Parenting Out Loud: Welcome to Our Unscripted Family Journey

"Does anybody else go through these things?" Two different personalities, one aligned parenting goal. Join us as we navigate raising four kids while maintaining our identities. First episode drops soon: Morning Chaos (and why coffee comes first).

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:13

Welcome to our introductory episode of Parenting Out Loud Unscripted. I'm Brandon

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

and I'm Jackie

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

and this isn't going to be a episode like we would normally record. We're going to use this first little part here to just kind of introduce ourselves, who we are, why we're doing this, and How do I go from there?

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

All right, I'll go first. My name is Jackie. I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I'm 34 years old. I'll be 35 pretty soon here in October. We have four kids, and anytime you tell somebody that, they always just are like, oh my God, four kids. And it literally is, oh my God, four kids. We have a five-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 15-year-old, and the chaos is never ending. We are actually a blended family. So Brandon and I actually met when I had two kids of my own and was pregnant with my third. And that's a story for another day. But when me and Brandon met, we just, we've been together for seven years now. And well, longer than that, we've been married for seven years. And basically, I'm a hairstylist here in this small town and I love what I do. And Oh, where to start? I mean, I'm more of the enthusiastic one. I'm into astrology. So I'm a Scorpio through and through. And I love stuff like that. I love weird haunting stories and ghost stories. And that's kind of my personality in a nutshell. And our kids all have their own personalities, which can make parenting kind of hard. And we just this the whole point of the podcast is to just talk about the daily things that we learn and how to do things differently. And also another backstory is we don't have a village. It's just me and my husband and his mom, who we are extremely grateful for. And so we'll talk about the challenges of that and what it's like to be a small family and not have aunts and uncles and cousins who can help you raise your village. So I'll give the mic over to Brandon now so he can introduce himself.

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

All right. Well, my name is Brandon. I'm not quite as interesting as Jackie is. I was born and raised in Georgia, not Las Vegas. So a little difference there. Straight out of high school, just to give you a little back story of where I'm from and what I've done. I joined the military straight out of high school, 17 years old, signed up, went off to basic training shortly after I turned 18. Looking back at that kind of experience, I wouldn't trade it for the world. If I had to relive my life, I would do the same way. I would join the military again. Now, if you ask me to join right now, I definitely wouldn't do it again in life, twice in life, or anything like that. But I enjoyed it. I believe I learned a lot of life experiences from that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:25

I also think it's what shaped your career into what you do now, today. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

I agree with that. Shortly after I had a deployment to Afghanistan, and once I got back from Afghanistan, I started looking into what I was going to do with my life on the civilian side of it. outside of the military so I worked a couple odd new jobs and then found my way into public safety which is where I've been at for about 12 years I absolutely enjoy it but you know like you said I learned a lot from being in Afghanistan simple thing you know toilet paper you know being able to be in Afghanistan and observe those people and how they live and all of the trials and tribulations that they dealt with there, it's nothing compared to our day-to-day life. We complain about stuff and You look at how they're living in mud houses and no toilet paper and using the bathroom outside. It

SPEAKER_00: 4:33

also is how I've heard you say that to the kids before about how they don't realize how well they have it here and how ungrateful kids can be sometimes. And it's not any fault of their own. They don't know any better. But I definitely can see where you're coming from and how that shapes your view to appreciate things so much more.

SPEAKER_01: 4:54

Yeah, definitely. definitely changes everything changes your perspective on it and things like that but that's kind of me in a nutshell I'm not the quite the extroverted and go giddy kind of person that Jackie is I'm more of the realist type of person and I kind of see the realistic side of things and she likes the made up scientific fantasies yeah fantasies I guess she she calls it. I'm the real person. The movies that I enjoy, the stuff that I enjoy is going to be the real stuff. Stuff that could really happen in real life. Every now and then you'll catch me enjoying something that's sci-fi or something that's not a real type of thing or something like that. But for the most part, I really enjoy watching stuff that's real.

SPEAKER_00: 5:49

I definitely agree. And I'm excited for this podcast because we do have such different perspectives personalities but our goals are completely aligned and I think that's what shapes our parenting into what it is today and where we want to see our kids and successful futures and how we still try to maintain our identities while still raising our kids and that's something we've talked about before that you know we our job in life is to raise these kids to be successful but in the process you don't want to lose yourself and that's that's super important to us and so we try to maintain that by trying to get regular day Right. Right. people tend to be like oh my god I could never do that and I'm like yes you can though you know and we I can't wait to make it a family thing I can't wait to dive into some of our stories that we have to share and I always kind of you know we always joke about does anybody else go through these things and sometimes I think people put a good facade on and they love to parade around that they're these perfect parents but there's just no way that mishaps don't happen in other homes. I just think it tends to happen more in our house but I can't wait to dive in about how like we've lost our kids before and like that's a story that people are just going to absolutely love and just funny things that happen in this house and I've had people tell me I wish I could just be a fly on the wall in your house to see some of the things that happen and also dive into some darker parts about how hard it's been to parent and being a blended family and how that has affected our kids and but the positive outcomes of it as well.

SPEAKER_01: 7:47

Yeah, I really like that. I'm excited to tell some of these stories and kind of excited as well to kind of hear from other people as well. I mean, we may not get a lot of viewers on this. There may be four total people that listen to this, but if there's four people, then I'd like to hear from four people about, you know, are we crazy or is this normal? I hear from parents all the time. I've got, you know, Somebody I know had told me that we're talking about Halloween candy and stuff, and... I was talking about how the kids just try to eat it all up and try to go through all of it one day. And this person was like, not my kid. I've got two kids and I just leave it sitting on the kitchen counter. And they're just the perfect angelic little kids. And they just, you know, they get a couple pieces a day and that's it. And I'm like, not us. We have to hide it in the attic just about it to keep it away from the kids.

SPEAKER_00: 8:48

Yeah. I tell people all the time, I'm like, I feel like there was a time where I didn't want people to come over to the house because I felt like all I ever did was clean, clean, clean. And I mean, there was a time where we had to hide the crowns because we were going to have what I used to joke. I used to call them Egyptian calligraphy on the wall because it was just always something. And I'm like, I'm so tired of cleaning this house and fixing things because these kids, they can be so destructive sometimes. And then I have kids that, oh, my kids never did that. Oh, my kids would never. do that. And I'm like, well, shit. Are we alone in this?

SPEAKER_01: 9:27

Right, right. I mean, you definitely feel like that. So definitely I would encourage everybody to like and subscribe. Come along for our journey. We're going to talk about stuff way more than just parenting as well. You heard Jackie talk about diving and stuff. We may get into some off-topic stuff that's not parenting. Talk more about life and kind of take you along our journey and see how everything goes.

SPEAKER_00: 9:53

I can't wait.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

Well I think we'll call this a good introduction and we'll talk of course a lot more about everything and you'll get to know us a lot better and hopefully we'll get to know some of y'all as well.

SPEAKER_00: 10:06

And join us for our first episode which is going to be talking about morning chaos.

SPEAKER_01: 10:11

Yes and definitely having your coffee first. We're going to talk about some morning routines and how it goes in our family and see if you can relate to it at all. And with that, we're going to end this first introductory episode and we will see you next time.