FOR WORKING PARENTS OF YOUNG KIDS
Give your family your best, not your leftovers.
You lead all day, then walk in the door and the second shift starts. Dinner, laundry, tomorrow already tapping you on the shoulder. I help you get that load out of your head and into a simple system that runs your home, so when your kid says “look,” you actually look.
Less on Your Mind | Present at Home | margin for what matters
YOU’RE HOME. BUT YOUR BRAIN IS STILL RUNNING EVERYTHING.
You give your best all day. To your team, to the people counting on you, to the problems nobody else can solve. Then you walk in the door and the second shift starts.
The meat still needs defrosting (oops, you forgot). Today’s lunchboxes need emptying (fingers crossed they actually ate their food), and the clothes and snacks for the morning need to be set out. The laundry’s still sitting in the washer. And tomorrow is already tapping you on the shoulder.
Your kid says, “Look!” And you hear yourself say, “Wait a minute.” Patient with everyone all day. Short with the people you love most by 7pm.
IT’S NOT ABOUT WHO DOES THE DISHES.
IT’S ABOUT WHO THINKS ABOUT THEM.
The appointments. The school forms. The grocery list. The birthday gift. The oil change that’s three weeks overdue. It all lives in one place: your head. So even your day off isn’t really off.
And underneath it all, there’s a fear you don’t say out loud: that these little years are going by in a blur, and your family is getting the leftover version of you.
YOU’RE NOT FAILING. YOU’RE MISSING A SYSTEM.
At work, you’d never run the whole operation out of your head. But at home, nobody ever handed you a system. That’s not a love problem, and it’s not a character flaw. It’s a system problem. And home was never supposed to get your leftovers. It’s supposed to be where everything else overflows from.
MY STICKY NOTE HAD 57 THINGS ON IT. HIS WAS BLANK.
Three weeks before our daughter was born, I sat my husband down at the dining table and handed us each a sticky note. Sixty seconds. Write down everything on your mind.
Mine had 57 things on it. His was blank.
Not because he didn’t care. He just couldn’t see what I was carrying. Honestly, neither could I, until I saw it all on paper.
“That night, one question wouldn’t leave me alone: What kind of business would I have if I ran it the way I was running my home?”
I’d spent years inside the Chick-fil-A world, watching good systems and real connection work together. Content calendars. Community events. Hospitality checklists. Thoughtful decisions made once, so the day runs on what’s already been decided. I just hadn’t brought any of it home. So I did.
Today I’m building this with a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old at home. I’m not writing to you from the other side of this season. I’m in it with you, and I built every piece of this around the same limits you have.
Maybe you’re carrying your own 57. It doesn’t have to keep living in your head.
WHERE THIS COMES FROM
Mentored at 21 by Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A
13+ years inside the Chick-fil-A world, as a Restaurant Marketing Director and later a social media strategist for Chick-fil-A restaurants
Trained in the Gottman Method, Levels 1 & 2
Helping families make time for what matters since 2011
“I would call myself a raving fan of You and Me Time.”
“In today’s fast-paced world, You & Me Time is an excellent way to enhance marriages and family relationships. I highly recommend this approach to creating meaningful relationship experiences.”
SAME KIDS. SAME MARRIAGE. COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TUESDAY.
If nothing changes, the load keeps running on you. Your day off still isn’t really off. And these little years go by in a blur of “wait a minute.”
But picture this instead.
The pancake breakfasts come back. The laughter at bath time. Sunday feels like Sunday again. Not because life got easier, but because your home finally runs on a system instead of on you. And there’s finally room left for the people you’re doing it all for.
No longer consumed by doing more and more at home. Finally able to just be there.
Present. Rested. Actually home.
I’VE SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE TRYING TO ANSWER ONE QUESTION.
When I was eight, my dad told me, “Sayuri, relationships are like flowers. If we don’t water them, eventually they’ll die.” A few months later, I came home from school to an empty closet. The hangers. His toothbrush. His books. Gone.
And one question followed me for years:
Why couldn’t they just water it?
Here’s what I know now. It wasn’t a lack of love. When life fills every inch of space, you can pour bucket after bucket of water and it runs right off. Nothing soaks in. That’s not a love problem. It’s a margin problem. And margin is never found. It has to be made.
S. Truett Cathy once told me I was turning my pain into purpose, and my bitter experiences into better experiences for others. “We serve a good God,” he said, “who turns our scars into stars.”
That’s why You & Me Time exists. So no child has to come home from school and find empty hangers in their parents’ closet, and no family has to figure this out alone. We help parents of little ones create margin for what matters most, so they can water their marriage and enjoy their kids’ childhood, not blink and miss it.
THREE STEPS TO MAKE ROOM FOR WHAT MATTERS MOST
1
START WITH YOUR SEASON, NOT YOUR TO-DO LIST
Most advice starts with a list. We start with a question: where are you? What season is your family in right now, and who do you want to have been when it’s over? You can’t decide what belongs on your plate until you know what this season is for. Get clear on that first, and the rest gets easier.
2
STOP TRYING TO GET CAUGHT UP
“Caught up” is never coming. So put everything on the table, not just your calendar. The open loops. The decisions you keep putting off. The small yes that turned out to be a big one. Then let it go, pause it, hand it off, or redesign it to fit your season. Nothing has to fall apart. You choose what you carry.
3
DECIDE ONCE. THEN STOP DECIDING.
Your brain was made to think, not to store. So mornings, evenings, and weekends get decided once. The small stuff gets handled as you go, before it piles up. And a short weekly reset keeps it all fitting as the season changes. Not a rigid system to keep up with. One that flows with you.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LEADERS FINALLY HIT PAUSE
You & Me Time began as one-of-a-kind experiences for couples, each one planned around their story. Here’s what some of them said.
“So“Sometimes somebody has to take our hand and lead us through the process — to get us back on track to the personal elements of a marriage that we need to be more guarded, more careful, and more conscious of. … I think I’m going to be a better husband on an ongoing basis because of it.”
— Dan Cathy, Chairman of Chick-fil-A, Inc.
Dan called himself "a raving fan of You and Me Time" and sponsored three Chick-fil-A Operators to experience it.
"Even our regular date nights had started to feel like a meeting more than a moment — running through the house stuff, the kid stuff, the calendar. You & Me Time was different. Every box was checked. My husband and I could finally just be. For the first time in years, it wasn't about getting through the list — it was about being together.”
— Nancy Lash, wife, married 7 years
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— David Neely, Chick-fil-A Owner/Operator, married 25 years
“I would recommend You and Me Time to anyone who is genuinely busy. Not because things are bad — but because even when things are good, you can still get stuck in a rut.” — Kurt, business owner, married 6 years
“Now we have a plan. It’s not going to be like previous years, where we didn’t intentionally focus on our relationship — not that it was bad, but there was nothing deliberate about it. Now we have a road map.”
“I work a full-time job, we have a two-year-old son, and while I have great ideas for things I’d love to pull off, I don’t have the time to actually execute them.”
— Jon Lash, married 7 years
“Your care and concern for detail makes a difference. Through this experience, I got to see that you’re the real deal. You really care. This work is about caring for people, about loving people. And you do.” — Dave Koepsell, Chick-fil-A Operator family, married 25 years
— Felix Hodges, husband, married 32 years
“It was a great opportunity to pause and rethink what’s most important. We spend time on good things — work, people, community. Those are all very good and commendable things. But sometimes you just can’t see the forest for the trees.”
“As a wife, I will pull back and let the children have his attention. By the time we finally sit down, you don't want to talk at all. To come into a space where nobody wanted his attention except me — it took a moment to break down that wall. But we didn't leave our You & Me Time moment until we went to sleep."
LeTricia Koepsell, wife, married 25 years
MAKE ROOM FOR THE MOMENTS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS.
The Saturday morning pancakes. The laughter at bath time. The conversation that goes deeper than “Who’s picking up the kids?” That’s You & Me Time: the moments that make everything else worth it.
But those moments can’t soak in when your life has no room for them.
LighterLoad creates the margin. You & Me Time is what you do with it.
If you lead all day and come home running on empty, starting with your season, not your schedule, is the right next move.