Holiday Road Trip, Family, And Food

About this episode

The rain started before sunrise and so did the stories. We drove 13 hours to Wichita for a week packed with caregiving, cooking, and a smoky casino that taught our teens more about odds than any math class. What we brought home wasn’t just leftovers, it was a sharper sense of what makes holidays work: clear boundaries, shared effort, and small rituals that outlive a single season.

We get honest about hosting in a small space, why “help” that adds three babysat kids isn’t help at all, and how to say no without blowing up the family thread. In the kitchen, we found a groove cleaning as we cooked, tag-teaming the dressing, and leveling up a Costco smoked turkey with butter, seasoning, and the perfect reheat timing. Two mac and cheeses entered; the lobster mac edged out the classic for one of us, while pumpkin cheesecake started a civil war. Between bites, we talked through the pull between big gatherings and intimate moments and why rotating hosts keeps the joy intact.

Nostalgia shows up too. We swap JC Penney catalog memories for the modern magic of keeping Santa believable, the value of a family-only breakfast, and the case for locking up phones so conversations can breathe. The theme underneath it all is connection: sharing recipes with the story and the tweak, not just a link, and passing down the know-how that makes food taste like home. We wrap with gratitude, finals week strategies, a budding DJ playlist, and the reminder that holidays are a practice, notice more, thank more, help more—so peace can find its way to the table.

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