Building a Big Career and Family of 8 with Andrea Canning EP 447

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Laura vander Kamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:15
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:24
Speaker 1: 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 February of twenty twenty six. I am going to be interviewing Andrea Canning, who is with Dateline Journalists. There lots of fun stories talking with her. But if I sound a little bit different, that's because Sarah and I are sitting out in my office since of in my recording closet, we are here on my sofa together in Philadelphia. Sarah, how are you doing. I am good.

00:01:07
Speaker 2: I am very happy to be back.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, for those who are paying attention, Sarah just actually took a very quick trip to this part of the world about what two weeks ago.

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Yes, so I had already planned this trip and then realized that I really wanted to make it here for my niece's sixth birthday party, as I've missed a lot of her birthdays, and so at first I went through sort of a thought process like, well, I can't go twice, And then I realized that the tickets were actually quite inexpensive and that it is in fact possible to go to Philadelphia for one night and still kind of spend pretty much the whole weekend there. So I actually went twice. The first time, I did not get to hant with Laura, but this time I have lots more time. So we are having a podcast recording party and yeah, yeah, fun.

00:01:50
Speaker 1: It'll be lots of fun. So yeah, I mean with travel, but you could do like duration, like stay somewhere for a long time. You can also do frequency, you know, and just have shorter durations. I guess you can be on either team your team frequency.

00:02:02
Speaker 2: Now, I think for family visits on very team frequency because I don't know, I just feel like it adds to the closest to be there for like specific occasions, maybe a specific holiday or birthday, And there is something about just feeling like, oh, I just saw you a couple months ago or I mean a.

00:02:17
Speaker 1: Couple weeks couple of weeks ago.

00:02:18
Speaker 2: Now that just like helps you feel like you're still physically part of their lives or something. So yeah, I'm team frequency.

00:02:27
Speaker 1: Okay, any tips for like really short trips.

00:02:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think the biggest thing you have to do is you have to think about the risk of the.

00:02:35
Speaker 1: Trip getting totally obliterated.

00:02:36
Speaker 2: Because Laura, you had a international trip get totally obliterated once due to flight quirks. That wouldn't been an issue if it was a two week trip, though since it was so short, it was a problem. So I definitely think for a super short trip you kind of need to fly direct. Otherwise there's just too much of a chance of something going wrong. And for me, you have to really think about, Okay, just makes sense to go late at night, Like if you're trying to not to get day off of work, as I was last time, I could have gone late on Friday night or very early on Saturday morning. For me, I tend to choose the early morning option because getting up at like three in the morning is for me less objectionable than maybe staying up until midnight. Plus, if you're staying with relatives, I didn't necessarily want to be knocking on their door late at night. In this way, I'm only annoying myself. So yeah, you have to think about those things. And then I definitely think it's good to have one specific purpose if you're going for a very short.

00:03:29
Speaker 1: Amount of time.

00:03:30
Speaker 2: Like celebrating my niece's birthday, everything was centering around that. We even made the cake.

00:03:35
Speaker 1: Yay, yay. Yeah. I have a trip coming up in a few weeks where we're going for just one night too, to celebrate somebody's birthday. Yeah, same thing. You leave Saturday morning, come home Sunday afternoon. You know you still have some time to do the weekend stuff. I'll probably get my laundry done on Sunday night, like I often do. But you know, it could be nice to have a little adventure like that. So this interview has nothing to do with that. When we're talking with Andrea about her journalism career, she's also a mom of six, so definitely the whole best of both worlds type. She talks about how she manages her life, how she built her career, in some of her favorite sort of true crime journalism that she does. So very exciting to hear from her. So Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Andrea Canning to best of both worlds. Andrea, welcome to the show.

00:04:27
Speaker 3: Hi, thank you for having me.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, so excited to have you. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

00:04:33
Speaker 3: So I am a mom of six, five girls and a boy who is our little friends, you know, came along kind of hail Mary at the very end, so he has five little mommies also taking care of him. I'm also a correspondent syndication host for Dateline NBC, and I'm a screenwriter. I write movies for Hallmark Channel and also for Lifetime Awesome.

00:04:59
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of different things going on. How did you wind up in this career?

00:05:03
Speaker 3: Well? I was really interested in advertising and kind of was one of those people took psychology, didn't know what to do, ended up shadowing and advertising agency, and was exposed to a TV shoot and thought, oh, TV sounds like kind of fun. Ended up going to college for radio and television, and then that led me to broadcasting and news and you know, just kind of the windy road. Yeah.

00:05:30
Speaker 1: Did you start out somewhere smaller, work your way up. I did.

00:05:34
Speaker 3: I was working, and so I was in LA I did an internship for Baywatch. They hired me, and then from there I went to Extra the TV show traded getting my real made for babysitting from one of the editors. So I put a newsreel together and I sent that out to I think fifty markets. I got two calls. I think one of them told me that I didn't have enough experience in Nebraska, and then the other one was from Mississippi. And I did just a phone interview, a ten minute phone interview. They gave me a quiz. They said if you go under ten out of twenty, then you don't get the job. And I was like, wow, okay, like this is back in the nineties, all right, like a different world today. I think I barely passed their test of events of.

00:06:26
Speaker 1: What wow, curd events, Okay.

00:06:27
Speaker 3: Current events, And they were asking me like questions about politics that I have to say I was not following at the time, at that age early twenties, was not interested in politics. But I did pass, thankfully, and next thing I knew, I was packing up my car and driving to Greenville, Mississippi from La So started as the morning anchor there at WXVT, and so I would produce the morning show and then I would have to go out and shoot my own story for the day that would air later on the news. I basically never slept.

00:07:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, so its a long and windy path. Eventually, eventually, how did you get your break at Dateline?

00:07:07
Speaker 3: Dateline came so I was working at ABC and I was doing mostly Good Morning America. I did the Charlie Sheen interview, which gave me, you know, some got some eyeballs, and then yeah, so then NBC was interested in. They said we have an opening at Dateline and I said, wow, that really sounds like it's right up my alley. And I told them I remember telling them the first time I met our executive producers, I said, you don't really know me that well, but I'll tell you this is the perfect job for me, and none of us are going to be disappointed.

00:07:40
Speaker 1: That's a convincing argument.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: Tenteen years later, you know, I was very I had my strong convictions on that one.

00:07:47
Speaker 1: So, well, what is it about it that makes it such a good match for you? I mean, you cover all sorts of different fascinating stories. What are the ones that get you most excited?

00:07:56
Speaker 3: I mean, I find it just all It kind of goes back really to that psychology degree when I didn't know what I wanted to do. I'm just very interested in people and their stories and also just like the both weird things people do and the bad things people do and the good things people do. I mean, you get such a wide range at dateline of just all of it. Right, you see the best in people and what they do in the worst circumstances, and then you see the worst of people in prison, you know, you interview killers, and then you see all the dedication from detectives and prosecutors, and also families who don't give up on cases, who say, you know what, we're gonna make somebody solve this, Like if they're not going to pay attention to us, we're going to make them. And you have all these families kind of turning into like an army of sort of like armchair detectives. And sometimes you have like regular folks who like not families, but like citizens who want to help solve things. And now it's like a new world, right with social media and technology and the interest in true crime. It's never a dull moment at dateline and the stories are all interesting.

00:09:05
Speaker 1: Well, what's one we've worked on recently that really caught your attention?

00:09:09
Speaker 3: Oh, well, I just had one on Friday night, Secrets in the Ashes, which is there to watch on peacock or you can stream it. One was interesting. It was two cases. One was in Texas, one was in Illinois, one was a long time ago. On their own, they wouldn't have become a two hour date line, but together they made a two hour dateline because there was one common denominator. There was a woman at the center of it, a mom of three girls.

00:09:37
Speaker 1: She was never.

00:09:38
Speaker 3: Charged with anything in Texas. It was a homicide arson, but there was speculation that she might have had something to do with it. She denies that, but there's a lot of people who think she was involved in killing this woman in Texas so she could be with her husband. Then fast forward, she's in Illinois, she's running for US Senate. She opens a bake and then she reaches out to an old flame from high school in Texas and says she wants to kill her husband. She wants to hire somebody to do it. And so that was like it was just weird. The whole thing was weird. And then what turned it on its head was that the target, which was her husband, is fully standing by her and she's saying, I love him. I was manipulated and they're like still together as of there's a lot.

00:10:28
Speaker 1: Of psychology involved in that.

00:10:30
Speaker 3: Like I said to her, I said, because we interviewed the husband, and I said, he says, he's like, you're you're his ride or die and you guys are together forever. She's like, oh my baby, and I'm like, oh my gosh, it is it is a story. And then like at the very end of the show, the house fire that the husband in Texas was charged and convicted of the house fire. We don't know if this woman Allison was involved or not.

00:10:56
Speaker 1: She says she wasn't.

00:10:57
Speaker 3: But now, but I interviewed him in prison and he's blaming his six year old son who was trapped in the house. That's what he wanted to get off his chest. My son told me he started the fire. I said, wow, you're just a piece of you know what.

00:11:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's so many different psychological angles there.

00:11:15
Speaker 3: Oh man. There was a lot to unpack in this episode. And then There's one moment where I was kind of wanted to get her how she would feel about like some accusations about her bakery and because they were saying that like she was selling frozen goods, which she denied, and she said, we had killer cookies and killer brownies, and like, all of a sudden, the editor half is good editor hat is like whoo, all of a sudden, I kind of had the smile on my face and I was like, interesting choice, and it hit her and she was like, oh, wait a second, don't take this out of context. And I'm like, well, given why we're here in prison, you know.

00:11:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that was kind of funny. And I have to imagine that these experiences help inform how you write scripts for places like Lifetime, Homemark, all those guesses you've written for.

00:12:04
Speaker 3: Definitely, I mean there's so much personal experience and work experience whatever you want to call it, that I can draw on from clues to human emotion, how families deal with things like all of it. Yeah, it's definitely there. And we deal with a lot of relationships too at Dateline. They're just on the opposite spectrum of Hallmark relationships. A homework as a place where you can have happiness and real love stories. Now, I mean Friday Show was a love story, just a very.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: Twisted one, twisted in many ways. Yes, but this is great. We're going to take a quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Andreaette Canning. Well, I am back talking with Andrea Canning, who's a correspondent for Dateline, has had a long history in television journalism. But you are also, as you said earlier, the mom of six, which I'm sure is its own special circus aside from the ones you are covering with Dateline. So tell us a little bit about your family. How old are your kids now?

00:13:19
Speaker 3: My oldest is sixteen, and then we have fifteen, and then thirteen, eleven, ten and six.

00:13:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, so said the one at the end really is the baby? Then, yeah, the little prince for all of it. So our listeners always want to know about logistics. I always say, you have a big career, you have a big family. What does your current support system look like?

00:13:38
Speaker 3: I have a nanny, Denisa. She's full time Monday to Friday. She doesn't live with us, but she comes in during the day and then my husband only works five minutes away, so he's always available, he's around if needed, and then of course he's home at night, and he doesn't travel too much for work, so he's a big help. He's like super dad. Yeah, he's great.

00:13:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably been a big help for you need to travel then for work, right, Yeah.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: And you know it's hard when you're on the road and you're doing long interviews and you're getting text messages like what time's the playdate this afternoon? And can I go do this sleepover? And what time is my squash practice? And I'm like, oh my gosh. Sometimes I just have to like shut it off and be like I can't right now, like you guys have to figure it out, And then sometimes I do respond and try to help them. It kind of depends on where I'm at in the day, but it definitely is challenging. I try to set things up as much as I can before I leave. And also my nanny can you know she's been with us for such a long time that she's a good person to fall back on for decisions because she knows the deal at this point. So does it get frustrating at times? Absolutely? Does it get like where your head's going to explode? Absolutely, but we try to keep everything in check and just sort of roll with it. And they're used to it right from the time they were born. I was in a job that had a lot of travel and was demanding and so and I always say to them too, when they complain or whatever, I say, well, do you want me to quit my job? And it's always a resounding no. So okay, then you don't want me to quit my job. So then we all have to work together and live with it.

00:15:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to figure it out. Well, how do you figure out the logistics? I mean clear is what your planning process looks like for how the family circus is run?

00:15:22
Speaker 3: Well, it helps me to like I have one of those old fashioned big calendars on the desk in our kitchen. My husband lives by his phone and he's constantly like texting me all these times and dates for things, and honestly, I just delete them. I can't, like there's too many. I just I can't. So that's great for him, that keeps him in check. For me, it's that big calendar in the kitchen and then just my little list in my phone of like here's what we have to do and before I leave I'll do like a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I'll just write out on a piece of paper, put it on the kitchen, count are here's who has this and this and this and then some things are standing dates that I don't need to a tutor session or something where like they know it's like every single week that it's ingrained in our all of our brains. So that helps too. But I just am a visual person. I like to see it every day when I go down to that kitchen, I'm like, Okay, we got this, we got this, birthday party, we got so for me, that's the easiest way to do it, and I think two for kids, having that visual as well helps.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, well just certainly, I mean so they know what's going on as well. Yeah, did the system evolve over time? Is there any moments that were like chaotic that you had to figure things out? Oh?

00:16:41
Speaker 3: I think we've had enough chaos to last a lifetime. We could probably feel enough chaos for five families at this point. You know, there's always that chaos, and I think we all need to just give ourselves a break. That other families are going through this too. It's just not easy, right, and you know, It's funny because I remember one day one of my kids got me so mad, like I was just like, ah, it was because you know teenagers and tweens, they can talk back or whatever. And I think this was maybe dating back a little further, but we had those Bermuda shutters. I was just like hitting the shutter, you know what I mean. I was like putting the shutters down like that was my And then I went out to dinner that night and I told my friend and she goes, oh my gosh. Earlier today, I was trying to get one of my kids to a tennis practice and I was banging the tennis.

00:17:30
Speaker 4: Racket on the bed, like okay, So I'm not alone that we all get frustrated or yell from time to time because you think that like no one else is doing that, right, You think I'm the only one.

00:17:41
Speaker 3: But you're not.

00:17:42
Speaker 1: You're not, oh, not by any means. Yeah. So, Andrew, I'm curious do you have any sort of like large family logistics kind of things that I know some people have, like crazy laundry strategies. I mean, my family, I have five kids. Monday is always pasted tonight because that way nobody has to ever think about it.

00:18:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a rule.

00:18:01
Speaker 1: That like in our house, you get a phone when you are eleven. Yeah, you make your own lunch after age eight. Oh, it is okay, we're a family rules. Yeah.

00:18:11
Speaker 3: Well, let's see. Fridays are always we try to go to like the local pizza place together. That's always fun if we can. It's now that they're getting.

00:18:20
Speaker 1: Older, table for eight, Yeah, it's getting more challenging. Now.

00:18:24
Speaker 3: We also have like our mandatory vacations where we go. I'm from Canada, so we go once a weekend the summer, once a week for Christmas, all kids, mandatory unless something like sometimes really cool things pop up, like one of my daughters got invited to go to Italy to the Olympics with a friend.

00:18:42
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, you see that one.

00:18:46
Speaker 3: And then we do Florida because my husband's family has a place there. And so when you have big families and things are expensive with flights and we don't do fancy vacations, we go to Canada and Florida and that's just the way. It's like we're lucky, trust me. We're like, we have two great places to go, but we're not the family traveling the world. That's not happening. We went on our first big international trip for a friend's birthday in June. We went to London in Paris and that was like the first time the kids had really gone on a big trip.

00:19:16
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was fun. Yeah, well still like having the eight passports that you are then juggling.

00:19:22
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean it's challenging with eight to get tables, reservations, to get into restaurants.

00:19:30
Speaker 1: To hotels. What do you do with hotels?

00:19:33
Speaker 3: We get to hotel rooms. We split it up four and for and then just packing the car to go to Canada because we drive, Yeah, and that's like a whole thing in itself. And then we finally my dad was like, why don't you get one of those toolly things you know you can put on the top. We'd never really thought about it, and we're like, yeah, what are we doing because we bring the cat and the dog and in the winter especially, there's just no room and we're all like like shoulder to shoulder, like presence and like and then so what did I do? So we had the tooley for all of I don't know, three weeks or something. We get back and my daughter's bugging me that this bracelet I bought her for Christmas didn't fit, and she's like, can we go to the mall? This is we got back Saturday night. The next day. I was like, okay, fine, Like the last thing I really wanted to do after Christmas break was go to the mall. But I knew it was important to her. We get to the mall, I go into the entrance of the mall and we hear a loud crash. The tooley is on top of the car still Oh no, yes. Now I'm trapped in the entrance to the mall completely freaking out, and I didn't know what to do. And I was like, oh my gosh, there's pipes. It's so low. Right, we've already hit the sign. Now we've like hit something else. And I'm like, what are these pipes? Like break open? I don't know what's in there. And so this man helped like guide us out. We just had to hear the crunch like it was just twice, and I was like, this is seriously, like I'm going to have a panic attack right now. And there's all these cars waiting to get into the mall parking lot, and so he backed us out. The Tullie was totally destroyed, but the pipes were intact. We were fine and we got home and she got her bracelet.

00:21:14
Speaker 1: Went well, then everything was a win.

00:21:16
Speaker 3: Hey, you know it's for my like PTSD from now going to mall parking lots and like every time I go now I'm like, oh my god.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: You have an excuse to avoid it. Yeah, exactly. Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Andrea Canning. Well, I am back with Andrea Canning. We've been talking about the chaos that occasionally ensues with large families and a complex circus of a life. So Andrea, what do you do for fun with all this going on? Oh?

00:21:55
Speaker 3: For fun, well, when I can get to a movie theater. I still love going to the movies. We go. Obviously, our vacations are spent swimming and going to the beach and like all of that is really fun. I love watching TV shows that are good. That's like one of my favorite things to do is to just finally chill out and relax, and like, if you're into a show, it's so great.

00:22:19
Speaker 1: Do you manage to get together with friends at all?

00:22:21
Speaker 3: Or yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, just go out to dinner with friends. Yeah, anytime somebody invites me, I'm there.

00:22:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm an easy invite, easy invite. You're like, I'm in, I'm in. Do you have any sort of like exercise you like to do or is that not fitting in?

00:22:37
Speaker 3: I don't exercise enough. I will be totally honest. My dream would be to have a personal trainer that would come to my house. Like all the time I hear they exist, they exist, but it's not happening right now. So what I try to do is I will walk to the kids' school. So we don't have buses here, so I will walk to school when I can, and then I'll have my nanny come and pick all of us up, me and the kid. It's like a thirty five minute walk. So it's just a great day. When I'm working from home, which is a lot because I either travel or I'm working from home, then I occasionally go into the office. But when I'm home, it's just a perfect way to get out of the house for thirty five minutes. Like I have a destination, I get to pick up my kids, and I get out of the house, like to get that cardiovascular exercise, so that's kind of my go.

00:23:29
Speaker 1: To And with work, are there any sort of productivity strategies that help you get things done?

00:23:35
Speaker 3: Lists?

00:23:36
Speaker 1: Lists?

00:23:37
Speaker 3: I love a good list. Isn't it so rewarding when you love list? I love checking things off my list. That's what I mean.

00:23:43
Speaker 1: That's the that's party.

00:23:44
Speaker 3: We just spent the whole weekend cleaning our house and getting rid of stuff and bags and bags, and I'm like, every time I was throwing something in the garbage bag, it was like super rewarding, right, Like I'm the opposite of a hoarder.

00:23:56
Speaker 1: I'm like, get rid of it.

00:23:58
Speaker 3: But lists are kind of the same way. You're like crossing it off. I did it, I did it. But again, it's that visual thing, like I need to see it because otherwise, honest to God, I forget everything, or a lot of us. It pops into our head, like you wake up at two in the morning and you're just like, oh my gosh, I forgot about that dance recital tomorrow or something. And so having that list in front of you or in your phone is just so incredibly helpful. But again goes back to the paper. I'm showing my age here, but you can't beat a good like journal, notebook, piece of paper.

00:24:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it's cuzy. You get to cross it off, like it's not as satisfying to do that on an electronic thing. You delete it, it's like it's gone, It's like it never happened, right, you know, I was going to cross it off. It's different.

00:24:40
Speaker 3: And the reminder, just the reminder, yeah, that.

00:24:42
Speaker 1: It was there.

00:24:43
Speaker 3: And of course one of my kids just turned on a really loud TV.

00:24:46
Speaker 1: So it's totally fine.

00:24:47
Speaker 3: I turned it off, Okay not now.

00:24:51
Speaker 1: Yes, Well it's a snowed ay that we were recording this, so everyone is around and same here. Hopefully they are being quiet or the dog not barking as well. Do you have any advice? You know, we have people listening to this who are building their careers or hoping maybe to have a larger family. Is there anything you sort of wish you'd known starting out that would have been helpful. I mean, I would say the one thing is like people say, like, don't sweat the small stuff, and I mean that's really wonderful in hindsight, but like when you're in it, you.

00:25:20
Speaker 3: Kind of just do sweat the small stuff. And I would say to someone it's okay to sweat the small stuff. You're in the moment. It's hard, you know, and stuff's gonna happen. I mean I've had complete meltdowns over milk spilling. Okay, Like, don't cry over spilt milk. Well, I've definitely cried over spilled milk. So I would say, like, just don't put that pressure on yourself that you're not allowed to be human and to have these you know, you're tired and you have all these kids. I had six girls, like in five years. I mean, you can't be crazy over like from that. It's hard, but like it's so rewarding. And I the one thing I tell everyone if they're on the fence about having another child, I'm like, you do it. You will never regret it. You will always be happy that you did. And I one the comment I hear over and over again from moms around here is I wish I had more kids. So that's my advice is have the have the other kid, have the other kid, have two three.

00:26:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, especially as they get older, it's fun to have all these people around. I mean, that's my favorite part is having all these older kids around my table and chatting with them, and it is that's why I come.

00:26:26
Speaker 3: That's why I'm already scared of Like my sixteen year old's going to be leaving soon, and I don't want anyone to leave. And then I was counting, like when my ten year old. I was like, wow, I barely if you really look at the years, I don't even have that much time left with my ten year old. I mean, she's going to be in high school before I know it. Like, it's just so scary. We all know as parents, how fast this goes by. Yeah, and the more years that go by, the faster it goes. Yes, when they're younger, everything is a little bit on slow motion and then it just like a runaway train.

00:27:02
Speaker 1: Well maybe they'll go to school somewhere close and then you can still be, you know, around all the time. So, Andrew, we always end with a love of the week. So something that is helpful or exciting or fun. Now I'm going to say kids that are old enough to shovel Snow, this has been a nice addition to my life. And I you know, I have a lot of boys, but anyway, they'reful, some of them. So yeah, that was nice when we had so much snow too, and not be the only person me and my husband out there doing it. How about you?

00:27:37
Speaker 3: Amazing? Yeah, and we know chores are so good for kids. I would say today, how about my thirteen year old daughter, Kiki gets a big shout out. I came home from picking up my other daughter and her friends from a sleepover, and I walked in and the mud room was completely cleaned and she just did it on her own, without anyone asking her to do it. I was shocked and please, and I said, you get the gold star for today.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: That is awesome. Like when the kids cleanliness instinct kicks hand and they don't want to have this clutter, It's awesome. It is awesome, awesome. Well, Andrea, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you?

00:28:15
Speaker 3: I'm on Instagram just Andrea Canning, very easy to find.

00:28:19
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Andreatte, thanks for joining us and we will be back with our Q and A in just a moment. Well, we were back. That was fun hearing from Andrea Canning about all things dateline and her life working and raising six children. So today's question is what about birthday celebration ideas for a tween that doesn't want a traditional party, so you kind of slightly aging out of the bouncy house era for birthday parties. What are some fun things to do, Sara, You've had a few of these lately. Yeah, we've had a couple.

00:28:51
Speaker 2: I feel like my kids are just exiting the traditional party phase. I think like a group of friends doing some kind of outing together can just be a sub and you're not calling it a party, but maybe you're still celebrating the kid's birthday. One of my kids is actually doing like a little mini beach trip, kind of a I guess extravagant birthday present in a way, but I mean it's a family trip too, so it'll be super fun with a couple of other families around her birthday. You could do a day at a theme park, especially if you happen to live relatively near them, or even just like movies and dinner together with a couple of friends. And again, it's like the activities can be similar, but you're scaling it down and making it a little bit more personal and you're not calling it a birthday party.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I mean always the friends sleepover ideas is something that you're probably not doing that often, and a sleepover just means more than one person, So it could even just be two friends and that would be fine. Like if somebody has sort of a smaller friend group and doesn't want to coordinate ten people and you don't want ten people in your house. You know, having two friends over to spend the night can still be a birthday party, especially if you have a cake or you know, have something festive that they enjoy eating. We've done that with a couple of my now, so yeah they like that. Yeah, I mean I would like that exactly, exactly. Well, this has been best of both worlds. I was interviewing Andrea Canning from Dateline. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

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Speaker 5: 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.