Explore | Discover | Love | Live: Embracing life’s adventures…

In our minds this (with a little passion and enthusiasm thrown in for good measure), sums up beautifully how we like to approach life.

We are Kaine and Renee Barton… and this is the ‘Not So Secret Life Of Us’.

A LITTLE ABOUT US

We are in our mid 30’s, live in suburban Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) and after nearly a decade of marital bliss, we are knee deep in the adventure that is parenthood.

Safe to say our lives have been turned upside down with the arrival of two beautiful baby boys. Jesse, who at two years old is equal part cheeky toddler and equal part loving big brother. And Jasper, who hasn’t cracked 12 months old yet, but fills out the role of adorable, chubby and cheeky bubba perfectly.  And despite this adventure being unlike anything we have experienced before, we are loving every second of it. Well, nearly every second of it… we are also equal parts excited, terrified and exhausted. And we are inviting you along for the ride.

But rest assured the ‘Not So Secret Life Of Us’ isn’t all poo stories and mummy rants.

We are also about fun, adventure and living life to the full. We love travel and are firm believers in collecting experiences and creating memories. Which is why we always have the camera bag packed, the batteries charged, and our trigger finger ready to capture those previous moments in life that often just slip by without much thought.

Adventure awaits….

HOW IT ALL STARTED

The ‘Not So Secret Life Of Us’ started in 2013 as a YouTube channel inspired by the YouTubers we liked to watch. It was a platform for us to document the most interesting parts of our lives, for us and for our future generations. Slide night anyone?

From humble beginnings of pet videos and the occasional vlog, our YouTube channel then evolved to daily travel vlogs (Euro Trip 2014), the baking of both baby Jesse and baby Jasper, and many other adventures.

As we continue to navigate our way through our biggest and most exciting adventure yet, being parents to two boys, our vision for this has grown.

WHAT IS THE ‘NOT SO SECRET LIFE OF US’

We’ve had a baby! Great. What do we do now?

We read the books and attended the classes. The next step was to dive head-first into the jungle that is the internet. We didn’t exactly know what we were looking for at first, but the further we dived the more we realised there was something missing.

There are plenty of great parenting blogs out there, as are there blogs from parents who love to share stories or photos of their children and families. But we just weren’t forming genuine connections with anything we found during our lunch breaks or late night internet binges.

So what exactly was it that we were looking for?

And then it clicked. Like a light bulb being turned on in a dark room. What we realised was missing from these blogs was the bigger picture. We started asking ourselves, what if the ‘Not So Secret Life Of Us’ could fill that void?

We didn’t want to be just another parenting advice blog, or those guys who bore you with yet another potty training anecdote. We want to give you something real. Something relatable. Our hope for this project is that it would bring together all elements of life: parenthood, married life, work, fun, travel and adventure that as a collective would become the ‘Not So Secret Life Of Us’.

OUR VISION

What we believe set’s us apart from other similar blogs and websites, is that the ‘Not So Secret Life Of Us’ is written from the perspective of both new mum and new dad. Much of the content we found was written almost exclusively by either the dad or the mum, but rarely did we find any sites that really embraced the shared perspective. So it was then that we decided to take on this project as a partnership and that we would share our experiences together. Husband and wife. Daddy and mummy. Male and female.

So with this in mind, our vision for this project, through written blogs, photos and YouTube videos, is to spread a little sunshine into your day. Whether it be with a giggle, a happy tear or just that comforting feeling that we are all human.

Join us as we explore, discover, love and live.