#1.1 When life gives you lemons
on Wed Feb 20 2019 08:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
with Darren W Pulsipher, Paige Pulsipher,
The first episode of the Where's the Lemonade podcast where we talk about why we are podcasting in the first place.
Keywords
- Both found ourselves divorced after over 20 years.
- We met online. Paige was the first girl to flirt with Darren online.
- It was hard to go on a date for the first time after 20 years.
- Did not want to introduce dates to kids until this was more serious.
- Lives are thrown together, no way to prepare.
- 6 (Darren’s) + 4 (Paige’s) = 10 Kids
- When we first got married we had 7 kids at home with 7 different schedules
- How Paige sacrificed her career to stay at home and keep things running.
- After some time Paige started an Etsy shop. Daisy Blossom Creations. Check it out here.
- We survived how did we do it?
Why are we doing this?
- We wish we had some practical advice from someone who was going through the same thing as us.
- Our friends that hadn't been through a divorce really couldn't understand what we were going through and how we were figuring it out.
- We have friends that are interested and curious about how we are making blending two large families together. And we seem to be fairly happy while we are making this work.
- We have talked to several other families that are in similar situations and have shared ideas and swapped stories. We want to share what we have learned with more people. In an effort help.
- We are not experts and will never be. We make mistakes every day. But we are trying to learn from them and share with others.
The format of the show
- Sometimes guests, like our kids or friends that have gone through the same thing.
- Topics we might cover: scheduling, traditions, time alone, grandparents, etc...
- 7 kids dropped their bags, kicked off their shoes. How to keep a clean house?
- How to go from being a guest in the house to a parent.
- 7 schedules 7 kids and tons of food. How to cook for that many people on a daily basis?
- If you have questions or thoughts you want us to cover check our website http://www.wheresthelemonade.org. facebook, or twitter.
- Every episode will have a short blog with some pictures. http://www.wheresthelemonade.org
- Every week we will have a funny moment.
Funny Moment:
- One of our kids loved the “Lego Movie 2” because it taught a “life lesson”, we thought wow he is maturing and understanding meaning in movies. Then we asked him what did you learn. “I Don’t know”. So we are part way there with maturity. There is still hope there.
Podcast Transcript
1
This is Darren and this is Page,and this is where's the lemonadewhere we try and figure outwhat to do with those lemonsthat are thrown at us or thrown at us.
Makes them lemonade, maybe.
I guess it depends on the week for sure.
In this episode, we're going to talk aboutwhy we're doing this podcast.
Why are we? I'm not exactly sure.
Maybe we'll figure it out. Sounds good.
So just a little bit about ourselves.
This is Darren and this is Page.
And after 20 years of marriage, we bothfound ourselves divorced and alone.
Yeah, we did.
It was a it was a tough time.
Very. Yeah.
I think anyone that's gone throughthat can relate to that.
Emotional turmoil and physical turmoil,
Everything that goes goes on in them.
Yeah, it's. It's difficult.
Difficult for the grown ups.
It's difficult for the kids.
It's just, you know, it's a bummer.
It's a major bummer.
That'swhen lemons are thrown at you, right?
Yes. Yes. So after some time, we.
We actually.
You'd been dating longer than I had.
And we actually met online.
We did.
In fact, you were the first personto flirt with me online.
Yes, I remember.
I was kind of burntout of of the online thing.
And I hadn't been on in a long time.
And I got on after a few months of a breakand there wasyour picture popped up and it said,you have a new member in your area.
So I sent you a little smiley face with awith a.
It was a flirt, you know, Flirt.
That's right.
And apparently, you hadyou had just gotten outjust five men on 5 minutes to spendall the time Photoshopping my picture.
That was 18 months old.
It wasn't 18.
Yeah, I was 18 months old. Huh.
And how many people?£30 lighter than what I was.
It was still me, though.
Bait and switch, but that's okay.
Just a little bit.
But it was. It was fine.
So I remember that the first date thatwe went on, it was really hard for me.
It's scary after,you know, 20 some odd years of,you know, Yeah,not doing that kind of thing.
And all suddenyou are doing that kind of thing.
It's it is.
It's weird and awkward and and Yeah,but we did.
In fact, we were.
I was your first date. Yup.
You were not my last.
No, no.
Because I did not want to bethe rebound girl.
No. So she actually insistedthat I date other girls,and he took that very seriously.
I had no problemonce I got used to it.
Yeah, I had no problem dating other girls.
Yeah, In fact, he was dating so many,he had to keep a spreadsheetto keep us all straight.
I actually did.
It's different when you're olderand there's kids involved becauseyou have something to talk about.
It's. They're each other's kids.
The family is so important to usand so whenwhen you start talkingabout other people's families,keeping all the namestrue, it's really, really difficult.
Oh, it sounds like it was a hard timefor you, dear.
It was.
I hardly got any sleep at all, rather.
But when we finally decided,hey, this is this is something serious.
This is something we want to to carry on.
We had to talk a lot about Whendo we introduce the kids to each other?
Yes, we were.
We had to make sure we were very seriousbefore we did that, because you don'twant to just throw the kids into,you know, a not serious relationship.
Right.
Because the kids become easily attachedto who you're dating.
And and it you break it off.
It can be pretty hard for them.
So before we introducethe kids to each other, we were datingonly late at night, basically afterwe would put the kids to bed.
Kids to bed? Yeah.
Then we would,you know, hang out at Walmart.
We had nowhere to go.
We couldn't go to WinCo movie theaters.
I would periodically have to goshopping at 10:00 at night.
My older kids were like, Oh, you have togo get chocolate chips again, Dad.
Yep, I'm off to get chocolate chips.
Don't wait up for me.
Yeah, Those chocolate chips are hiddenat the grocery store, apparently.
Yes, they are.
They take a long time to find so funny.
But we were throwing my six kids.
And your four kids all together. Yes.
And if people did not just addthat up. Yes.
We have ten children together.
In fact, when I started datingyou and I was telling my friendsabout you and your six children,they all said, run, run, run away.
Why would you get involvedwith somebody with six kids?
And I you know, I didn't feel like
I could be that that pickyand that choose, you know, when you'retrying to find someone with all the ages.
Took one day with meshe was she was I was smitten.
But do you know what I mean? You you can'tyou know, you have so many boxesyou want to check off, right?
When you're looking for someoneand you're looking for a good matchfor yourself and your family and your kidsand that's very different.
It's different. And so you.
I didn't feel like I could go, Nope,
You can't have more than you know,you can't have allyou can only have two kids.
You can only have brown hair.
You know, I just felt like
I had to be a little more open than that.
So only brown hair.
I have white hairand I have since we've been married.
So anyway, I did not run away.
No, you did not.
I stayed. Yeah, And I'm glad you did.
Well, great. I am. I'm very glad.
That's good to know.
So when when we actually got married,we actually had eight kids at home.
One was just getting readyto leave on a two year mission.
Right. So that was all chaotic.
And then then we had seven kids at homeliving with usat seven different schedules,at five different schools.
Yeah, it was it was crazy. It was crazy.
So we learned a lotfrom that blending experience.
And that's why we're doing this podcast.
Yeah, to just share our experiences.
We are not experts on anything at all.
Far from it.
You know, we're learning every day, butit's just we're hereto share our experiences.
And if somebody, someone out therecan benefit from listening tohow we're getting through things,then I'd be very happy.
Yeah, I, you know,with with all the at the beginning,with all that goingon, you were working as a bank teller?
No, I was working as a.
Oh, that's right. Banker.
My personal banker, actually. Yes.
I have been promoted to banker.
You were my personal bank.
I was your first.
How many accounts did we open up?
Oh, gosh, I don't know.
Yeah, it was in the Wells Fargo days, So,yes, we had to open so many accounts.
That's all done now. Butyeah, Iremember you were really sadthat you had to quit your banking job.
That is sarcasm in his voice.
No, I was not sad at all,but I did enjoy working.
But that was ait was a very stressful job.
A very stressful job.
So but we didn't we really didn't see how.
There was no way.
Yeah.
I mean, Darrenmade a lot more money than I did.
So it was a it was a no brainer that
I stay home.
But with sevenkids, seven different schedules,there was just practicallyno way that I could have.
I remember we were eating two dinnersand I
Yeah,because the kids were in swim and swim.
It was it was a really crazy time.
But we made it through it.
We did.
We did.
We we just kept on goingand kept on going.
We found some lemonadeevery once in a whilewhen it was more rarein those days to have lemonade.
So we're going to talk about some ofthose things in some of our episodes.
But it's funny because some of ourfriends are married friendsthat had gone through divorce.
They were watching us go through thisand they didn't know what to do. No.
And they even though they triedto be there for you and it's difficult.
It's difficult for thembecause they really can'thave the empathythat someone that has gone throughit will have so much as ourour friends try to be there for us.
It was they really couldn't understand.
Yeah, they couldn't understand.
So that's yeah, that'sone of the reasons we're doingthis is so that, hey,maybe they can hear our storynow that it's been some yearssince that's passed, you know,we have a little bit more perspective.
We're not in the throes of everythinggoing on, butwe also found other friends that have gonethrough the same thing as us.
Yes. Yes.
And I think there's a little bit of pull,you know, too, towards those people.
When you meet someone and go,oh, you've you've been through this too.
Yeah.
And you know, and we have some closefriends that are, you know, acouple of years in front of us as far asthey don't have any kids at home anymore.
Right.
And they went throughblending big families together.
So it's it's interesting talking to them,getting advice from them and tips.
And so we want to sharethose tips with more people.
And we know our our situationis pretty unique with such a big family.
But I think there's a lot of good tipsthat we learned along the way.
Yeah.
And people are always curious when theyfind out about our family situation,about how we are doing this,and we seem to be fairly happy doing it.
I think so. I mean, you know,we definitely have our moments inour days where things are notexactlyperfect, perfect, but it's never perfect.
You know, one of the things we learnedwas to laugh a lot.
Yes, that helps out quite a bit.
That does that.
That is actually very helpful.
You just have toto try and see the positive or the,you know, the the fun in it. Yes.
You know, whatever it is, sometimesit's laugh or cry.
And I'd always rather laugh.
And we play a lot of music.
Music is big.
Yeah, it's big in this house.
You're not ever find usgetting ready for school.
We ready for the day Without music.
Without music on itjust tears up the whole mood.
And if someone's really grumpy,all you have to do is turn some musicon and start dancing and everythingcalms down, right?
Especially eighties music.
It absolutely works every time.
Absolutely works every time.
But we're we'rethe show format is all about thingsthat we've learned.
So each episode as we go through thiswe'll talk about in depthone of one of the different thingsthat we've doneor that we've learnedis something that happened that week.
As we're still in the middle of this.
We still have kids at home.
Two of them are mine and one is yours.
And they're only, what, eight months apartbetween the three of them.
So yeah, just about.
Yeah.
So yeah, we've got 12, 13, 14,almost 14 year old in the house.
Yeah.
So have the three amigoswe like to call them. Yep.
And these three are really interesting.
They've all grown up together. They.
Yeah.
Where The older kids really, they kind ofgrew up but some were already gone.
Some of them were whilewe had a little bit of time left.
But it's interestingto see how things changedover these last yearswith the difference in the kids.
So we have several topicsthat that fit the kids in well,not just the kids,but our lives that have changed over time.
But we want to talk about those topics.
Yeah, I mean, there's it's funny,when we first sat down to make a listof all the topicsthat we could oh, my goodness,you know, have episodes on for a podcastbecause I was thinking, oh, you know,is there enough? Yes, there are enough.
And oh my goodness, we just kept writingand writing and writing topics.
I mean, one of themthat we'll be covering,you know, at some point is the scheduleswe mentioned that there were seven atwill, eight but seven kids really at homeand that seven different schedules.
And that was crazy.
We had you created a calendar with yeah,we use Google Calendar,which was a shared calendar.
My ex could see where the kids were.
She could put things on there.
It was the only waywe can keep things straight.
But everybody has their own color.
Everyone have their own color.
The older kids that had phones had theirschedule, they could make changes to it.
We could see what was going on.
It really saved us at the beginning.
Yes. Yeah, it really did.
You have to be so much more organizedwhen you're a blended familyand are having that many kids.
Yeah. Keep track of. Well, yeah.
And there were a lot like not only justkeeping track of the schedules,but having that many kidsfrom different familiesand with different expectationscomingall into one family was was difficult.
I mean, one of the things wasyou like a clean picked up house.
Yes, I do.
And youwanted it clean all the time.
And it was like a horde of elephantscoming home every day from school,not all at once, but it took like an hourand a half to get everyone home, right?
Well, and they would walk in and there'sseven backpacks and, you know, shoes.
Everybody walks in, dropstheir backpack, kicks off their shoes,opens up their homework, get stuff out.
All the teenage boysread the refrigerator,everyone's in the kitchen getting a snack.
And I'm just kind of freaking out, going.
In fact, I remember I came home once.
You were upstairs in your room crying.
There were some tears involved,and all seven of my childrenwere in the family roomwatching TV with all of their stuff.
With all their stuff laying about. Yeah.
And I went upstairs,asked you how you're doing.
I could tell how you were doing.
Yeah, I know exactly what I was doing.
I came downand I think I shocked all of the children.
Yours and mine both.
Yes. I think that I could hear youfrom upstairs through my tears.
Even I could hear you.
It was important that the that the kidsall saw how important you were to me.
Your kids and my kids both.
Right.
And I'll tell you what.
Since in our househas always been picked up and not always,but it's a battle every day.
But you have to see I'm torn.
That's where I attribute you. Yes.
The kids on top.
Yeah.
And Paige stays on top of the kids? Yes.
When they comein, they know what the rules are.
And if they don't do it,
I mean, it's like instant.
Yes, we address it right away. Not later.
And our house.
Our house is always picked up.
It is there.
They they are so good at it now.
In fact, so muchso that even the neighbor kidsand you would wonderwhy would you have neighbor kids over?
Oh, we love having people over.
Oh, there are kids here all the time.
Sometimes
I think we have more than ten kids.
Oh, I love it.
But even the neighbor kids come overand it's really funny.
They walk in the front door, they'll comehome from school, come to our house.
No, hang their backpacks up, take theirshoes off, put them in the Cubbies.
Yeah.
And you even had some of your friends hereand their kids have walked inand done this.
And they're like going, What in the world?
They don't do that in our house.
I'm like, Well,you haven't gotten mad at them, I guess.
Yeah. Or it's just consistency.
It's consistency and they know thatthey can go in the kitchen.
I'm very free.
They can have a snack, you know, I'm veryfree with what they do in the kitchen.
As long as and all the neighborhood kidsknow, all of our kids know they clean itup, they haveto put their dish in the dishwasheror I don't do dishes in the sink, ever.
Those are not in the sink.
So it's interestingbecause that consistency that wasand we're going to talk about thatin one of our episodes.
So the topic of consistency in discipline,consistency and house rulesand things like that are extremely.
Yes, Yeah, that'll definitely be a topichow we handle discipline withyou, with your kids.
I mean, with my kids, that's,that's a whole Well,and then also the three amigosthat have been raised together. Yes.
Because they were little.
They were little.
So they they only know they really onlyremember this kind of life.
Right. Right.
Our blended life,which is, you know, it's good and bad.
Right.
And one of the topics we will alsodiscuss iswhen I met you,you had just bought this houseand it was a large houseand a seven bedroom.
So it I needed enough for my kids right?
Yes. Yes.
And so I moved in to your houseand I felt like a guest in the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I can imagine you were, but I had nothing.
Is this is a blank canvas canvas.
I was literally in this housesix months. Yeah.
Before we got married.
It was.
It was a blank canvas waiting for me.
Except for one area.
Well,you just told me there was one picture.
You said I could do whatever I wanted,but there was one picture that you did.
That's my George Washington picture.
And I love that picture.
Valley Forge picture.
So but so I have traveled a lotthroughout my career, and I've captureda bunch of little trinketsfrom every place I've gone.
So piece of the Berlin Wall, some other,you know, trinkets from Japan and Chinaand South America.
And I had them allin the entertainment center in the familyroom, and thingsstarted disappearing from there.
And I didn't know where they were going.
Well, just one at a time.
I had a strategy.
Yes, because you told me
I could do whatever I wantedand you didn't careexcept for that one picture.
So I would take away onetrinket at a time and put it away,thinking maybe you wouldn't know.
I didn't want to hurt your feelings,but I also you a wait I had in my mindhow I wanted to decorate the house.
And so, you know, it was each dayanother trinket would disappear.
And then one day I was like, Forget it.
And I just took them all down.
Yeah, that's the only time
I recognize that anything was gone.
I went, Well, where did everything go?
You know?
But it was fine because I realizedhow you were feeling in this houseand you have made it.
You've made it our home.
Yes, it's our home now,but that's a whole topic.
We will discusshow how you go from feeling like a guestin your own familyto being part of the family.
Exactly.
And that being part of the familyis another topic we talk about.
It's a we have to remember thatour kids are not ours.
Yeah, they are oursand and someone else's too.
So we have like pictures of our familiesbefore we were divorced.
Yeah.
And they're in the house, our exes and.
Yeah, and the kids thereand they're on the wall.
The kids see them. We talk about it.
It's importantthat they have a feeling of belonging.
We don't ever want the kids to thinkthat we are trying to forgetabout that part of our livesbecause we are not.
That was, you know,
I will never regret that time of our life.
It was wonderful.
We you know, those are well,it's it's who makes us who we are,who we are and who the kids are.
And so we definitely like tocelebrate our past, not try and forget it.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So and then also another interesting thingwhen you when you first came over,
I mean, the swim thing was crazy becausewe had all of our all my kids swimming.
So swim was at the worst timepossible at dinnertime. Oh,terrible.
And also it was a little difficultat first learninghow to cook for nine, ten people.
Well, I didn't know because when I movedin with you, I only had two kids at home.
My oldest two were already at college,and so I was used to cooking forjust us three, whichthere wasn't a lot of cookinggoing on at all because I guess Sam was sosmall, was small, and I was workinguntil 6:00, so I didn't go home till 630.
I was exhausted.
I the last thing I wanted to do was cook.
So we were having,you know, frozen food or whatever. Butso I wanted to impress everyonewith these lovely meals that I would makeand she'd cook for an hour.
There was there was plenty of food. Yes.
I mean, Darren would come home from workand he would see thismassive casserolethat I and he was like, Oh, yeah.
And I'm like, Is this too much?
I don't know. We'll find out.
And frankly, the boys at the time,we have, what, three teenagers swimming.
They could have eaten everythingthat we cooked.
Yes, Yes.
But I'm the only one.
Well, yeah,there's only a couple of us in the family.
I like leftovers.
Yeah. It's not you.
You really like leftovers.
And I like leftovers for lunch,
But maybe not for dinner.
Yeah, Yeah. So? But we figured it out.
We figured it out just in timefor us to have only three kids at home.
So, yeah, I.
So, you know, we share the cookingquite a bit, actually,but that's a whole nother topic.
Yeah.
Cooking and planning for,you know, kids for half the time and kidsfor all the time.
It's because we have Darren'skids half the time,and we have my kids 100% of the time.
So we never are alone by ourselves.
We always have kids, which is, you know,that's what normal people.
That's when all families have their kidsall the time.
Well,then we talk about time spending alone.
In fact, in our next episode,you guys will hear abouthow important it is to spend alonetime together.
Yes, that is that is a very importantthing to do in a second marriage. Andyeah, we we relish that time together.
We absolutely doand enjoy every minute of it.
But yeah, that's our next hour.
Yeah. So yeah.
So tune in to our next episodeto hear about that.
One more thingwe we've kicked this off is brandnew for us, so we'retrying to get everything all figured out.
We do have a Facebook page.
You can check it out.
Where's the lemonade with question mark?
And you can see that there arewe also have a Twitter feedwhich is w t lemonade.
What, the lemonade?
No, Where is the lemonade?
And and hopefully you.
We also have a blog out there, too,which is attachedto each one of our podcastswhere you can see picturesof what's happened that weekor the subject that we're talking about.
So it should be a lot of fun.
You're handling all that stuff.
I'm I'm I'm not into it.
Oh, you're going have to learn.
We will figure we will figure this out.
I am not a social media kind of girl,but you're you're really good at handlingthis baby. Oh, okay. We'll see.
Another thing that we have in eachone of our episodes isa funny moment for the week.
And there's loads of themand there are loads of themand I think it's been funthat we since we wrote this down, Hey,we got to have,have to have a funny moment for each week.
Oh, it's great,because as soon as we get onewe write it downand you know, yeah, it's great.
So this weekwe chose something really funny.
We recently saw the Lego
Movie, The Lego two, Sorry, Lego two.
The second part. Second part. Right.
Not to confuse with Lego two,the first partwhich hasn't been produced yet,
I'm sure that will be a prequel someday.
And our youngest.
Yes, he said weafter we saw the movie, we came home,we were talking about it and he said,
I, you know, one of the reasons
I really likethe Lego moviesis because they have a life message,you know, just a really good messageabout how to live your life.
And I said, Oh, and I'm thinking, wow, youknow, there are 12 year olds growing up.
He's catching on.
The things he can't do, his,you know, messages in the movies.
And so I said, Oh, that's great.
So what is the message?
He's like, I don't know.
So he just he heard somebody say,you know, all these movies are good.
They have messages in them.
And so he just repeated it.
But he has he's like, I have no idea.
I'm like, oh, well, we're not as far alongas we thought, but it'll get there.
But, you know, it is interestingbecause the message forfor that movieis kind of like the message of our blog.
Yeah, it's that at the end it'severything's not awesome song.
Everything is not always awesomeeven though I would lovefor everything to be awesome all the timebecause I do,
I like to have fun and be happy.
Like that's my thing.
But it's not always.
It's not. It's not always awesome.
No, but we always try and find waysto overcome that. Yes.
And that's why we say, Well,where's the lemonade?
When lemons are thrown at us,sometimes it's hard to find the lemonadeand maybe it won't be lemonade.
Maybe it'll just be something else.
And lemon zest, lemons,maybe it'll lose it.
Maybe it'll be lemon squares,which are delicious.
But it's still not what you were goingfor. Right?
Right, exactly. Just like, you know,we didn't expect to find ourselves.
And divorced.
No, not at all. In fact,we've said this many times.
We wish our kids wouldn't have ever gonethrough that situation.
Absolutely. And even ourselves.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that throws people off.
We don't we would not havewished this on ourselves at all.
And it's hard it's going to be hardfor our kids and us the rest of our lives.
And so, yes.
Do we wish that it never happened?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Even though we love each other dearlyand we can't even imagine beingwithout each other. No.
But if we had a choice, we wouldn'thave gone through what we went through.
No, no, because it really stinks.
But here we are, baby. Here we are.
So we're trying our best.
And we've had loads of lemonade.
We've hadwe have of just sucking on a lemon.
Yes, we have.
And we've had lemon squares, David,
Like sucking on lemons.
Our one son really likes.
Just a second, Lemon.
We had to stop doing itbecause it's bad for his teeth.
Exactly. So.
So anyway, so hey, maybe there's peopleout there that just want the lemons.
I don't know, but.
But we've had, you know,all kinds of happy, happy, happy times.
But it doesn't.
But it requires effort.
Absolutely. Right.
Attitude, adjustment,effort, lots and lots of it.
And letting some things just go.
Let it go. That's right.
So tune in to our our podcast.
Go ahead and subscribe to our podcast andwe look forward to talking to you guys.
We're open for suggestions and topicsthat you want usto talk about andsee you next time.
Yeah, go make some lemonade.
On our nextepisode, we're going to talk aboutspending time alone together.
My favorite time.