different expectations, like when you have little kids, your weekends are gonna be planned around what you're gonna.
Do that's fun for them.
And then if you want downtime, which your course, you're gonna want downtime, you need to actively plan it in like you trade off with your partner.
Okay, you get Sunday morning to do your thing.
I get Saturday morning to do my thing, or we each take three hours on Saturday afternoon and do our own thing and then we you know, even I think it would be a good idea to map out who is on with the little kids when you're all in the house, right so that mom, because let's be real, it's going to be mom who would be the default in most cases, can in fact relax at the house because she knows that somebody is actively on with the
kid and that's got to be mapped out. But you don't if they are not little kids anymore.
And I would put on huge encouragement to if you do map something like this out, try to leave. And I know you heard me talk about lying in my bed and reading books, and that's what you really want to do. You're tired, and you're like, but you can't. It's very unlike you're gonna hear screams, You're gonna hear fights, Like it's gonna be better. See what you can think of that would be relaxing and rejuvenating if that's what
you're looking for that is not in your home. One thing to think about would be an exercise class that does not feel like hard work or torture like a yin yoga class, for example, it's like, you know what, you're gonna get to be quiet and lay on pillows and you'll be left alone, or going to Starbucks for an hour and getting your favorite drink and reading a book or something like that, because if you have had this discussion of a swap, you want to make the
most of those hours and it's just going to probably be difficult if you're staying in your own home. If they're home now, if they.
Left, great, Yeah, then you get to do what you want at home, which is even better, Sarah. You like to do some baking projects sometimes, right, Like this is a thing that happens on weekends.
Yeah, this is a fit really common thing on and this you know when your kids are like not eighteen months, but maybe like four or five and older, you know, in that age group where you know, this could potentially be something that you do as a something to do after nap time kind of a thing that also is somewhat productive because hey, you'll have those pumpkin muffins for the morning or whatever you decide to put together. But I like it even more when I can do it by myself.
Yeah, yeah, it's relaxing. Cooking by yourself can be relaxing. Cooking with people underfoot not so much.
With this.
One idea is that you could choose things that are that could be chores, like cooking or baking, but you can do them for fun. However, most of us do have some sort of chores we have to do on the weekend, So with that, you might want to set a small window for doing those things so they are not always possibilities. Right, So we're a big fan of like outsourcing housekeeping, getting groceries delivered or anything like that.
But if you are doing those things, maybe you say, okay, we clean house from ten thirty to noon on Saturday morning. Everyone participates outside of that, we are not cleaning the house, and you will probably get the things that most had
to happen done during that time. And then you know, if you're finding yourself looking at a dirty floor on Friday night, you're not spending all of Friday night cleaning out because you know there's a time for that Saturday morning and most of the things will get done.
Then, Yeah, compartmentalizing sounds awesome. I definitely think if you're looking for kid participation in any chores and your kids are older again, then that eighteen month window, having a deal that they have to pick up XYZ before they turn on their game of choice can be incredibly effective.
Yeah, and with that, we often have these projects we want to get done on the weekend. We're like, oh, well, this is the time I'm going to clean out the garage, this is the time that I'm going to organize everyone's winter clothes or whatever it is. And that's fine because again, you probably are going to do it on the weekend
and not during the week. However, you want to make sure that you only bite off the amount you can chew on a weekend and the amount that's not going to make you feel stressed and like you are a failure when you don't finish it. So I would suggest making yourself a very short weekend to do list, like the things that absolutely have to happen, and you can do one thing beyond maybe two if it's a low key weekend, but one or two things beyond basic life maintenance.
So yeah, you know you're gonna do the laundry and grocery shopping. But if there is one or two other small things you are going to do. Set that as a goal for yourself, and then only do that, and then you'll accomplish it and you'll feel good. So a previous weekend, I decided I was going to clean off the shelves in the upstairs movie room. Right, they'd gotten really cluttered over the course of the past year with nobody putting things away.
So I went and did that. They look better. That was my thing for the weekend. Nothing else.
I did that with my book decluttering, like you know, I'm trying to organize and declutter key areas, and putting an entire room on my list for the Sunday would have made me do absolutely nothing. But I'm like, oh, I'm going to do is go to my bookshelf and figure out what books I'm ready to donate.
And I did it there and they're diaty.
Go, they're in the garage, they're out of the house, so we're good.
Yeah.
And if you have a big project, you're like, we have to clean out the garage. Spread it over like six weekends, right and look at it. Shine a specifical task. Yes, this idea shelf is this weekend, that shelf is next weekend. This pile on the floor is the next weekend, and you will get through it and you will not feel overwhelmed. We're gonna take one more quick ad break and then
we will be back with more on making good weekends. Well, we are back talking all things weekends, how to create enjoyable, relaxing weekends, with the caveat, of course, that our youngest children are now at the age where they don't have to be constantly supervised. So if you have young kids, we understand that weekends are not automatically relaxing, and there are certain strategies you can do consciously trading off with your partner or hiring childcare for a few hours. We'll
discuss that more in a little bit. But you can also have the mindset that I should enjoy my weekends and this goes a long way toward making weekends more enjoyable. Pursuing pleasure and consciously pursuing pleasure is really a two step process. I mean one, you want to solve any pain points. Is there anything you can do that you find on weekends very painful that you can solve? So? Are you driving all day to kids sporting events? According to your plan? That you're looking at, Well, do you
need to do that? Can you spread that around with other people? Can you skip one of them?
I don't know.
Is there something that could happen or is there something fun you can do there? Like is there a cool bookstore that's nearby the soccer place that you could spend your time there or go for a run while you're there instead of just feeling like you've lost your entire weekend to this.
Yeah, I definitely think this is where trade offs come in as well. If you know that there are a couple of kid birthday parties and two parents, then you are not maybe two of them is going to make the weekend feel like too much, but one of them would be okay. Then embrace the socialista, so the one you choose to go to, and then figure out how you can swap off for the other one.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe there's one that, like you would be particularly more excited about doing than you know your spouse doesn't hate chuck E cheese.
I don't know, whatever you can work out between the two of you.
And you can also you solve the pain points and then also come up with little ways you can up the pleasure factor.
Like, what are you eating on the weekend? Have you thought through your meals?
Like are there good things to eat in your house so you're excited about like your Saturday morning breakfast?
Right, you're not just you know, eating cold cereal again?
Or something we talked about having good things to read, Like if it's pretty outside, are you going to get outside at some point? Are you listening to fun music while you're in the car, Like do you have something good to listen to? You know what you want to listen to? Like, think about ways you can push a little bit more pleasure into the crevices of your weekend.
Yeah, even a favorite show that you're going to watch, or I don't know, if you have to take a kid to Target to get thing? Can you spend ten minutes in this section of your choice, like maybe looking at all the stationary and planners for next year? You know things like.
That could be done. Sounds fun? Yeah?
No, I mean when you do all these things, you know you plan ahead when you consider the anchor advents or adventures you want to be talking about that you remember on Monday morning when you going through my list here, Oh my goodness. When you plan in me time, you think through your downtime, you compress your chores and errands, and then you consciously pursue pleasure. You can have really awesome weekends, and we want that for everyone listening to this.
So today's question is related to this, though, which is that somebody wrote in that I work full time, and not coincidentally, we also have full time childcare. Is it okay to hire a babysitter for a few hours on the weekend. I know it might be okay for the occasional date night, but what about like regularly during the day.
I feel guilty about this, Sarah, what do you think?
Oh my gosh, Well, I love your answer, but I will just tell you that I used to do this I don't need to do it anymore again, because I'm at a different stage. But there was a time in my life when I fairly regularly would get someone from like I don't know, ten to two or something like that on a Saturday, especially if Josh was on call, so I knew there was like really no switching off to be had, And oh my gosh, the difference that
those few hours made in my happiness was immense. The difference that those hours made in my children's life was zero or maybe even positive because they got a break from me, they had fun with their babysitter, they got to do something else, and the idea looking back on
having like really any in trepidation about that. It seems so crazy because also, like doing the math, Laura's teaches us how many hours we have, and four hours out of your whole weekend is not even that significant, but it's gonna feel significant if it's a difference between you having no time for yourself and you having time too. I used to go to it's not even open anymore, but I used to go to a fly bar at bar class. I felt all fancy. That was an example
of a fitness class that wasn't torture. So it was like, I'm getting out of the house, I'm doing something for myself, and it's also not even that hard, so it's just fun.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, if you're not seeing your kid at.
All during the week, I don't know.
If you're one of those people who is in fact gone constantly and all that, then maybe you probably should focus your weekends on spend family time. But I'm guessing very few people listening to this fall into that category, and hiring a few hours sitter for a few hours on a weekend can be life changing. I mean, obviously, trading off with your spouse is a very straightforward thing to do and cost nothing, and so most people can avail themselves of that immediately in order to.
Get more meat time.
Now, if that doesn't work for whatever reason, or if you too want to spend some time together which is also allowed, which is also allowed, then this is where bringing in somebody else can be helpful. And I would point out that many people who live near grandparents, and if the grandparents want to be helpful like and drop the kids off at Grandma's for a few hours and get that time together, if you don't have that available, again, the paid help is just approximating either your spouse, your
extended family, or anything like that. If those things are not available to you, So yeah, go for it. I mean, you might want to think about when would be most strategic. I mean, obviously, sometimes sitters like to have enough hours to make it worth their while, So maybe you might do something like three o'clock to nine o'clock on Saturday, right so you would miss the post nap meltdown, they'd get fresh blood in there for that.
You could go.
Work out, or you guys each could go see a friend and then you meet up for dinner or a movie afterwards and have your Saturday night date. And that would be a great way to feel like you really got a weekend and that Saturday was fun as opposed to being all the work of caring for children, because again,
I mean it's fun. Like, we love babies, we have a ton of them, but they are a lot of work, and especially if you are the person who's primarily caring for them, they are a lot of work and you wind up with very little time to relax, and people need time to relax.
That's one of the things that make people feel most stressed.
Totally agree, So we give you a full permission slip signed.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, all right, So love of the week mine is I'm going to say kids who are old enough to babysit, because it so makes the logistics easier. I'm pondering, I mean, we just need a lot more help if we didn't have that now. But the fact that you can like leave most of my kids by themselves for a bit, and two of them who are home right now can be left in charge of others. It makes everything so much easier to figure out, which I appreciate it totally.
Well, mine is something simple, But I don't want to take this for granted. I love reservations like the fact that you can make sure to even book online, not even have to talk to anyone, and then know that you're going to have like a table big enough for your family at a restaurant at a time you guys want to eat. That is so nice because the alternative is so frustrating, and so yeah, I embrace it, good old reservation and I guess we'll add to that apps like resi or open Table.
Now.
I know they're not always the best thing for restaurants because sometimes they have to give a portion of whatever, But if you haven't made a reservation and it's Saturday night and you have five people or more in your family so it's like harder to find a table, you can look to see who has a table available and actually book it on your phone while you're driving around, saving yourself the heartache. So I have both of those apps on my phone. I use them, and I love it.
Yeah, technology is great for having a sufficient information to make decisions.
Which is very efficient. Love it all right? Well, this has been best of both worlds.
We've been talking about how to fall in love with your weekends again. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram.
And you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
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