Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Onunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. 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 is episode two hundred and twenty nine, which is airing in mid to late December, right before Christmas. Over the next two episodes, we're going to be doing our year in review retrospective, looking at all the things that happened or that we enjoyed over the past year. We invite you to share yours as well, of course, over at our Best of Both Worlds podcast Instagram, if you're at our Patreon community of course, or either of our blogs. We'd love to hear what worked for you over the course of the year, anything you've learned, anything you particularly enjoyed, and recommendations you want to share with our community whatever would be your love of the week over the past fifty two weeks. So, Sarah, when this airs in December twenty first, are you guys going to be off school at that point? Yes, we are going to definitely be off school. My kids actually have two weeks and one day off. And I was thinking about how many days that was, and I was thinking it was fifteen, but it's actually seventeen because you also got the weekend a lot of days. However, six of those days they're going to be spending in quote unquote camp in part because I am working for a lot of winter break and so is my husband and it all goes well and no one gets sick. That means they'll actually have two days of camp where I do not have work and I have childcare. So I'm looking forward to that as my own personal treaty. Yes, your own little present for two days out of seventeen. Yeah, exactly. Although you know I got seventeen. There is a lot, Like I was just thinking, I mean, if ever you could coordinate it, or you know, your work life looks different or something, you guys could like go to New Zealand or something and that length of a time, if that's the length of time you get off, and over winter break we never get that long. So were my kids will still be in school when this airs, and they will be right up to the twenty fourth. They get the twenty fourth off, but not any days before that. Then there is the week off through to January first, of course, but you know, other than that, not so much. So it doesn't quite work with the New Zealand trip, especially not this year, given them. I don't think New Zealand's accepting people anyway, and I couldn't keep a mask on a toddler for seventeen hours. But anyway, we won't go there. Well, New Zealand would be tougher because I'm not New Zealand specifically, but travel because usually Josh has to work at least one major holiday every single year, and he's very stubborn about not wanting to work Thanksgiving, so that usually means Christmas or New Year's. However, next year, I'm hoping not to work any of those majors. So we're thinking about like a ski trip or something. Yeah, yeah, no, but I mean it's just a lot of time to play with. Yeah, a lot of days it's like a mini summer. Well, I've been thinking about that just if we ever did make it over to Asia Pacific, right, you know that you want to go for a long enough time to make it worth it on the flight, and we don't have that long winter break, and so it's sort of unclear when that would ever actually happen. Summer well, but that's their winter, so it's slightly less exciting to go, you know, do stuff there. I mean, maybe you know, could be good. We'll see anyway, So we're what are you guys going to do for the break? Then you're going to put the kids in camp? You're so six of the days will be camp, which is actually a really wonderful benefit. Our school offers this, not for the actual holidays, of course, but I think the Monday through Wednesday of each week. So they're going to do that and that shouldn't be too disruptive because it's the same like normal drop off and routin as school would be. And then I'm going to try to impose some structure because that's just a lot of days. And again it's like either to be myself in charge or my husband in charge. A lot of the time it's gonna like kind of flip flop. So I am planning on number one, creating kind of like a little calendar so they can see what to expect, because I think sometimes the nebulous uncertainty can add to I don't know, like behavior stuff for my kids end, and I do want to stick to like kind of like relatively normal bedtimes, like not drift you know, hours hours later and kind of this is our wonderful weather season, so I want to take advantage of doing lots of outdoor stuff in the morning and then settling in for screen time in the afternoon. That's kind of our normal template. They got a Nintendo Switch for Hanaka, so they are all about that fun screen time, and it's actually been more fun to see them like actually playing games together versus punched over their own devices. So I'm happy about that. Oh that's really cool. Yeah, Nintendo Switch has a group one. My son has a Nintendo Switch, but it's like a handheld, so that might be it. So it is you can put it up on the big screen, and then you can get multiple controllers, so there's games that involve you can have multiplayer at once, or it can be like old school like remember the like regular old Nintendo when you would be playing Mario together and it would be taking turns, but you're sort of you know, you're each playing and you're each invested in watching, So it feels more like that you're right, there is like its own screen, but you don't have to use that, so we're not encouraging use of that. We hooked it up to our TV so that it's like a family device, although the irony is that they're greatly enjoying playing Super Mario Brothers One, which can be purchased in a Nintendo game store for like eight dollars and came out in the eighties. So it just cracks me up that that game has stood the test of time. What if that's the one that came with the Nintendo, the original system, you know, or I don't know if it's original, but the one it would have been around when I was like ten, I actually beat that game. That's amazing. Go on my tombstone. I know that is amazing because my husband, who's very good at games, was like, I was never able to beat that game. Well, so key thing is amazing. Last part where you're like a rescue the Princess in the eighth level or whatever, it's impossible to get through it without one hit, and so you have to be the big character at the end, like when you're going into the final bridge, you have to be in a big character state, and then if you are, you can take the hit going through and rescue the princess. But it's I mean, somebody can. If we have any other Super Mario Brothers devoted, they're probably saying, Laura, you're completely misremembering this from thirty years ago, But that is what is lodged in my brain as the tactic required to end it and rescue the princess. So knew we were going to supply nineteen eighties video game tips. Yes, exactly, so fun that one. Yeah, so I don't know where we're I mean getting ready to move. I will be doing a lot of driving boxes of stuff over to the house. We may do an episode on moving at some point, but suffice to say, even if you hire movers, it's almost impossible to outsource everything when you have a lar large household. Like I'm not saying that a couple with one apartment, you know, two bedroom apartment couldn't manage to get everything. But in our case, Like, you know, they won't take stuff like live plants, so you either have to chuck the plants or move them yourself. Right, You know a lot of stuff that just doesn't make any sense for a mover to pack up carefully. I mean, it's just like little toys. But if there's a bin of toys, I mean they're going to wrap each one individually and put it in a box, and that's just it makes no sense, like I should just the two of us will put it in our trunks and drive it over and put it in the basement and deal with it later. So that will occupy a reasonable chunk of you know, the time of Christmas break, haha, Mary, Christmas. I am also hoping to declutter in preparation for the move during break, and I'm trying to jazz the kids up about that. Yeah. So I may be on top of video games from the nineteen eighties, however, I am a lot less on top of pop culture from twenty twenty one. So it was somewhat of a sad moment in the preparation for this episode when Sarah was sending me her best of lists from twenty twenty one. In all these categories, and I'm like, what is that? Like, I don't even know. So Sarah's going to probably take the lead on sharing the best of stuff from our pop culture categories. However, my caveat is that, as part of spending ninety percent of my brain space renovating a house, if you have any questions on preferred paint colors. For instance, I can recommend Iceberg as a nice light blue shade, which is suitable for bedrooms that you might have hardwood floors in, which we did in Golden Oak that was our stain. Navajo white is a very nice sort of warm white cream color, almost a bit of a yellow tent to it. That is good for a neutral, that's a warm neutral. If you're doing that in various spaces, I can recommend Cambria surface, like the for countertops. We went with the Iron Bridge for our counters. So if you're in the window market, I would recommend Pella's Architects series, the ones with the integrated world screen. All right, now we can get to TV, which I know nothing about. Oh my goodness, the Iron News. I'm like, I'm actually like, ooh, I might need to write those paink colors down. I don't know. About the rest of the audience, though hopefully there's some people that applied to all right, So yes, today's episode is going to be more like pop culture and product favorites for the year, and then next week you're going to hear a little bit more like personal year in review type stuff, just to clarify that. So I started a TV series, and I just wanted to share my absolute, hands down most enjoyable TV series this year was White Lotus, which I believe aired on HBO. My husband and I loved watching this together. It was like a total binge watch. I think it's six or eight total episodes. I hope they are going to be coming out with other seasons. But it's just like set in a luxury hotel, total upstairs downstairs vibe, but also just like kind of making fun of some really obnoxious people, which is a genre I sometimes enjoy. So it was great. I loved it. And it's a Mike White produced series and he's just awesome. So yeah, and then we talked about family TV and I was saying, uh, actually I didn't put anything, but I will I will give a note towards Bluey. My kids loved watching that. Australian dog cartoon this year. I have not watched it. Do you need to be like more seven years old to watch it? Or is it no Genevieve like Genevie Vice? Okay, good to know. So I have been reasonably impressed with Cocoa Melon. Over the course of the past few months, I've gotten into the family dynamic, the mommy and daddy Tom Tom is the older boy, Yo Yo is the older girl, and then JJ of course is the baby who's kind of the star of the show because it's aimed at two year olds. But you know, the songs are kind of catchy, and I thought they always had the same songs, but I realized there's like twenty volumes and we had just taped one, and that's why I was like, why do I keep hearing the same songs over and over again? And some of them are really good in terms of like they're you know, veggie eating propaganda, like peas peas, It's time to eat my peas yeay yay. I like them yum. And it's like, oh, it's time to go to bed, yeay yay, it's time to go to bed. I was like, let's sing that in art house, but there's also fun ones like you know, my Mommy is the Best, which is a very catchy song, and I encourage the hearty singing of my Mommy is the best. The best there ever was a lot of those songs do have like the same sound to them. It's the hilarious part. From a content production perspective, so I mean, it's a very for an animated series. It must be fairly economical to produce, because they have literally hired five singers because I can tell you, like I heard one of the frogs saying at one point and it was the dad. It was the same voice as the dad. So they have hired four treble singers and one bass singer. They have you know, used either songs that are in the public domain or have composed a few little catchy ditties, and it's evaluated like a billion dollars or something. Universal paid for it. I don't know, but it just I mean thinking they are expenses from a content production must have been relatively minimal, so pretty profitable. Not bad. They definitely hit the formula because Genevieve is four and above the target audience and she's stills it and will sit there motionless watching it. All right, So before we get to the breakdown, did you see any movies this year? No, I don't think I saw a single movie. I might be wrong, but I really couldn't remember any, so I don't think I did. I did watch Luca with the kids and they enjoyed it, and I thought it was pretty cute. And we just watched Elf. Does that count? It's cute, that's more of a classic. You know, you can repeat that. As this is airing, my kids will have gone to Spider Man over the past week, and the new Spider Man is out, which is supposed to be like a top hit of the year, so they're very, very excited about that one. Sopefully that will be a you know, major plus for the year. Jasper's excited, Jasper's Brilli into movies, and that the box office is slowly coming back. It's still sort of relatively low, the totals in comparison to say, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, the top stop something. You know, let's getting there, get there. So we'll see. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with our our best of lists. Well, Sarah and I are back with our twenty twenty one best of lists. As mentioned before, I'm somewhat pathetic in this and that I've consumed very little pop culture other than Coco Melon over the course of the past year. Sarah has been a bit better on this, so you know, people take heart. Once your children get slightly older, maybe just maybe you can watch a television show. So, Sarah, how about the podcast category? Other than best of Both Worlds? What was Yeah? And so many podcasts. I mean, this doesn't even scratch the surface of what I listen to, but probably my favorites, like the ones I get very excited when they pop up into my feed. I love No Stupid Questions with Angela Duckworth and Steven Dubner. I listen to that like every weekend when I run. I just love it. And actually, there's a new Freakonomics series or podcast that came out this year called Freakonomics MD that very much like hits all of my sweet spot interests and it's done really, really well with a host named Bapuu Jenna. He's awesome and entertaining. I still love the Girl next Door podcast for just conversation and fun. That's with Kelsey and Erica and it's just like a really fun light listen. And then I don't think I've missed an episode of Planners and Wine, which is an awesome planning podcast that comes out every week. I'm actually in their Patreon as well. Wonderful, wonderful. So obviously I'll put in a plug for Best Laid which is another excellent planning podcast. So if we have any listeners of Best of Both Worlds who have not yet checked out Sarah's Best Laid Plans, you should definitely do that. As a family, we listen to wait, wait, don't tell me on long car trips. So you know, there's only like one episode a week, so if it's you've done multiple car trips, you kind of are behind. You only can get it for like forty five minutes, but you know it's nice and Michael and I can listen to it, gather and enjoy it. Sam listens to it. The little kids are usually watching a movie, so I mean I would not have, like, you know, if a five year old was actually paying attention, it would might maybe not be the best podcast for them to listen to. But for you know, teens and preteens and adults, it's it's pretty funny. So I enjoy listening to Peter Segal and the rest of them on that. And of course I still listen to the occasional episode of How to Money as well. I'm a bit behind on listening to those, but you know, I do occasionally listen to that as well. We love Joel and Matt. We've had them on the show too. All right, Sarah, how about me music? Okay, So I had a great time last week listening to the All Songs Considered Top Listener Picks of the Year episode. So if you're looking for just a great list of twenty pretty accessible artists and different genres that people liked this year, I highly recommend that episode. I definitely caught some of my highlights on that. I mean, I thought there was a lot of good music that came out this year. I think a lot of people were like inspired during the pandemic and just did some really creative stuff. Currently, I'm listening to brand the new Brandy Carlisle a lot. We're actually going to see her in concert next year, so I feel like I'm preparing. And then Casey Musgraves. I loved her latest release and I have to admit a runaway favorite that I did not expect is that I greatly enjoyed the Little lass X album. So there you go. Not a peg dat, but all right, that's excellent. And do you have a kid's kids music favorite too, like you listen to like the Kids Bop or whatever it is. Well, my kids have finally like embraced one like real artist. Although I think this band has a lot of a large kid following, but they're super into Imagine dragons, like the new song thunder Oh my God, Like how many times would we play that in the car. But I'm just sort of happy that they have something that they're interested in that's like quote, real music. But I also really enjoy this kid's album called Cats Sit On You by the Story Pirates. A lot of kids music is really annoying. This to me feels like crossover between kids' music and like almost Broadway is like it has like a show tune sound and the woman, especially as like a great voice. So I definitely know a lot of the words in that album and my kids really like it and sound Spotify. So yeah, Cats Sit On You by the Story Pirates excellent. Ellent, We're just gonna skip me here, moving on to Sarah's best of beauty product beauty products you've discovered this year or have ramped abuse of this year? How Towork? What was the best of in that category? Probably my Sunday Riley Genes, which I ran out of and I actually miss Like I feel like it's not common, but I actually am like, oh my god, I have to get more. But I feel that way about this product because it's just very, very smoothing and seems to change my skin a little bit. I also learned that sadly, the really pricey renowned vitamin C sereums that a lot of people talk about. I can't stand the smell. I don't think I'm ever gonna use vitamin C. I cannot get past it. It's multiple brands. I guess the real vitamin C has the smell that like smells like old hot dogs, Like that is what it smells like. I can't. I'm gonna move on. I'll use retinol. I don't need vitamin C. It's fine, jeez, yuck. All right, well, my my oldie, but goodye is the ol a regenerous cream. And the upside is you can buy a two pack at Costco for a very reasonable price, like about what you would pay for one of them in the drug store, and so I am able to just use that as I would like regular oldlution, like put it all over my hands, put it all over my face, because it's not pricey when you buy it at Costco. And then I started doing botox again, which I'm I don't know Stara's looking. I'm at the end of the three months, so I have to get it again, probably in January. But so, I mean I like it. I like botox a lot. Sadly, this time they went they decided I needed a little bit more around my eye, and I think the needle just like slipped or something. I wound up with a bruise on one of my eyes that looked like I had, you know, either makeup or something that. Unfortunately, it looked enough like makeup that I could put something of a smooky eye on the other side and it would look okay until it faded or else. Like. This was the phase when Henry was like throwing blocks, so I could also just say, eh, must have been a block. So this occasional downside of such things, you know, there nothing is ever perfect, And I think I think the office is very good. It's just sometimes that happens. Well, I can vouch. I think it's an amazing technology, and I also endorse the benefits of these medical miracles that we have. All Right, next clothing line, I know you're going to talk about your new goals, but I will say I am greatly enjoying the made well, perfect fit vintage jeans for those that want to venture out from the skinny jeans since they're no longer cool. This is a great pair. They're very comfortable, they're high waisted, they're flattering. I actually have them in two sizes, one that's like, looks really cute but doesn't feel amazing, and one that like is super comfortable, And you can imagine which pair I reach for more. But I really like this shape of them. I think they're just really well tailored, made well. It does a great job of jeans. Yeah, now that's good. I will give a shout out to the general idea of a cowl neck in a sweater that if you are wearing a sweater but you want something that looks a little you know, fancier around your neck, that's often a way to do that without you know, having to do anything else right, Like it's just a little texture or a little shape around your neck and can make it look a little bit more put together than just a plain old sweater. But my actual aspiration for twenty twenty two is to have a wardrobe that is worthy of my new closet, because we made really great his and hers, you know, custom closets in this new house, and so hopefully I will be able to put stuff in it that will make me excited to get dressed. So that's a that's a goal for the year. But in the meantime, I've been enjoying buying a Boden for Ruth and for some other little girls. I know, it's just fun to buy a little girl clothing from a very cute clothing company. I've been doing a lot of under armour for the boys, like teen and preteen boy clothes, just hard, hard, hard, you know, Jaspers in men's sizes now, but still like getting stuff that's not he's not You don't want to look like an old man, so you know, what's what's the teen boy look? And it seems to be a lot of athletic gear is what I've been figuring out, and so under armour seems to be the way to go on that, and then more and more of us in the family are wearing the American Giant hoodies. So if you have not yet checked this out, you know, probably a little late to get it for Christmas anyone listening to this, But they are a maid in America Clothing company. They are very sturdy hoodies. They are pricey houddies, like they're not going to be cheap, but they seem to last for a very long time. It's now the only hoodie I really wear when I'm wearing a hoodie, So would recommend that Josh has one of those. And they are very heavy, like if you pick them up, I'm like, they weigh like three pounds. So yes, they're probably also nice in South Florida. But if you are in a part of the world like Pennsylvania where you need something to wear for you know, three quarters of the year, including indoors, because you otherwise be chilly unless you've cranked the heat up to a point where you're sweating and it's then it's good to have those, right, So you made a big tech acquisition. Yes, I actually had to look back because I was thinking about this category and I had two tech acquisitions within the last like fourteen months, but one of them was in twenty twenty, and so my Airpad pros, which I freaking love and like don't know why I waited so long to get them, I love, but I bought them in December twenty twenty, so they don't count. And last month I bought an Apple Watch, and I was skeptical. I was kind of worried about the running aspect, especially because I've just heard they're not quite as accurate as the garment. However, for me, it seems for my purposes of my very amateur running career here it's accurate enough. I mean, maybe it would be different if I was like in a big city and it was going to read one mile as like three miles or something like that. But I'm mostly running in flat suburban Florida, and I don't think it's hard for GPS signals to get to the ground here, So it works well for running for me, and it is much more comfortable on my wrist, And very importantly, if anybody's in medicine and has to authenticate multiple times a day via the duo app, I can do that on my wrist. So when I do certain prescriptions. I used to have to like run to get my phone from the office every time, and it would just like add minutes at a moment when I didn't want to. And now the signal makes it to my wrist and I just go accept, and it's like, I mean, it's a small thing, but for me, it's like it took a very common annoyance out of my life. So even though that seems like a silly reason, that is one reason I really like it. And it also makes me feel like I need to be less tethered to my phone because I'm not going to missed off because the garment I had did have a Bluetooth connection, but it was rather tenuous, and so it was almost like I couldn't trust it, whereas I feel like I can trust the Apple Watch receiving my phone's data. So yeah, it's really great. I like it. Well, if it saves few minutes every day, like that's a good purchase right there. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, our fun little tech equ No, I don't know if it counts as tech, but we got we put in a theater room in the new house, and we tore up some of the attic area and made it into a theater room. And so we had got these six reclining theater chairs, which I guess what makes some tech is you have to plug them into the floor. So this turned out to be this whole thing that we wound up needing six outlets on the floor put in to get the theater seating put in. But it should be great have a big screen for you know, watching movies and can tilt back the Saints. This was definitely a request from the fourteen year old, but it should be should be fun. How about books? What have you gotten into Europe? Forty six, forty seven? Where are you now? Think I'm at forty six, but I have two books that are mostly done, so I'm going to be at forty eight soon. So I'm now I'm like, can I get a short book of poetry or something right? You know? No, seriously, I'm not going to pick up a five hundred page tome right now. So yes, you got it. My favorite So I do keep a list so it's easy for me to see what I really loved. And I will admit it's probably weighted to the recency bias a little bit, but my favorite novels were Greenwood by Michael Christie, which I read in May, and Homegoing by Yagyassi, which I read I think in sometime over the summer. Both actually had a lot of similarities to them, like following multiple generations through time, one of them into the future and one of them way into the past. So kind of some parallels there, and both really well written and incredibly absorbing and engaging. So recommend both of those. And then my favorite kind of like nonfiction books that I read. I loved Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Berkman. I would love to hear Laura and Oliver have like a face off, not an antagonistic face off, because I think they actually agree on a lot of things, but just an interview, I guess. And then Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. I had wanted to read that for so many years. I mean that book came out like in the sixties or something. It was a very meaningful read for me. I thought it was just really powerful and a heartbreaking story to read. I haven't read that much like holocaust literature, and I think I've sort of avoided it for whatever reason, but it was just a really really important read. So recommend. Yeah, yeah, well it's a it's probably intense, so I mean, this year I've been reading through Warren Peace, which has absorbed a lot of my reading capacity, I guess, even though it's just a little bit per day, I haven't really felt like getting involved in another saga, I guess, and so that's kind of occupied that space. However, I will give it a shout out because it is the best novel of all time, so highly recommend people read it. If they have not, don't. It is long, but it is not hard. It is very accessible as a novel, and the chapters are very very short, so you can just read a few, put it down, get another few, put it down. I also want to give a shout out to a lot of the authors we have had on this show over the past year who've had excellent books out, like Dori Clark with The Long Game, Rachel Rogers. We should all be millionaires, Emily Ostro with the Family Firm in her other work, so it's always good to have an excuse to read their books that we've enjoyed, you know, having those on our list, the share that we've been able to read a lot of our guests books, so enjoying doing that. So I guess our Love of the Week was really all of that, right, you know this was an all Love of the Week episode. Yes, although I have one product run. Okay, what's that that I had on my mind? Have you ever run with a flip belt? Ye? It's like this little, like twenty dollars elastic thing that you can like shove your phone in and it goes around your waist. Now, you run in leggings, so you probably have like a pocket you could just put them in. But it's too hot to run in leggings here, even in December, so this is like a game changer. I've been holding my phone in my hand for like the last twenty years, and now I don't that seems like you've never thought that there might have been another solution. I just never like saw it as that much of a problem. And then one day I think I heard about it on like the Another Mother Runner side or something, and it was just like I could order this for twenty dollars and try it, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It holds your phone in place, it does not bounce, and you can just throw it in the wash and it's great. So that's my love of the week. Yeah. No, my leggings have a side. The ones I buy have side big pockets. I mean I sort of look like a camel with stuff shoved in there, but whatever, I don't care. I mean, I'm not you know, trying to look cute in the gym or anything. I'm out running. So there we go. Well, we don't have a question this week, but we want to put out a shout a shout out for people to please send us questions because we're compiling them for an upcoming mailbag episode. So if you want to send them to me, you know, like Laura at Laura vandercam dot com, you can always do that shoe box blog right at gmail dot com. You can share them on our Instagram page, you can you know, post on my blog, you can whatever anyway you want to reach us. We are happy to get your questions, trying to compile a big list for upcoming Mailbox episodes, so please do that. And in the meantime, you know, this was part one I'm the best of, but we'll be back next week with more on best of and in general making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you 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.

Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Onunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. 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 is episode two hundred and twenty nine, which is airing in mid to late December, right before Christmas. Over the next two episodes, we're going to be doing our year in review retrospective, looking at all the things that happened or that we enjoyed over the past year. We invite you to share yours as well, of course, over at our Best of Both Worlds podcast Instagram, if you're at our Patreon community of course, or either of our blogs. We'd love to hear what worked for you over the course of the year, anything you've learned, anything you particularly enjoyed, and recommendations you want to share with our community whatever would be your love of the week over the past fifty two weeks. So, Sarah, when this airs in December twenty first, are you guys going to be off school at that point? Yes, we are going to definitely be off school. My kids actually have two weeks and one day off. And I was thinking about how many days that was, and I was thinking it was fifteen, but it's actually seventeen because you also got the weekend a lot of days. However, six of those days they're going to be spending in quote unquote camp in part because I am working for a lot of winter break and so is my husband and it all goes well and no one gets sick. That means they'll actually have two days of camp where I do not have work and I have childcare. So I'm looking forward to that as my own personal treaty. Yes, your own little present for two days out of seventeen. Yeah, exactly. Although you know I got seventeen. There is a lot, Like I was just thinking, I mean, if ever you could coordinate it, or you know, your work life looks different or something, you guys could like go to New Zealand or something and that length of a time, if that's the length of time you get off, and over winter break we never get that long. So were my kids will still be in school when this airs, and they will be right up to the twenty fourth. They get the twenty fourth off, but not any days before that. Then there is the week off through to January first, of course, but you know, other than that, not so much. So it doesn't quite work with the New Zealand trip, especially not this year, given them. I don't think New Zealand's accepting people anyway, and I couldn't keep a mask on a toddler for seventeen hours. But anyway, we won't go there. Well, New Zealand would be tougher because I'm not New Zealand specifically, but travel because usually Josh has to work at least one major holiday every single year, and he's very stubborn about not wanting to work Thanksgiving, so that usually means Christmas or New Year's. However, next year, I'm hoping not to work any of those majors. So we're thinking about like a ski trip or something. Yeah, yeah, no, but I mean it's just a lot of time to play with. Yeah, a lot of days it's like a mini summer. Well, I've been thinking about that just if we ever did make it over to Asia Pacific, right, you know that you want to go for a long enough time to make it worth it on the flight, and we don't have that long winter break, and so it's sort of unclear when that would ever actually happen. Summer well, but that's their winter, so it's slightly less exciting to go, you know, do stuff there. I mean, maybe you know, could be good. We'll see anyway, So we're what are you guys going to do for the break? Then you're going to put the kids in camp? You're so six of the days will be camp, which is actually a really wonderful benefit. Our school offers this, not for the actual holidays, of course, but I think the Monday through Wednesday of each week. So they're going to do that and that shouldn't be too disruptive because it's the same like normal drop off and routin as school would be. And then I'm going to try to impose some structure because that's just a lot of days. And again it's like either to be myself in charge or my husband in charge. A lot of the time it's gonna like kind of flip flop. So I am planning on number one, creating kind of like a little calendar so they can see what to expect, because I think sometimes the nebulous uncertainty can add to I don't know, like behavior stuff for my kids end, and I do want to stick to like kind of like relatively normal bedtimes, like not drift you know, hours hours later and kind of this is our wonderful weather season, so I want to take advantage of doing lots of outdoor stuff in the morning and then settling in for screen time in the afternoon. That's kind of our normal template. They got a Nintendo Switch for Hanaka, so they are all about that fun screen time, and it's actually been more fun to see them like actually playing games together versus punched over their own devices. So I'm happy about that. Oh that's really cool. Yeah, Nintendo Switch has a group one. My son has a Nintendo Switch, but it's like a handheld, so that might be it. So it is you can put it up on the big screen, and then you can get multiple controllers, so there's games that involve you can have multiplayer at once, or it can be like old school like remember the like regular old Nintendo when you would be playing Mario together and it would be taking turns, but you're sort of you know, you're each playing and you're each invested in watching, So it feels more like that you're right, there is like its own screen, but you don't have to use that, so we're not encouraging use of that. We hooked it up to our TV so that it's like a family device, although the irony is that they're greatly enjoying playing Super Mario Brothers One, which can be purchased in a Nintendo game store for like eight dollars and came out in the eighties. So it just cracks me up that that game has stood the test of time. What if that's the one that came with the Nintendo, the original system, you know, or I don't know if it's original, but the one it would have been around when I was like ten, I actually beat that game. That's amazing. Go on my tombstone. I know that is amazing because my husband, who's very good at games, was like, I was never able to beat that game. Well, so key thing is amazing. Last part where you're like a rescue the Princess in the eighth level or whatever, it's impossible to get through it without one hit, and so you have to be the big character at the end, like when you're going into the final bridge, you have to be in a big character state, and then if you are, you can take the hit going through and rescue the princess. But it's I mean, somebody can. If we have any other Super Mario Brothers devoted, they're probably saying, Laura, you're completely misremembering this from thirty years ago, But that is what is lodged in my brain as the tactic required to end it and rescue the princess. So knew we were going to supply nineteen eighties video game tips. Yes, exactly, so fun that one. Yeah, so I don't know where we're I mean getting ready to move. I will be doing a lot of driving boxes of stuff over to the house. We may do an episode on moving at some point, but suffice to say, even if you hire movers, it's almost impossible to outsource everything when you have a lar large household. Like I'm not saying that a couple with one apartment, you know, two bedroom apartment couldn't manage to get everything. But in our case, Like, you know, they won't take stuff like live plants, so you either have to chuck the plants or move them yourself. Right, You know a lot of stuff that just doesn't make any sense for a mover to pack up carefully. I mean, it's just like little toys. But if there's a bin of toys, I mean they're going to wrap each one individually and put it in a box, and that's just it makes no sense, like I should just the two of us will put it in our trunks and drive it over and put it in the basement and deal with it later. So that will occupy a reasonable chunk of you know, the time of Christmas break, haha, Mary, Christmas. I am also hoping to declutter in preparation for the move during break, and I'm trying to jazz the kids up about that. Yeah. So I may be on top of video games from the nineteen eighties, however, I am a lot less on top of pop culture from twenty twenty one. So it was somewhat of a sad moment in the preparation for this episode when Sarah was sending me her best of lists from twenty twenty one. In all these categories, and I'm like, what is that? Like, I don't even know. So Sarah's going to probably take the lead on sharing the best of stuff from our pop culture categories. However, my caveat is that, as part of spending ninety percent of my brain space renovating a house, if you have any questions on preferred paint colors. For instance, I can recommend Iceberg as a nice light blue shade, which is suitable for bedrooms that you might have hardwood floors in, which we did in Golden Oak that was our stain. Navajo white is a very nice sort of warm white cream color, almost a bit of a yellow tent to it. That is good for a neutral, that's a warm neutral. If you're doing that in various spaces, I can recommend Cambria surface, like the for countertops. We went with the Iron Bridge for our counters. So if you're in the window market, I would recommend Pella's Architects series, the ones with the integrated world screen. All right, now we can get to TV, which I know nothing about. Oh my goodness, the Iron News. I'm like, I'm actually like, ooh, I might need to write those paink colors down. I don't know. About the rest of the audience, though hopefully there's some people that applied to all right, So yes, today's episode is going to be more like pop culture and product favorites for the year, and then next week you're going to hear a little bit more like personal year in review type stuff, just to clarify that. So I started a TV series, and I just wanted to share my absolute, hands down most enjoyable TV series this year was White Lotus, which I believe aired on HBO. My husband and I loved watching this together. It was like a total binge watch. I think it's six or eight total episodes. I hope they are going to be coming out with other seasons. But it's just like set in a luxury hotel, total upstairs downstairs vibe, but also just like kind of making fun of some really obnoxious people, which is a genre I sometimes enjoy. So it was great. I loved it. And it's a Mike White produced series and he's just awesome. So yeah, and then we talked about family TV and I was saying, uh, actually I didn't put anything, but I will I will give a note towards Bluey. My kids loved watching that. Australian dog cartoon this year. I have not watched it. Do you need to be like more seven years old to watch it? Or is it no Genevieve like Genevie Vice? Okay, good to know. So I have been reasonably impressed with Cocoa Melon. Over the course of the past few months, I've gotten into the family dynamic, the mommy and daddy Tom Tom is the older boy, Yo Yo is the older girl, and then JJ of course is the baby who's kind of the star of the show because it's aimed at two year olds. But you know, the songs are kind of catchy, and I thought they always had the same songs, but I realized there's like twenty volumes and we had just taped one, and that's why I was like, why do I keep hearing the same songs over and over again? And some of them are really good in terms of like they're you know, veggie eating propaganda, like peas peas, It's time to eat my peas yeay yay. I like them yum. And it's like, oh, it's time to go to bed, yeay yay, it's time to go to bed. I was like, let's sing that in art house, but there's also fun ones like you know, my Mommy is the Best, which is a very catchy song, and I encourage the hearty singing of my Mommy is the best. The best there ever was a lot of those songs do have like the same sound to them. It's the hilarious part. From a content production perspective, so I mean, it's a very for an animated series. It must be fairly economical to produce, because they have literally hired five singers because I can tell you, like I heard one of the frogs saying at one point and it was the dad. It was the same voice as the dad. So they have hired four treble singers and one bass singer. They have you know, used either songs that are in the public domain or have composed a few little catchy ditties, and it's evaluated like a billion dollars or something. Universal paid for it. I don't know, but it just I mean thinking they are expenses from a content production must have been relatively minimal, so pretty profitable. Not bad. They definitely hit the formula because Genevieve is four and above the target audience and she's stills it and will sit there motionless watching it. All right, So before we get to the breakdown, did you see any movies this year? No, I don't think I saw a single movie. I might be wrong, but I really couldn't remember any, so I don't think I did. I did watch Luca with the kids and they enjoyed it, and I thought it was pretty cute. And we just watched Elf. Does that count? It's cute, that's more of a classic. You know, you can repeat that. As this is airing, my kids will have gone to Spider Man over the past week, and the new Spider Man is out, which is supposed to be like a top hit of the year, so they're very, very excited about that one. Sopefully that will be a you know, major plus for the year. Jasper's excited, Jasper's Brilli into movies, and that the box office is slowly coming back. It's still sort of relatively low, the totals in comparison to say, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, the top stop something. You know, let's getting there, get there. So we'll see. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with our our best of lists. Well, Sarah and I are back with our twenty twenty one best of lists. As mentioned before, I'm somewhat pathetic in this and that I've consumed very little pop culture other than Coco Melon over the course of the past year. Sarah has been a bit better on this, so you know, people take heart. Once your children get slightly older, maybe just maybe you can watch a television show. So, Sarah, how about the podcast category? Other than best of Both Worlds? What was Yeah? And so many podcasts. I mean, this doesn't even scratch the surface of what I listen to, but probably my favorites, like the ones I get very excited when they pop up into my feed. I love No Stupid Questions with Angela Duckworth and Steven Dubner. I listen to that like every weekend when I run. I just love it. And actually, there's a new Freakonomics series or podcast that came out this year called Freakonomics MD that very much like hits all of my sweet spot interests and it's done really, really well with a host named Bapuu Jenna. He's awesome and entertaining. I still love the Girl next Door podcast for just conversation and fun. That's with Kelsey and Erica and it's just like a really fun light listen. And then I don't think I've missed an episode of Planners and Wine, which is an awesome planning podcast that comes out every week. I'm actually in their Patreon as well. Wonderful, wonderful. So obviously I'll put in a plug for Best Laid which is another excellent planning podcast. So if we have any listeners of Best of Both Worlds who have not yet checked out Sarah's Best Laid Plans, you should definitely do that. As a family, we listen to wait, wait, don't tell me on long car trips. So you know, there's only like one episode a week, so if it's you've done multiple car trips, you kind of are behind. You only can get it for like forty five minutes, but you know it's nice and Michael and I can listen to it, gather and enjoy it. Sam listens to it. The little kids are usually watching a movie, so I mean I would not have, like, you know, if a five year old was actually paying attention, it would might maybe not be the best podcast for them to listen to. But for you know, teens and preteens and adults, it's it's pretty funny. So I enjoy listening to Peter Segal and the rest of them on that. And of course I still listen to the occasional episode of How to Money as well. I'm a bit behind on listening to those, but you know, I do occasionally listen to that as well. We love Joel and Matt. We've had them on the show too. All right, Sarah, how about me music? Okay, So I had a great time last week listening to the All Songs Considered Top Listener Picks of the Year episode. So if you're looking for just a great list of twenty pretty accessible artists and different genres that people liked this year, I highly recommend that episode. I definitely caught some of my highlights on that. I mean, I thought there was a lot of good music that came out this year. I think a lot of people were like inspired during the pandemic and just did some really creative stuff. Currently, I'm listening to brand the new Brandy Carlisle a lot. We're actually going to see her in concert next year, so I feel like I'm preparing. And then Casey Musgraves. I loved her latest release and I have to admit a runaway favorite that I did not expect is that I greatly enjoyed the Little lass X album. So there you go. Not a peg dat, but all right, that's excellent. And do you have a kid's kids music favorite too, like you listen to like the Kids Bop or whatever it is. Well, my kids have finally like embraced one like real artist. Although I think this band has a lot of a large kid following, but they're super into Imagine dragons, like the new song thunder Oh my God, Like how many times would we play that in the car. But I'm just sort of happy that they have something that they're interested in that's like quote, real music. But I also really enjoy this kid's album called Cats Sit On You by the Story Pirates. A lot of kids music is really annoying. This to me feels like crossover between kids' music and like almost Broadway is like it has like a show tune sound and the woman, especially as like a great voice. So I definitely know a lot of the words in that album and my kids really like it and sound Spotify. So yeah, Cats Sit On You by the Story Pirates excellent. Ellent, We're just gonna skip me here, moving on to Sarah's best of beauty product beauty products you've discovered this year or have ramped abuse of this year? How Towork? What was the best of in that category? Probably my Sunday Riley Genes, which I ran out of and I actually miss Like I feel like it's not common, but I actually am like, oh my god, I have to get more. But I feel that way about this product because it's just very, very smoothing and seems to change my skin a little bit. I also learned that sadly, the really pricey renowned vitamin C sereums that a lot of people talk about. I can't stand the smell. I don't think I'm ever gonna use vitamin C. I cannot get past it. It's multiple brands. I guess the real vitamin C has the smell that like smells like old hot dogs, Like that is what it smells like. I can't. I'm gonna move on. I'll use retinol. I don't need vitamin C. It's fine, jeez, yuck. All right, well, my my oldie, but goodye is the ol a regenerous cream. And the upside is you can buy a two pack at Costco for a very reasonable price, like about what you would pay for one of them in the drug store, and so I am able to just use that as I would like regular oldlution, like put it all over my hands, put it all over my face, because it's not pricey when you buy it at Costco. And then I started doing botox again, which I'm I don't know Stara's looking. I'm at the end of the three months, so I have to get it again, probably in January. But so, I mean I like it. I like botox a lot. Sadly, this time they went they decided I needed a little bit more around my eye, and I think the needle just like slipped or something. I wound up with a bruise on one of my eyes that looked like I had, you know, either makeup or something that. Unfortunately, it looked enough like makeup that I could put something of a smooky eye on the other side and it would look okay until it faded or else. Like. This was the phase when Henry was like throwing blocks, so I could also just say, eh, must have been a block. So this occasional downside of such things, you know, there nothing is ever perfect, And I think I think the office is very good. It's just sometimes that happens. Well, I can vouch. I think it's an amazing technology, and I also endorse the benefits of these medical miracles that we have. All Right, next clothing line, I know you're going to talk about your new goals, but I will say I am greatly enjoying the made well, perfect fit vintage jeans for those that want to venture out from the skinny jeans since they're no longer cool. This is a great pair. They're very comfortable, they're high waisted, they're flattering. I actually have them in two sizes, one that's like, looks really cute but doesn't feel amazing, and one that like is super comfortable, And you can imagine which pair I reach for more. But I really like this shape of them. I think they're just really well tailored, made well. It does a great job of jeans. Yeah, now that's good. I will give a shout out to the general idea of a cowl neck in a sweater that if you are wearing a sweater but you want something that looks a little you know, fancier around your neck, that's often a way to do that without you know, having to do anything else right, Like it's just a little texture or a little shape around your neck and can make it look a little bit more put together than just a plain old sweater. But my actual aspiration for twenty twenty two is to have a wardrobe that is worthy of my new closet, because we made really great his and hers, you know, custom closets in this new house, and so hopefully I will be able to put stuff in it that will make me excited to get dressed. So that's a that's a goal for the year. But in the meantime, I've been enjoying buying a Boden for Ruth and for some other little girls. I know, it's just fun to buy a little girl clothing from a very cute clothing company. I've been doing a lot of under armour for the boys, like teen and preteen boy clothes, just hard, hard, hard, you know, Jaspers in men's sizes now, but still like getting stuff that's not he's not You don't want to look like an old man, so you know, what's what's the teen boy look? And it seems to be a lot of athletic gear is what I've been figuring out, and so under armour seems to be the way to go on that, and then more and more of us in the family are wearing the American Giant hoodies. So if you have not yet checked this out, you know, probably a little late to get it for Christmas anyone listening to this, But they are a maid in America Clothing company. They are very sturdy hoodies. They are pricey houddies, like they're not going to be cheap, but they seem to last for a very long time. It's now the only hoodie I really wear when I'm wearing a hoodie, So would recommend that Josh has one of those. And they are very heavy, like if you pick them up, I'm like, they weigh like three pounds. So yes, they're probably also nice in South Florida. But if you are in a part of the world like Pennsylvania where you need something to wear for you know, three quarters of the year, including indoors, because you otherwise be chilly unless you've cranked the heat up to a point where you're sweating and it's then it's good to have those, right, So you made a big tech acquisition. Yes, I actually had to look back because I was thinking about this category and I had two tech acquisitions within the last like fourteen months, but one of them was in twenty twenty, and so my Airpad pros, which I freaking love and like don't know why I waited so long to get them, I love, but I bought them in December twenty twenty, so they don't count. And last month I bought an Apple Watch, and I was skeptical. I was kind of worried about the running aspect, especially because I've just heard they're not quite as accurate as the garment. However, for me, it seems for my purposes of my very amateur running career here it's accurate enough. I mean, maybe it would be different if I was like in a big city and it was going to read one mile as like three miles or something like that. But I'm mostly running in flat suburban Florida, and I don't think it's hard for GPS signals to get to the ground here, So it works well for running for me, and it is much more comfortable on my wrist, And very importantly, if anybody's in medicine and has to authenticate multiple times a day via the duo app, I can do that on my wrist. So when I do certain prescriptions. I used to have to like run to get my phone from the office every time, and it would just like add minutes at a moment when I didn't want to. And now the signal makes it to my wrist and I just go accept, and it's like, I mean, it's a small thing, but for me, it's like it took a very common annoyance out of my life. So even though that seems like a silly reason, that is one reason I really like it. And it also makes me feel like I need to be less tethered to my phone because I'm not going to missed off because the garment I had did have a Bluetooth connection, but it was rather tenuous, and so it was almost like I couldn't trust it, whereas I feel like I can trust the Apple Watch receiving my phone's data. So yeah, it's really great. I like it. Well, if it saves few minutes every day, like that's a good purchase right there. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, our fun little tech equ No, I don't know if it counts as tech, but we got we put in a theater room in the new house, and we tore up some of the attic area and made it into a theater room. And so we had got these six reclining theater chairs, which I guess what makes some tech is you have to plug them into the floor. So this turned out to be this whole thing that we wound up needing six outlets on the floor put in to get the theater seating put in. But it should be great have a big screen for you know, watching movies and can tilt back the Saints. This was definitely a request from the fourteen year old, but it should be should be fun. How about books? What have you gotten into Europe? Forty six, forty seven? Where are you now? Think I'm at forty six, but I have two books that are mostly done, so I'm going to be at forty eight soon. So I'm now I'm like, can I get a short book of poetry or something right? You know? No, seriously, I'm not going to pick up a five hundred page tome right now. So yes, you got it. My favorite So I do keep a list so it's easy for me to see what I really loved. And I will admit it's probably weighted to the recency bias a little bit, but my favorite novels were Greenwood by Michael Christie, which I read in May, and Homegoing by Yagyassi, which I read I think in sometime over the summer. Both actually had a lot of similarities to them, like following multiple generations through time, one of them into the future and one of them way into the past. So kind of some parallels there, and both really well written and incredibly absorbing and engaging. So recommend both of those. And then my favorite kind of like nonfiction books that I read. I loved Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Berkman. I would love to hear Laura and Oliver have like a face off, not an antagonistic face off, because I think they actually agree on a lot of things, but just an interview, I guess. And then Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. I had wanted to read that for so many years. I mean that book came out like in the sixties or something. It was a very meaningful read for me. I thought it was just really powerful and a heartbreaking story to read. I haven't read that much like holocaust literature, and I think I've sort of avoided it for whatever reason, but it was just a really really important read. So recommend. Yeah, yeah, well it's a it's probably intense, so I mean, this year I've been reading through Warren Peace, which has absorbed a lot of my reading capacity, I guess, even though it's just a little bit per day, I haven't really felt like getting involved in another saga, I guess, and so that's kind of occupied that space. However, I will give it a shout out because it is the best novel of all time, so highly recommend people read it. If they have not, don't. It is long, but it is not hard. It is very accessible as a novel, and the chapters are very very short, so you can just read a few, put it down, get another few, put it down. I also want to give a shout out to a lot of the authors we have had on this show over the past year who've had excellent books out, like Dori Clark with The Long Game, Rachel Rogers. We should all be millionaires, Emily Ostro with the Family Firm in her other work, so it's always good to have an excuse to read their books that we've enjoyed, you know, having those on our list, the share that we've been able to read a lot of our guests books, so enjoying doing that. So I guess our Love of the Week was really all of that, right, you know this was an all Love of the Week episode. Yes, although I have one product run. Okay, what's that that I had on my mind? Have you ever run with a flip belt? Ye? It's like this little, like twenty dollars elastic thing that you can like shove your phone in and it goes around your waist. Now, you run in leggings, so you probably have like a pocket you could just put them in. But it's too hot to run in leggings here, even in December, so this is like a game changer. I've been holding my phone in my hand for like the last twenty years, and now I don't that seems like you've never thought that there might have been another solution. I just never like saw it as that much of a problem. And then one day I think I heard about it on like the Another Mother Runner side or something, and it was just like I could order this for twenty dollars and try it, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It holds your phone in place, it does not bounce, and you can just throw it in the wash and it's great. So that's my love of the week. Yeah. No, my leggings have a side. The ones I buy have side big pockets. I mean I sort of look like a camel with stuff shoved in there, but whatever, I don't care. I mean, I'm not you know, trying to look cute in the gym or anything. I'm out running. So there we go. Well, we don't have a question this week, but we want to put out a shout a shout out for people to please send us questions because we're compiling them for an upcoming mailbag episode. So if you want to send them to me, you know, like Laura at Laura vandercam dot com, you can always do that shoe box blog right at gmail dot com. You can share them on our Instagram page, you can you know, post on my blog, you can whatever anyway you want to reach us. We are happy to get your questions, trying to compile a big list for upcoming Mailbox episodes, so please do that. And in the meantime, you know, this was part one I'm the best of, but we'll be back next week with more on best of and in general making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you 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.