It’s been way too long since we’ve recorded an episode! Life has been crazy but we want to share an update. We shared our experience with parental alienation in episode 7. In this sequel, we discuss how our situation has evolved and how alienation can impact kids/adults in the long run.

Modeling a healthy marriage is important for all children. In a blended family, when kids have previously witnessed a failed and possibly unhealthy marriage, it’s more important than ever.Listen in as we talk about how we strive to show our kids a loving, respectful partnership and model the kind of marriage that we wish for our children someday.

Guilt can be considered a basic emotion that we all experience. In stepfamilies, guilt can come from many unexpected places, such as trying to keep everything fair or not having a relationship with your partners ex. Listen in as we discuss how guilt has shown up in our stepfamily through the years in oh-so-many ways!

Do you ever feel like you’re the only responsible one? Us too!! Join us for our vent session as we discuss how being the only “responsible parties” while raising teenagers and taking care of elderly parent can be overwhelming and frustrating.

Happy love month! We are celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary this month! February is such a special month for us so we’re throwing it back and talking about how we met and we’ll take you through what happened on our wedding day. Love is what it’s all about!

Communication with the ex can be taxing, to say the least. Dealing with it is all about boundaries and your mindset.  Listen as we discuss the evolution of our communication boundaries.

We had fun with this one. It was recorded after a few drinks so the giggles may have grabbed hold. We recap 2021 and talk about what we are looking forward to in 2022…and beyond.

In this episode we discuss how it has impacted  and continues to impact our kids when their bio parents are absent or inconsistent. We also discuss how Jen’s life without a father, shaped her future.

We decided early on in our marriage that we would not try to have an “ours baby”.  That doesn’t mean we haven’t thought about what it would be like to have a child together. Listen in as we revisit some of those conversations and talk about whether or not we made the right decision.

Blending isn’t just for the stepparents and step kids. When you remarry and start a new family, there’s also the issue of blending with the extended family. There can be feelings of loss, loyalties and issues with acceptance. Listen as we dive into our experience blending our extended families.

In this episode we discuss how our marriage was tested during quarantine 2020.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.” However, sometimes looking back can be helpful. Listen as we delve into the past and talk about the baggage we both brought from our first marriages. We open up about how we have overcome the challenges that triggers and past traumas have presented in our marriage.

Every married person knows, no matter how much you love your spouse, they can still annoy the crap out of you. So we put together some of our pet peeves about each other and shared them here. We had some fun with this episode! We hope you have as much fun listening to it as we did recording it.  As always, there’s a lot of giggling and a few slurred words here and there. Enjoy!

There are valid reasons to be angry and hurt when marriages end. However, there are not any valid reasons to make your children the keepers of that anger and hurt. This episode is about our experience with parental alienation. Parental alienation impacts the children especially but also the entire family.  We have been living this brutal reality for eleven years and it’s time to tell our truth. This is an emotional topic for us and it was hard to get through some of it, but we think it’s an important one to share. Unfortunately, we are not alone in our experience. There are many people going through the same things and their relationships are suffering and most heartbreakingly, their children are suffering because of the alienation. It’s hard to know what you can do to stop it because not everyone on the outside can see what’s happening. We aren’t experts and we don’t have all of the answers but we are here to tell you, you’re not alone and we understand. Don’t give up, there is hope.

Hey, we want to tell you a secret. We found the key to a happy marriage. It’s the little things. Listen in as we break down all the ways we keep our marriage alive and kicking.

In this unedited episode, we discuss how our conflicting parenting styles have impacted our marriage and stepfamily through the years. This is a sensitive topic for us and an issue that led to many disagreements, arguments and full blown fights. Full disclosure. We had several cocktails before and during this episode so there’s some extra slurring and it may be a bit repetitive at times but we didn’t want to cut anything out and take away from the authenticity. Bloopers and all! Thanks for listening.

This episode is all about Jen’s experience being a stepmom. We dive into what has made it especially difficult over the last eleven years and how her perspective has changed. We talk about bonds, boundaries and what it’s like raising teenage step kids.

This episode is all about the stepdad perspective. We talk about expectations, what the role of a stepdad means to Troy, how it has changed and evolved through the years,  how he handles jealousy between bio and step kids and what we have both learned along the way.

Couples that fart together, stay together? In this impromptu episode, we discuss farting in front of each other and what that means to a marriage.  Before we started recording, we were sitting on the porch having a couple of drinks when Troy accidentally farted. The conversation began and we realized that it was too good NOT to record. Fair warning, we were already two cocktails in before we started recording, so there may be excessive giggling. It doesn't matter who you are, FARTS ARE FUNNY!

In our first episode, we give you an introduction to our marriage, blending our families, step-parenting, sex, and life together over the last 11 years and what to expect in future episodes.