Sara Evans Talks to CBB About Seven Kids and Home Cooking!
Albert Ferreira |
Singer Sara Evans has a lot on her plate. As a mom to seven children — three of her own and four belonging to husband Jay Barker — the country star is responsible for making lunches, packing backpacks and drying tears — all while recording albums and writing books!
Sara, 38, recently took time out of her busy schedule to talk to CBB about her controlled chaos, as well as her partnership with Libby’s, encouraging families to “get back to the table” and enjoy home-cooked dinners together.
CBB: How is the family?
Sara: We are all wonderful, and crazy busy! In total, we have Andrew, 11, Avery, 10, Braxton, 9, twins Harrison and Sarah Ashley, 8, Olivia, 6, and Audrey, 4. All the kids are in school now. We have three boys playing tackle football, one daughter playing soccer, and one playing tennis. We don’t make it to all their games/matches. Jay is coaching one of his sons, so he has to be at all those practices and games, and we try to make it to the others when we can. The school system my son plays for plays Saturdays, and Jay’s kids never play on Saturdays, so that helps.
You were from a big family, does that make this easier?
I’m the third-oldest of seven, ironically. I learned to be very domestic from my mom, because she was always cooking, and I had to help raise my younger sisters. I was always helping her cook, making the beds, doing laundry. I’ve always done domestic chores. I look at my kids sometimes and think they don’t do anything compared to what I did! Times are different. They do have chores, want to be paid for them and do not get paid for them. I tell them, “Then you need to pay me rent!”
 Albert Ferreira |
What’s it like in the mornings before school?
I have 3 kids, and Jay has 4. We don’t have his children in the morning, except on Monday mornings. So only one day a week do I have seven kids getting ready for school. With my three kids, it’s pretty calm. That’s my favorite part of the day, getting them up, making breakfast, getting backpacks ready. They literally walk across the street and down the street and they’re at school. Our kids attend two separate schools.
How do you make each child feel special?
We just do! They all know that they have their own place in the family, and we really try to do everything we can to make that apparent to them at all times. Andrew is Jay’s oldest, as well as the oldest of all seven. He is adopted, and he happens to hate sports, which all the other kids absolutely love. So we try to give Andrew his own thing to do. He got a laptop for his 11th birthday a few weeks ago, because we spend all this money on the other kids with sports gear, fees and dues, so we thought he deserved that. We gave him a big party, and made a huge deal of the fact that we’re going to help him get into computer graphics, which is his passion at the moment. We want to give each child their own thing.
Are any of your children showing an interest in show business?
My son is 10 and plays drums and guitar, my daughter Olivia plays guitar. My 4-year-old is a great singer, too.
They understand what I do. Jay’s kids have been in awe of it. When we take them on the road, they come out and want to watch the shows. But my kids are over it! They care about whatever movie they can watch on the bus when I’m on stage. It’s nice because I get the new attention from Jay’s kids. They love the bus – we all travel on one together. We’ve had 10 different trips where we’ve taken all seven kids, and it’s crazy! They all get along really well though — it’s amazing. Jay and I call it a miracle.
We’re seriously like the Brady Bunch. They get along well because they see Jay and I are happy and have no stress in the home. We never fight, are always singing and playing sports with them all, and above all, having fun. It’s not to say that they never fight, but get along well. Jay has three boys and one girl, and the girl is a total tomboy. And she and I connect on that level big time. We play sports all the time, but it’s great because if she was a real girly girl, and kind of like a daddy’s girl, it might be hard for her to have two step-sisters. She’s older than my daughters, so she looks after them. It’s really cute. My girls definitely idolize her.
Do you prefer the South to Hollywood?
We all live in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s such a great city, and a great place to raise kids. It’s wholesome, conservative and safe, yet at the same time it’s really cool. There’s a lot of old money, so it makes it a great place to live – great shopping, restaurants and country clubs.
Do your kids split their time between you and their father?
No, they’re usually with me.
Albert Ferreira |
Tell us about your partnership with Libby’s.
Last year Libby’s asked me to rerecord their commercial, so I went into the studio and made it my own sound, made it really country, and this relationship formed out of that. So this is the second year in a row I’ve helped them promote “Back to the Table Month,” which is September, and talked all about the importance of getting the family to the table, cooking at home and spending time connecting with your kids — and feeding them healthy, nutritious meals.
I was raised on country cooking, three meals a day. We never ate out and rarely had fast food. That’s how I was raised, and how I believe my kids should be fed. I was excited to partner with Libby’s, because I believe there should be a vegetable with everything my kids eat. I feel guilty when I don’t do that! My husband says a lot of his life was spent eating fast food because he was on the go with so many sports teams. So we’re going to conquer that somehow!
My goal is for us to eat at home, and for me to cook three times per week. It’s so easy: Open a can of Libby’s vegetables and serve it with some sort of meat. I love the crock-pot, too. I get up, cook something all day, then pop open the can of vegetables and voilà, a home-cooked meal! All these studies have shown that there’s less drug use, better grades and higher self-esteem among kids who eat with their families. I know that it creates great memories, too. I’m very passionate about it, and I love to cook.
I’ve shared a corn casserole with Libby’s, that I love to make. It’s easy, takes about 15 minuets to make total, then is baked for 30 minutes. I look at the way my mom cooked and she was, and still is, always cooking something homemade. But now that I’m doing it myself, it’s really not that hard. It’s not hard to cook for your family. I think people are intimidated by it. It’s not about making gourmet meals, but about sitting down as a family and having that meal together. There’s something important about that.
What’s new with your career?
I’m in between albums. I’m writing and recording my sixth album for RCA right now, and it will come out in January of 2010. I have a Christmas tour that starts the day after Thanksgiving and goes for three weeks straight, on the West Coast. So we’ll be doing Christmas songs, plus my hits. We’re really looking forward to that.
And you also have book coming out, correct?
I wrote a book, the first in a series of four fiction novels. That first one is being released in January. It’s a little bit of a downtime for me now, but it’s going to explode. Thomas Nelson approached me about writing a book, and I’d never thought about it. But he knew I wrote my songs, and thought I’d have great creativity, and a story to tell. I thought about it, and he asked me to go away, and contemplate if I were to write a story, what I’d write about. So I thought, what are all of my favorite books and movies? And I found myself centered on stories that take place in the south that involve a lot of women, like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Hope Floats and Fried Green Tomatoes, and focus on the relationships between friends, mothers and daughters.
I looked at that in-depth, like how we come to realize when we grow up why our mothers are the way they are. We take a look at their childhood, at them as mothers. So it’ll be called The Sweet By and By. The main character’s about to get married, and is looking at her life, her loves, her strained relationship with her mom. I’m excited about it! It’s been a great experience.
Learn more about Sara’s partnership with Libby’s here!
