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 early Ish April of twenty twenty four. We're going to be talking all things memory keeping and with that traditions and celebrations to topics that kind of go along with the idea of memory keeping, especially during the busy years which we know so many of our listeners are building your careers, raising young families. You know, time is mostly spoken for. It can be challenging to think about the meta aspects of time. You know,
how can we honor the past? How can we create occasions that we will want to remember as future us looking back on the past. But thinking about these meta aspects of time can make time and life in general feel more rich and full, like you're not just on a hamster wheel that time. You know, it's not just sliding on this slicknoleum floor into you know, the future or something. You've actually got this tapestry that is brilliant
and colored and wonderful. So anyway, many metaphors I have been mixing there, but I do believe it is worth putting a little bit of effort into it, right.
Sarah, Yes, I love this.
I always think about the three selves that you have spoken about before. You have the anticipating self, which gets to an enjoy event even before it happens. You have the experiencing self that's actually there at the event. That's probably the smallest amount of time given most things. And then there's the remembering self, which gets to reflect and remember and maybe even celebrate the event after the effect.
And we've discussed how there are certain life experiences that serve our remembering selves the best, an example being perhaps a Disney trip.
I mean, maybe that's just us. Maybe other people.
Have the most amazing experiencing selves on their Disney trips, but for us, it's all about the anticipation for the kids and the memories for us, so thinking about how we want to honor those memories with kind of purposeful actions or tangible I don't know, like things that represent what we've done can be really really valuable to kind of stretch out that remembering piece for these events and not just let them slid right past.
As you said, Linoleum, though that was new.
You like that one.
Yeah, now I was thinking about this. I mean, there are moments of Disney that the experiencing self is happy with. I mean, I enjoy some of the rides, for instance. I mean that's why people go on roller coasters, as they are actually pretty fun. But there are moments for the experiencing self, and then the rest of it is more about creating the memories and maybe hoping that the experiencing self isn't too cranky about the whole experience of
waiting in a line with small and fidgety children. But you know, as you said, the present is so fleeting, And this is one of these fascinating things. If you read about the philosophy of time, of how people studied time and thought about time over the years, the present itself is almost nonexistent, right because as soon as it happens.
It is in the past, and yet that is the only thing we are currently experiencing in our physical bodies, and so it has this bigger footprint than the fleeting nature of it would be.
I don't know.
I read this whole thing with William James. There's like, how do we figure out what the present is? I mean, working memory is a certain number of seconds, but you can't distinguish two things that are less than about half a second apart.
So we've got angels dancing.
On the head of a pen here is basically what we come down to and trying to figure out the definition of the present.
But I love how much deeper this episode got than its conception.
But that's good. I think that's good.
We like thinking about time, reflecting on time, and speaking of how we record things in time. Let's go back and get a little bit more concrete to thinking about.
How we used to.
I don't know, have memories kept throughout our childhood before the digital age is upon us now, But back then things were really different, and I think it's kind of useful to think about how things have changed and what we might miss from that age and what we are glad is different.
So I don't know. I'll start.
So, I grew up as you did in the eighties and nineties, and my parents' memories were preserved as mostly photographs which they developed put in albums, and then there were some rare video clips. But we didn't have a camera in our family. My uncle did, so a very disproportionate number of our family videos have my in them because it was his camera and they were probably around
when he was there. And then there's also like some random audio tracks that we have that my dad has kind of passed around from when I was playing violin and singing, so that's kind of cool. And then that's about it. I did not keep old journals. I did not keep high school memorabilia. I might have one yearbook
lying around, kind of crazy. I don't think I should have kept everything, Like, I stand by my desire not to have boxes and boxes to sip through, but maybe like one or two shoe boxes worth of childhood memories.
Would have been worthwhile, and I don't have that.
Yeah, I mean, we have the standard occasional family photos printed up in albums. I don't know, I mean, I guess I don't find it all that interesting out I spent a whole lot of time looking back through those albums if I happen to be visiting my parents or anything like that, although I do find the more distant
past a little bit more interesting. And my mom has digitized some of these old family photos and she posted one recently that featured It was an extended family photo and she was sitting on the lap or next to my I mean her mother, my maternal grandmother, who I have never met because she died when my mother was fairly young, and so it was weird to see this woman who as a young woman, I have some photos of her, but just really don't have that many and
certainly have no memory of her, to see what she looked like and see, you know, is there any family resemblance.
I think we have the same chin, So yeah, no, it was kind of cool to see.
Which I'll put this out as a public service announcement here for anyone listening to this that if your parents have not done this, you know, if they have not gone through the process of like downsizing or you know, going through all their old stuff, they may have a lot of old photos or albums or things like this, and the ravages of time are not kind to anyone or to physical object, and so you might want to help them digitize these before their basement gets flooded, before
you know it completely warps in a heat wave that gets their attic you know, unusable for a couple of days, and all the photos are then messed.
Up by it. It would just be worth.
Doing with at least some of them, because then you can have, you know, a record, even if the physical object doesn't necessarily last. So public service announcement might want to do that.
I will say I have one tangible object from my childhood that somehow has made it and it happens to be my journal from second grade, which is in a mead notebook and is very whiny.
Yeah, yes, that's what journals are.
We've discussed how maybe maybe we don't want our own journals necessarily being read, But that one's okay because it was like seven No.
I sent Sarah a note that I mean, I found a bunch of myne old journals, you know, in bags and stuff as we've been going through boxes, and I you know, if I should, you know, if something ever happens to me, I think Sarah could fly up here and like burn them, right, that would be her service to my legacy, that nobody else would ever need to see these things. That would probably be be better for
everyone on this planet. But these days, you're keeping more of your memories through your blog, and in fact, your blog is I mean approaching sort of vintage status at this point.
Oh yes, okay, so we'll fast forward to today.
We're kind of like that's how things were done in the old days and now in recent times. Yes, I would say for me, my biggest personal memory keeping tool is everything that's archived at the shoebox dot com and goes back to two thousand and four.
There were not a lot of.
Photos because I didn't think I knew how to post them until maybe two thousand and six or two thousand and seven. But still there is, I mean, there is just quite a treasure trove. Not to mention it is the right how do I put this, like the amount of personal journal that what I was comfortable of putting online.
So it has some fairly intimate thoughts, but nothing that I couldn't have broadcast out into the world, although sometimes I read some of myself and it was like really, but still not as bad as what you're talking about would need to be burned.
So it's really really fun to have that.
And I can see why for other people who that's the only thing holding them to social media, like I have all my kids' photos in here, you know, I save my kid's childhood and instant stories or something like that, I could see why that would would drive them to want to stay. Because for me, it's easy for me to say, well.
I don't need to keep that.
But that's because I have this other digital record that I have built. So I don't know, start a blog. No, I'm just kidding, but it is really really nice to have that. In terms of photos, we are I don't know, we're not the world's most organized about this, but I'm very much at peace with what we do have, possibly because I do have so many digitally through my website. But we printed photos until maybe two thousand and six,
and we have a bunch of those around. Our wedding album is not an album form, it's just a bunch of we have, like the negatives, and we have a million photos that our photographer gave us like kind of like four x six size maybe, and they're in plastic sheets. That's our wedding album. I'm fine with it, like it's not even a project. I am whatever.
I get so terrible.
I'm terrible about sentimentality about certain things. And I'm happy we have those photos, but I don't feel like I need them in any other format.
And then twenty eight to twenty ten is.
Kind of like a little bit of no man's land because I think like a lot of the photos were on digital cameras but then didn't make it onto the hard drive they got switched. So when I searched those years on Google Photos, I don't find much.
It's just kind of sad.
But then starting in twenty ten and twenty eleven and beyond, like I have, we have almost everything, so I feel really good about it. It's not organized, but it's completely searchable. And I guess there is the possibility that Google Photos would like die, but I have to imagine that if they were going to die, they would give some sort of warning first so we could pull everything off. So I'm just gonna go with that one hope.
You know, Apple Photos, however, disappears, and there's a lot of people their photos tied to their Apple ID will be gone forever. Yeah, there's this interesting gap for us and the technology too. So we have a ton of printed photos of Jasper as a baby in two thousand and seven, right, and we would print those pictures and we used a digital movie camera at some point in
there to take lots of videos. And then I know, I started taking a lot more photos of Sam on my phone because I got an iPhone in it was the very end of two thousand and nine, beginning of twenty ten, I believe, so that's when he was a baby, and so I started taking most of my photos on that as opposed to the digital camera that we then would send the files into Shutterfly and get them printed up.
So there's kind of this total fall off, and like printed photos of babies that happens after Jasper and to Sam and not just what always happens with the second kid. It's because the technology itself had completely changed, and so then I think I wasn't using social media as much until a couple of years after that, and so there's this gap that suddenly there start being more photos I don't know, around twenty twelve or something, and everything is
more available. We have printed photo like books of most of the years, so we have at least did that or did it from photo sessions that we did when the kids were little and then got a couple of years behind a few years ago. But Ruth has taken that job over and our family. She has access to all my photos that I take on my phone because her iPad is the same Apple ID I guess as my phone, and so she has gone and made several albums and they're really cute. So you know, yay solution
there outsourced things to your kids. They may have the time to do it. We're going to take a quick ad break and then we will be back with more on memory keeping, traditions and celebrations.
So back to talking about photos.
I was just going to tell you that, even though I have no desire to create a beautiful wedding album, because I'm happy with our pictures in plastic sleeves, they're their own memory, I guess I do want to have family photo albums. I like doing one for each year, and we have one up until twenty twenty one, so I still have to do twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three.
But I think I will do what you did and ask Annabel if she's interested in this project, perhaps for a small hourly rate of some kind and that way we can be done and she can have something to do. It seems like it would be a lovely summer project for us.
Yeah, you guys aren't as big on like taking family photos with a photographer, are you.
Or we've done it twice total, once when at of all was a baby, and then once in twenty nineteen.
That was a great photo shoot.
Actually it was done at my in law's fiftieth anniversary, and my sister in law got the idea to hire a photographer and do family photos. And the amazing thing about that is like we were able to share the cost and then we got all these big group shots and we also got our own like nuclear families, and
some individual pictures as well. So I highly recommend that idea, like doing a photograph around a gathering, and also everyone's dressed up and looks nice for the gathering, and if it's in a pretty setting, like oh my gosh, all the stars have aligned and you can come away with something really special.
So we're overdue to do that again.
Maybe I'll do it for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversaries.
Oh, that would be awesome. Yeah, you should totally do that.
We did that when my parents had their fiftieth wedding anniversary. We gathered my side of the family, obviously in a beach house for the week, and my sister in law hired a photographer to come take it. She suggested that we either all wear light blue and khaki or white on top and jeans, and so we went with the white and jeans, and we have those photos of us, and I think it came out really great because you know, you're on the beach and that actually looks like good
coloring on a beach and works for most people. And like you said, we got the individual photos too that we could then use for our Christmas card. So when we gathered this past summer for my husband's side of the family, we were celebrating his mother's eighty fifth birthday, and we you know, she rented us all a giant compound and turks and caicos for a week. We hired a photographer. I suggested doing this, like, let's hire a photographer, and so you know, it's funny, I did the same thing.
I'm like, okay, everyone wear jeans and white. So I got a bunch of questions writing up to this like okay, short's okay? Or do you have to wear pants? Or you know, like if it's a tank top white, is that okay? Or should be a blouse?
You know.
But everyone made it work, and I think a lot of people did wind up using that photo or those extended family photos as spot cards this year.
So it is.
Always a pain to hire a photographer to stop what you're doing to get everyone to pose.
You know, nobody wants to do it.
It's really kind of tedious in the moment, but you will be happy you did it. And I think a lot of us could stand to put a little bit more work and time into documenting the presence so we can remember it. And that's why you keep that five year journal, right, So maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, so I am doing you guys know, I use a lot of paper planners, and I'm always people are a gas that I don't keep every planner from every year, but I just don't want to leave that behind, Like seems kind of gross to have like a book for every year building it.
I don't know, like I don't want to see my pass like that.
But a five year journal feels okay because Honestly, I can picture a shelf of five year journals up from now until I'm one hundred, and it doesn't take up like a horrible.
Amount of space.
So somehow it doesn't bother me in the same way. Maybe it's just too morbid. I don't know, but yeah, yeah, I love doing the five year journal because on each day I'm on year four of five of the one that I have.
I wish I had started this before then.
I guess I have my blog, so it's not like we're like in a vacuum, but I just put like basically what happened the day before. Like, I don't write a lot. I've write a few lines. I usually do it in color. I kind of play with pens when I do it. It's like a little meditative act I
do in the morning. And yeah, it's so fun to look back on, especially because the when I have now starts at twenty twenty one, and you know, it wasn't twenty twenty, but twenty twenty one, especially early twenty twenty one, was a very very different lifestyle than.
We are all enjoying right now.
Plus I had little, little kids, and so to be able to see how things have changed as I go from top to bottom on each day is super cool. One thing I'll say if you decide to do this is if you have some blank spaces, it does not matter. So do not be one of those people who start one and enjoy it and then they miss three days and then they're like, Okay, I can't do this, Like there are absolutely missing slots in mind, but more slots are filled out than aren't filled out, and that's way good enough.
So don't be a perfectionist about it you decide to do this.
Yeah, the perfect does not need to be the enemy of the good. For those who are on social media, obviously, Facebook will do those time hop things often where they show you your memories from twelve years ago today, and you know that is a kind of cool thing to see, especially if your kids were Probably if you had kids twelve years ago, they obviously looked a lot different than they do now, so that is always kind of fun to see what you are thinking about.
At the moment.
My time logs are serving this function for me right now, So longtime listeners know that I began tracking my time in April of twenty fifteen, which you do the math, that is nine years ago now, so there are some extensive memories documented of every half hour of Laura's life since twenty fifteen. But I have been employing this more as a memory keeping kind of thing as opposed to how many hours do I spend working or driving or
emptying the dishwash or anything like that. And the particular way I do it is that I match up the Monday start date. So for a couple of years, I would see that the ones I had saved on my current laptop matched the Monday date that I was doing. So December, like seventeen of twenty twenty three was the same day of the week as December seventeen of twenty twenty seventeen. Sorry, twenty twenty three match twenty seventeen, and
so I was starting twenty eighteen. And then of course we had leap year, so that shifted it again, so now I'm five years behind. So these days I'm looking at the weeks from twenty nineteen. So that's kind of exciting because I'm getting up into the point where I'm going to learn that Henry is on his way, so I'm kind of looking forward to seeing.
That on the log and remembering all that. So yeah, it was.
It kind of tedious to do, not terribly, I mean, like the five year journal, it's only three minutes a day for me, but knowing how I spent an entire week in like early twenty nineteen is kind of priceless at this point because there's no way I could recreate it.
At this point, I would have no idea.
But since I have the artifact of that time, I can in fact call it back up.
Are you tempted to now copy and paste a photo?
Like? Oh yes?
We read a grateful Kay Kaylen Lopez blog and she has been tracking her time continuously for several months now at least, and she has done this more and explicitly memory keeping way where she pastes in photos on the Excel file. And that's really awesome. I think that's great, and that will be even better to look back on than what I have, which is words on a screen. But you know, I have to rely on my brain to pull it back up. So moving on just a
little bit, pivoting to the idea of traditions. We're including this in this episode because these are things that we choose to do over and over again and honor them as special. So they will in fact become memories through sheer repetition, and then as you do them again, they become opportunities to look back on your life in the
previous times you did whatever this tradition might happen to be. So, Sarah, maybe you could talk a little bit about why you think traditions are worth trying to make happen.
Yeah, I mean, I was reflecting on the difference between something that's just routine, like because once their roles around, we don't know go to tap class, versus tradition, like why do we choose to elevate certain things and not elevate other things? And I mean I think, if anything, we should err on the side of turning more things into traditions. And like just kind of I think there's just like a level of attention or a little level of celebration that can bring certain things we do over
and over again to the forefront. I do think if it's something very very frequent, it's hard to call it a tradition. Again, like Wednesday tap class. If perhaps like the last Friday of every month, your family loves to go out to the movies, then that could be considered a tradition, and that would just like elevate it a little bit more. I think that hearing other people's traditions
can be really, really fun and inspiring. So I think we should take this opportunity to share some of our family traditions so that people can therefore reflect on theirs. And I will say one natural thing that does happen with traditions is you compare it with years past, Like that's what I think humans love. One of the things humans love about holidays, other than the chance to just connect and get together and celebrate, is like it automatically
invokes the prior ones. Right each Thanksgiving, we think, oh, like last year I had a babe at this event, or last year we held it here, or last year this family member was with us, and since then they've passed. Like these things are really important. They mark milestones. So I think traditions are just awesome and we should pay attention to them and perhaps cultivate more of them. So a few non typical traditions that we have in our house include an annual graduation dinner at the melting Pot.
Graduation every year. Yes okay, we're graduating from fourth grade? Sounds good? Yes, okay, end of school year dinner school year.
Okay, the restaurant is absolutely like the kid's choice. Yeah, but they love it. They look forward to it. We always go in June.
There's like always a thunderstorm that we're dodging on the way because that's the weather we have.
But it's like, I don't know, we love it.
And actually we've started to invite grandparents to this tradition, so it's just kind of.
Getting more and more elevated.
We do something when you're ten, you get to pick your family's upcoming trip destination ten or thereabouts, depending on timing. We do first day of school ice cream. That's just always a thing, It's a given. We have some traditions
tied to different vacation spots, specifically Amelia Island. That's the place our family has gone the most times, while other than Philadelphia on my parents' hospital, like the non family location, and we do things like we always have dinner like at this seafood place with a pirate and it does feel like a tradition just because we like seek out
these same experiences every time. I think one newer tradition that we have kind of cultivated accidentally is to always go to Arii and buy stuff before vacations that have an outdoorsy component, Like I think it gets us in the mood, like what do we.
Need for this?
Like what kind of adventures are we going to go on? And yeah, we're headed to do that in two days. So yeah, tradition lives on. And then I mean there are also holiday traditions. I've talked about the Valentine's Day treasure hunt in our house. The kids buy gifts for the Mother's and Father's Day and we try to make them kind of nice. I love to do July fourth in Philadelphia, and Jewish holidays are almost always at Josh's
family's house because they put on really lovely celebrations. So yeah, those are just a few of our specific family traditions.
But it was actually really.
Fun to reflect on what they are and think about what could perhaps be at it as the kids get older.
Awesome, Well, we're gonna take one more quick ad break and then I'll be back talking about a few of my family's tradition. Well, we are back. We've been talking memory keeping, now traditions, and we'll get to celebrations in just a minute. Although that is totally related, some overlap here. We have a few family traditions that have become ones over time that we've consciously created, like getting family pajamas at Christmas, so we order a matching set for everyone, and we've done this for.
Boy five six years.
Five years, and so we have a lot of pajamas, but the kids seem to.
Like it, so we do it.
We have started the tradition of doing sibling gifts at Christmas, which is another one that would not be able to be taken away very easily. We go to the same town on the Jersey Shore Ocean Grove every summer, and for the past few years we've actually stayed at the same house, so it's kind of like our beach house without being our beach house and having to deal with all that. But that vacation features a ton of traditions
because we have been there so often. Like we often go to Day's Ice Cream, we go to the Silver Brawl arcade in Asbury, mikel and I often stop at the Asbury Beer Garden.
There's just a lot of different things.
I was reflecting bringing this back to the Disney part from earlier in this episode.
I feel like.
We've been to Disney enough times now that parts of that are starting to feel a bit like tradition, Like, hey, here we are waiting for the safari at Animal Kingdom Park again.
We've done that a great many times.
I actually find traditions.
I find that the most fun part of Disney doing stuff again and again and like remembering it and like, oh here we are, Yeah, same thing. I mean, we have different ones that we do, but I think that's part of their business plan to keep things very much the same. So it does feel like, you know, ritual almost Yeah. Yeah, Well, let's just do a quick look at celebrations. Obviously, traditions and celebrations are very tightly entwined, but this is a time of year with a lot
of celebrations. So kid birthday parties, Sarah, what of the birthday party norms have you like learned over time as
you've been observing this. Yeah, so, I mean I feel like the little kid parties are big family parties, and certainly where I live, people go very over the top in some cases, and then they become much more kid centric kind of around four or five, and then the drop off sort of kind of seems to gradually start around seven, although even past that, I mean we had Cameron's tenth, and we had parents that stayed I think more for convenience than for any concern of what, you know,
whether their kid could be alone. And then there's like this other shift which I wasn't necessarily ever thinking about, where I think there's.
An age where your kid doesn't necessarily want.
A party but would rather like do something special with a friend or with a family or things like that, and I feel like that's around maybe well, I don't know, I'm just headed into that territory now.
Yeah.
Yeah, it depends that we've had like a small number of kids over to the house for something that the older kids want to do. And I think Jasper's trying to plan an outing to a tea place. He really likes tea, and there's this place called a Taste of Britain in the area that does a high tea, so I think he and his friends might be doing that, which is kind of kind of random. Do you guys do much for your anniversary each year? I'm just curious.
Yeah, we do, actually, I mean I would say we try to make that when we do a getaway. We can't always time it exactly for the anniversary. Sometimes it's more around my birthday. Those two are very close together, but we do we usually try to either do some sort of really nice in or out. Well, this year, we're going to be, as we'll talk about in a future episode, you know, running a marathon that weekend, so it'll be fun and togetherness and a really nice celebration.
So we do, and we don't do gifts for anniversary. I mean, the gift is like getting to spend time together. That's a yeah, big gift. Mostly don't need new stuff.
But you had a great tip in here about looking at the family calendar because people like to have a certain amount of celebrating in life, Like we always want something to look forward to, and there are certain times of year where they come fast and furious, and sometimes people have their children exactly two years apart, so then you wind up with like three birthdays in a row and one month or something like that. But if the calendar is a little bit sparse, it might be worth
thinking about. I mean, you've done that.
Yeah, I love doing this.
I mean this is kind of part of my annual planning practice where we kind of think about what the big rocks are in the year, and when I see months that are just like, oh my god, there's nothing fun, Like you have to find something and maybe that's something can be a celebration. So you gave a great example of birthdays being clustered, which in our house they are. There are no birthdays between May and December.
In our family.
Everybody is in those five months beforehand, and so I'm like, well, what's in that frame. Hmmm, My blog's anniversary, that's an important birthday. Our podcast anniversary, that's a very important milestone. So trying to think of other things that perhaps could be celebrated in those slower times.
Yeah, it's funny. I think the professional ones we tend not to think about quite as much. I mean, obviously, if you work for a giant corporation that is like somebody does this, like does this as a policy, like you know, twenty years or ten years or Whatever's that's awesome. I don't know how many places like even do that anymore. But throw yourself apart, like I've been in this job
five years. I mean, whether you intend to stay or not, you could celebrate your longevity for that and what you've learned over the course of five years and the people you have met over the course of five years, and I don't know, get yourself a cupcake or something.
It could be.
I'm realizing that I had my tenth work anniversary and I didn't even notice it.
I wish I had. I wish I could go back, but I guess I'll have to wait for fifteen.
You would have given yourself a cupcake.
Yeah, or like asked my practice manager to buy me a cup or something like that.
I could at least pay for my Starbucks today. All Right, so this question, we're going to pivot to the question here. This listener writes in, I am looking for fresh ideas for date nights, so, you know, getting a little bit tired just going out to the same restaurant over and over again.
Sarah, what would you suggest?
Yeah, I think that I should take this advice as much as I'm giving it. But I think day dates are underrated. I always Actually I'm going to give a shout out to Kelsey from the Girl next Door podcast. She's all about the date eate. She and her husband do a lot of this, and I love that idea. Because you're not tired, you can like do something, So you could go to a museum, you could go to a hike. It would be an opportunity to hike without any kids complaining about the distance.
How cool would that be.
You could also keep it at a normal time, but like maybe turn your restaurant seeking into some kind of quest, like we're going to go to the top three rated Miami restaurants, or we are going to try every Peruvian place in the area and figure out which one is the best, like, you know, turning it into some sort of activity where you maybe even want to like take notes or I don't know, like just elevating it a
little bit. And then one thing we are planning on doing soon, which is inspired by my friend who is super into yoga, is that she's going to have us come for a yoga date where she has this class that she likes at like four point thirty on a Saturday.
She lives in Miami Beach, so to be perfect, we'll drive down, we'll go, we'll all do yoga together, and then that area is walking distance from some like really nice restaurants, so we'll just like but casual, so we can go in our yoga gear, so we'll just like mosey out and get some dinner afterward together.
So I'm really looking forward to.
That sounds awesome. Yeah, I'll throw out one.
One random idea is that I heard this from somebody recently that they hired a sitter to take their kids out, Like the sitter took the three kids out to a movie, which allowed this couple to enjoy some time in their home by themselves, for whatever they chose to do with it. So I'm just going to throw that out there as
an idea. I will say that sporting events are kind of different in that you're watching something but it's you know, it just probably you don't go to that many that are like professional or college level or something like that. I really enjoyed going to a six Ers game with
Michael last year. But even more so, just something to think about with trying to come up with interesting date ideas is that if you have little kids, actually booking regular babysitting for a time that you might have a date night can encourage you to be a little bit more creative about this, because if you know you have every Friday night, then you start looking for things that
are happening on Friday night. Or it doesn't have to rise to the level of, oh, would we get a sitter for this right, because you already have the sitter. So you could be like, well, why don't we go to this farmer's market and then see if this thing that's festival in a local square is any good or not. Like you probably wouldn't get a sitter just to do that, But if you know you already have this sitter, then you're willing to try things that are a little bit more.
Out of the box because the time is protected.
So just throwing that out as an idea awesome, right, Sarah Love of the Week.
Yes, I'm going to be basic.
I love that we have a Starbucks at my hospital where I work, like we didn't always, so it's just amazing. And I've definitely gotten into a oat milk cappuccino have it lately, especially when I have a lot to do and I want a little bit of extra cappine in my system.
I just love it.
I look forward to it, and I don't do it every day but maybe twice a week and savor it every single time.
Yeah, we have quite the Starbucks habit around here. I would say they're more order ahead app I've wound up using a lot now. It just makes it so much easier because then you're not wait in the store, which is one thing if you're going to the store and hanging out with someone there or a kid or whatever.
But if you are.
Just procuring the drinks, not having to wait around for them is really cool. So you know, put in the order five minutes ahead of time, drive over on your way, and.
Then pick it up. It's great.
We've been getting a lot of strawberry aside lemonade refreshers. Probably will get even more as we get into the summer, and the cold beverages sounds more and more appealing in the afternoon.
I would say that happens more days per week than not. So yeah, we have quite the Starbucks habit around here. I guess that could be my love of the week from now on. Well, this has been best of both worlds.
We have been talking about all things memory keeping, celebrations and traditions, just putting a plug in for thinking about these things.
Even if you are in the busy.
Years, at some point you're going to be looking back on this, and even you can see yourself looking back on life five years ago. And isn't it nice when you have concrete things to remember? So you might want to be kind to your future self and think about keeping some memories and creating some traditions that your future self can look back on. And 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.
Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.