Liz (19:14)

Today's episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. I really love using Rocket Money because it breaks down my finances and such an easy way for me to track and understand. I literally just got an email saying that I spent 300 more last week than I do on average. That's thanks to Christmas shopping, but nonetheless it helps me keep track of what I'm spending and where I'm spending it. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. Rocket Money's dashboards gives you a clear view of your expenses across all of your accounts. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to Rocket Money.com Carpool Today. That's Rocket Money.com Carpool RocketMoney.com Carpool Today's episode is also brought to you by Zocdoc. Sometimes searching for the right doctor is like a bad Mad Libs. You need a blank specialist who takes blank insurance, who is within blank miles of you and who actually makes you feel blank. Well, ZocDoc makes it easy to fill in those blanks and to help you find the right doctor for your specific needs. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and choose the right one for your needs and click to instantly book an appointment. Word talking about in network appointments with more than a hundred thousand healthcare providers across every specialty from mental health to dental health, eye care to skincare and much more. You can also see their actual appointment openings and choose a time that works for you and Click to instantly book + Zach Talk Appointments happen fast, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking. You can even score same day appointments. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com carpool to find an instantly book top rated doctor today. That's Z O C d o c zocdoc.com Carpool this episode is brought to.

Kelly (21:22)

You by Dutch Bros. Get stoked for all the Holly jelly vibes this season at Dutch Bros. Stay cozy with returning winter faves Hazelnut Truffle Mocha and Candy Cane Mocha plus the new Winter Shimmer Rebel energy Drink blends up sweet cream and blue razz. Flavor with soft top and shimmer sprinks to keep those spirits energized all winter long. Download the Dutch Bros app to find your nearest shop, order ahead and start earning rewards. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. There's nothing sweeter than baking cookies during the holidays. With Prime, I get all my ingredients delivered right to my door, fast and free. No last minute store trips needed. And of course I blast my favorite holiday playlist on Amazon Music. It's the ultimate soundtrack for creating unforgettable memories. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.comprime to get more out of whatever you're into. I also love I use this hack so much and that my friends is called a Mother's Helper. Okay, you know who else is on Christmas break? 9 to 12 year olds. A 9 to 12 a 9 year old. Now I don't have one but I have nine year old. I have a nine year old niece. She's so helpful. I love the idea of reaching out to a mom who has kids slightly older than yours and just asking if you could, if they're 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 year old would come over and be a mother's helper for the day. Now I'd pay her a little bit of money, but you can pay a 9 year old $20 for 5 hours. I mean where, where else are they going to get income? Like they're just excited to get out of their house probably and make a little bit of money. It is so helpful to have just a slightly older kid at your house when you're trying to juggle a bunch of small children. Vice versa. If you have a 9 year old or a 10 year old and you're like what am I going to do with them all? Break. Why don't you reach out to maybe a mom of younger kids who you know and say hey so and so is looking to make a little extra money. Would you interested in a mother's Helper? They'll probably say yes. They'll probably say yes. So whether no matter what side of the aisle you're on, I love the idea of just older kids and younger kids connecting. I think it's good for the younger kids to play with someone who they feel like is more their friend versus like a babysitter. And I think it's good for the younger kid for the older kids to spend some time with. Younger kids work a little bit. Think about babysitting as like you know, something that they can maybe do in their future. So I'm a really, really huge fan of Mother's Helpers. Okay? Another way that I. And let me be clear, another way I really plan to get some things done this Christmas break is with Mother's Helpers. So it's something as simple as like, you know, when Fred's taking a nap and Libby's, you know, sleeping in this. Sleeping. Someone's playing with George and Hattie in the basement. And I'm tackling a micro anxiety, I'm tackling projects. I'm really going to focus on going deep and not wide this Christmas break. I'm going to let my house go a little bit. I'm going to be honest, I might not see the kitchen table for a couple of days. But that's okay because remember what I said earlier, it's not about the journey, it's about the destination. Who am I? January 7th. That's what I want to know. I'm a girl who now has a clean kitchen table and an organized storage room. I'm a girl who now has an unloaded dishwasher and a junk drawer that's completely cleaned out. I am going deep. I'm tackling the fridge. I'm tackling, like I said, the junk drawer. I'm going through my closet. I'm going through kids clothes. I'm doing it all. I'm doing it all. I'm letting things go and I'm really going to focus on that. One of the things I plan to do is a little toy rotation because I think that's always very important during this time of year. Your kids just got a lot of new toys. Now you realize you have way too many toys. Here's how I like to do toy rotation rotations. And we know, Liz and I, on the episode we recorded, we talked about this a lot. But a few episodes ago we talked about like just how to Kelly something and Kelly something is just taking the moon and what does the stars look like? You know, shooting for the moon and landing on the stars. So is there a world where, you know, you could do a super organized toy rotation? Yes. But here's my version of a toy rotation. Are you ready? I take a storage tote tote and I bring it out. And you know what goes in that storage tote? The first things I see, I don't worry about, oh, let me collect all the trains to put the trains together. Oh, I'm gonna grab all the baby doll stuff and put it here. No, it's to me. I'm to the point it's just about less. So I take that storage tote out. The first things I see, fill it up. The first things I see. If I only find one Barbie shoe, I don't care if that one Barbie shoe's going in there. I'm not looking for the second. I'm getting things out of my life, and I'm putting them in the storage tote. I'm then going to put that storage tote away. Now a week's gone by, a month's gone by. You know, whenever you decide before you bring that storage tote out, you know what you do? You go get another storage tote and you do the same thing. That way there's no cross contamination. Do not bring a storage tote out until another storage tote is put away. Once you have your second tote filled again, which is the first crap you see, first things you see, just grab it. It. Then I'll bring out the first storage toe. Now it's Christmas morning again. It is. It is the only way I have found to actually toy rotate. If I were to, like, not do something because I felt like I didn't have an organized system, I would never develop a system. This works for me. Would it work better if I did gather up all the trains? Probably. Because it's kind of weird because now we only have three trains. We used to have 25. Okay. We were going to play with three trains for a while. Let's find. Let's use our imagination. What can we do with three trains, a Barbie shoe, and a baby bottle? What can we do? I love. It stretches them. It'll stretch your kids a little bit. So that's huge for me on toy rotation. I also think that, you know, it's a time where we're going to be home, okay? It's a time where we're tired of looking at our items. So we're home, and we're tired of looking at things in our home, probably. What a great time to utilize Facebook marketplace. What a great time to poshmark to sell things on a Facebook group. Let's recoup some of our Christmas money. Am I right? You're gonna be home, so why don't you just throw up that chair that has been sitting in your basement that you don't really like? Why don't you throw up that giant hot wheel thing? Throw it up on Facebook Marketplace. Give it a week. If it doesn't sell, then take it to Goodwill or take it to a resale shop or like a once upon a Child, but just try. You're gonna be home. You can do the porch pickup. Love Poshmark. Elizabeth talked about this. We'll have to get her back on because when Liz was living in Dallas, she got really into Poshmark and she made a couple thousand dollars off just selling things, buying things, reselling them on Poshmark. And if you're going to be home and you got the printer set up and you've got a couple of, like, poly mailer bags, you can be moving and grooving through some of your stuff. Same thing with Facebook groups. Like, if you have any of those good bamboo jammies, like a little sleepies or a kite baby, those things resell. Find a group like little sleepies resale on Facebook. Put up your little sleepies Jamies that you don't have, say, 25 bucks shipping included. I probably. You'll get bites. You'll get bites immediately. And you're home. You're home. What else are you going to do? Let's recoup. Recoup. I think that's a great tip. Also a good time to maybe take on a home project. Now, I'm not saying that you have to build a fireplace, but I'm saying, you know, maybe since you're also going to be home and available, maybe you could scour Facebook marketplace and finally find, like, the coffee table that you've been looking for and then go pick it up. Or maybe you could, you know, work on a bathroom or do a peel and stick wallpaper project or just, you know, hang a piece of art. Just think about, like, what's one thing that I've wanted to try to accomplish, whether it's like, even if it's just looking for the right piece. I think when you spend some time in your house, hopefully you'll feel more motivated to start tackling some of those. Those. Okay, I want to move on to some food topics of discussion because one thing that I'm really going to try to focus on this year or this Christmas break is I want to clean out the fridge, pantry, and freezer. And what I think is going to be why I think this is going to be a really fun challenge is because people are going to be home for meals that they're not normally home for. So typically we're, you know, we're always home for breakfast, but normally no one's home for lunch. And I'm going to give myself permission to make kind of weird must go lunches. And I'm also going to say, you know, I'm going to Stretch myself on what I think is a good lunch food. Do you know what I mean? Prime example is I have half a box of orzo. It's been staring at me for months, Months, this half box of orzo. Because half a box isn't enough for my family. Is it enough for a couple people to have it for lunch? Yeah, it is. It is. We're going to use it up. We're going to make fancy lunches. We're going to make fun lunches. And I love what naptime kitchen says about, you know, if. If it works better for you for your nutritious homemade meal, homemade hot meal, to be your lunch versus your dinner. Okay, so we may have baked chicken thighs and half a half a thing of orzo for lunch and have PBJs for dinner. What does that. What does it matter? What does it matter if Fred takes an early nap and I can whip out a great launch? That's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do. Or I'm going to double it and then have some for dinner. Also, I'm really excited to look through and just start cleaning out the pantry and using up items. Liz and I have both separately talked about how we both planned our meals for the rest of December this month. And this has been so helpful. One thing I'm always looking for is, you know, I love. You know, I love things that save me time, save me money. What I love the most is saving headspace. My headspace is the most valuable thing to me because my mind, between the four kids and the car mom and being a wife and a mother and all of those things, I'm always short on headspace. Always. Being able to have all my meals planned out for December has been so nice. And I thought this was a really great tip that got shared in the carpool Facebook page. Two tips, actually. The first is do a physical calendar and print it out. And then you know what you do with that physical calendar for December? Oh, I'm going to save it for next year. Oh, guess now. Now you know what I don't have to do next December. Plan my meals again, because I already did. Now will I have to change around? Okay. You know, now the Christmas program falls on this day, so let's move this here, of course. But bottom line is, I have a December planned out, and I'm going to put in my notes this year, like, what worked. So, you know, for example, I have on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, we're having barbecue pork nachos. For dinner. And that may sound weird to you, but we don't do anything on Christ Day. We have my mom's on Christmas Eve and we have Tyler's family the following week. So Christmas Day, it's just me and my little family. And that sounds like a fun thing that we could make together. If it doesn't work out, if I find it's too many moving parts with a crock pot and whatever, I'm going to put that in my note and I won't do that next year. But bottom line is, I am going to try. That's going to be my starting point for next December. The other tip that was shared was looking at the grocery store sales and doing your meal plan off of that. That. Now, I loved that for a couple of reasons. One, like, saves a little bit of money. Great. I also, though, think even if you're not necessarily on a tight grocery budget, it gives you a starting off point. And who doesn't like to save a little bit of money? When you look at an empty calendar of like, what am I going to make for dinner? Then it starts going through your head. You know, you can't remember anything you've ever made, ever. But by getting the grocery ad and seeing like, oh, sweet potatoes are on a good sale. Okay, now you have inspiration. Now we have let's do a sweet potato dish then. And what's good about this is normally grocery ads stay the same every single year. So, like, what's on sale in December will likely be on sale in December next year as well. So, again, a good way to just make your grocery bill go a little further, save a little money, and give you some inspiration. So that was a incredible tip from a carpooler. Okay. This was a tip from Elizabeth that she did not get a share. So I'm going to try to do her justice because she really had it thought out. But Elizabeth made the point that, you know, the holidays are a time to have fun, and the holidays are a time for joy. And we put such pressure on these kids, on these little kids to eat what's on the table. And it just doesn't feel like the time or the place to try a green bean casserole. Okay? Not if it's going to cause meltdowns, not if it's going to, like, ruin. I mean, the holidays are supposed to be about joy. So let's just all give ourselves permission to let the kids eat Mac and cheese and chicken nuggets in a roll at dinner and then still have a cookie. It's one or two days out of the year. I mean, come on, you're a good mom. You do it. You make them eat it the other days. You deserve to have a good Christmas too, though. Okay? I want you to have fun. This is your day too. I don't want you to have to be power struggling with a four year old who doesn't want to eat grandma's peas. They're disgusting. Okay? So a couple of things you can do. Pack the food. Pack the food and be unapologetic because you're having fun. Pack the food. Feed them before. Feed them before. If it's a safe food. I mean, the holidays are so overwhelming and overstimulating as is. Again, the last thing you need is a plate of food that you don't recognize. And then Liz also shared the hack of like, if you're worried about the nutrients, you know, a great way to just fill gaps this season is a smoothie. Okay. There is. You want a very balanced meal is chicken nuggets in a smoothie. Okay. Some berries, maybe a handful of spinach, a little protein powder. Okay. That's fine. That's great for a toddler. And then you can go to the party knowing he had protein, he had a nutritious smoothie. If he doesn't eat anything but like mashed potatoes and a Christmas cookie, that's fine. It's not what it's about. You don't make an adventurous eater on Christmas Eve. You have fun and you keep the magic. So I thought that was very, very well said by Elizabeth. Okay. I wanted to look at if I had anything else on my notes because I did take notes. But then the problem is I deleted a lot of these notes as we were. I think I got them all. Oh, nope, I got one more. I got one more. Okay. I also really want to, I told you, clean out my closet. But I want to work on myself a little bit this Christmas break and I want to get myself dressed and I want to really nail that five minute makeup routine. Okay. Because we all talk about it like, oh, it's like one, like a little light makeup to make myself feel better. But does anyone else feel like they have. They either like, have to have no makeup or like do their makeup fully. Like, I don't love how my like light, how my five minute makeup look is and I just want to get a little better and faster at it. And I'm really going to pay attention because I'm going to do this five minute makeup routine every day over Christmas break. And I want to pay attention to, like, okay, yeah, that blush, like, took too long to blend. Or like, I need something quicker for my brows. Maybe I'll stop doing a pencil and I'll look at a powder or I. This foundation is too heavy and too hard to blend. I just need a tinted moisturizer. I want to nail the five minute makeup routine and I'm going to set a timer. I'm going to get her down to a science on how to do a good five minute makeup routine. I'm also going to get myself dressed and wear the clothes in my closet. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm on a little bit of a weight loss journey. I am happy with my body, of course, birth four children. But I also am. My clothes aren't always the most comfortable right now. And I would like my clothes to be a little more comfortable. So this tip's not going to be for everybody. Not going to be for everybody. But I do have jeans that fit. Are they the most comfortable jeans in the world? No. But are they find a way around the house? Yes. I'm going to wear those jeans I'm going to wear. I'm going to be very aware. I think I'm gonna make better food decisions. I'm not gonna go hungry. I'm gonna prioritize my protein. But sometimes when I'm in, like, leggings and everything's comfy, I'm not always, like, thinking about that. So I plan to put on jeans every day because one when I go back to work. Talk about routine. Your girl's gonna have to do that. I can't be wearing, like, sweatpants and a Detroit Lions hoodie into the dealership to film all day. So I gotta get back to one. Finding out what fits me. I don't even know. I don't even know which one of my clothes fit me right now, what fits me. And I want to get into that habit and I want to make good, good food choices. I need a little waistband accountability, if you know what I mean. So that's something that I plan on doing personally to, you know, hopefully improve. And then hopefully, you know, by the end of it, I'll know, okay, these are the pants that fit. I got a really easy, good five minute makeup routine. And then it's like, oh, I have seven minutes today. Let me do a little bit more makeup. Let me step it up a notch. But, like, I want to have those levels and I want to feel really good about them. So those are some tips that I plan on using to have a great Christmas break. I'm excited. I am looking forward to reconnecting with my kids, spending, like, my last couple of days with Libby, and just having all my family together. It's really fun to now, like, know that I'm done having kids, and these four kids, like, are my family, and I want them to spend as much time together as possible. So I don't enjoy a solo episode. This felt very awkward. Yeah, I don't now. I'm, like, forgetting how to podcast. But I hope you guys have a very merry Christmas, a very happy new year, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to the carpool podcast with Kelly and Liz. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed riding with us, tell everybody you know there's room, room in the car for everyone.