Hey guys and welcome to the Moms and Murder podcast, a true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa.

Hi, Melissa.

Hi, Mandy. How are you?

I am doing great. How are you?

I am doing well. It's a beautiful day here, very happy about it,

and yeah, good. It's beautiful. You had a big week, right? I did. Yeah, September, first of all,

is flying by. I can't believe we're already almost halfway through this month. It seems like

I don't know what's happened here.

I feel like I say that a lot of times, but like legitimately, I mean it. Yeah, but we had a big

week here in my house, a big weekend rather. My oldest child turned 13. So I am officially

the parent of a teenager and that feels so, so weird. Yeah. Like, there's just no way that's

possible. I don't feel old enough to have a teenager at all. I know. I get very, like, confused on how

old I am until I'm around younger people and then I'm very intimidated. And I'm like, I'm so not

cool and they know it.

It's a lot. Yeah, no, it's a weird thing having a teenager and feeling like you just, I feel like everyone should say to me like, you're not old enough to have a teenager and no one does. Right. And that's the problem. Yeah. Everyone's like, no, that sounds right. Yeah, I know. I get it. Yeah, yeah. And I know I talked to you a little bit about this kind of earlier in the week before his birthday came, but I feel like I made a bigger deal out of it mentally than he did, you know, because I'm thinking like 13. This is such a huge deal. It has to be super special. It has to be such a unique birthday. and, you know, I told you about some of my struggles,

you know, with this age, it's just so hard because what do you give a 13-year-old? You know, they, at this point, he's had all the cool gifts, you know, he's gotten all these things. And it's like, what do you really do for them? And then they don't really know what they want to do. And they're just kind of like, I don't know. I don't care. And so I'm like, you're not even helping me out.

Like, this is, this is terrible. Your birthday is going to be awful and it's going to be

my fault because I can't think of anything fun. But you know what? It turned out fine. We gave him money. That's really all he wanted. And I wish I would have spent considerably less time stressing out about that and just, you know, giving him the money and,

and moved on. So, yeah, so it was great. He had a good time. We had a great weekend. We spent

a, stressing out about that and just, you know, giving him the money and moved on. So, yeah, so it was

great. He had a good time. We had a great weekend. We spent some time together as a family. And,

yeah, now we're just having a nice relaxing Sunday at home. So very happy that this busy week is now

...