In a candid new interview with Lara Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance opened up about the “whirlwind” transition from a private life in Ohio to becoming the Second Family of the United States. A little over a year into their term, the couple reflected on the chaos, the comedy, and the commitment required to raise a young family on the national stage.

Lara Trump: I’m so excited to sit down with both of you.

JD Vance: Good to see you.

Lara Trump: Thank you. This has been, I’m sure, quite a whirlwind, what has happened with your family over the past several years. Did you ever, either of you, think that politics were in the future and that you would very, not too long later, be the second family of the United States?

JD Vance: Well, it certainly happened much faster. I did not think we were going to be running for office at all, but certainly not to this level so quickly. So sometimes things just happen. But I don’t know. What do you think?

Usha Vance: I mean, I would say no. We had all of these different plans. We purchased a house that we decided was the house that we were going to retire in. We picked the schools for our kids with the intention of them being there until they graduated. So it all came as a bit of a surprise, I think.

Lara Trump: And now that you’re a little over a year in, looking back over the past year, what advice might you give to yourselves a year ago going into all of this?

JD Vance: Roll with the punches a little bit. I mean, there’s a certain amount of chaos that inevitably comes with it. And we just try to kind of lean into it, right? So if we’re going to have a big trip, we’ll find a way to take the kids. And yeah, that means they’re not going to sleep as much as they should. And yeah, that means they’re going to probably misbehave in certain ways. But we just try to make them as much a part of it as possible. And I think that attitude of just kind of being flexible has made it much easier to thrive as a family in this thing.

Lara Trump: What do you think, Usha? Do you agree?

Usha Vance: I think that’s right. I mean, I was actually going to say roll with the punches, too. So, jinx.

JD Vance: I’m going to answer first so I steal all of her good answers so she has nothing to say.

Usha Vance: No, I was thinking we had two jobs before this and we mostly took care of everything on our own. And so we had a very orderly schedule, kind of a way of doing things where everything was planned out and we made sure breakfast was at the right time and dinner was at the right time and all of these sorts of things. So letting go of that and kind of getting used to flying by the seat of your pants was a new experience, maybe more for me than for JD. But it’s fun. And so I think the advice I would give myself is not to worry so much about losing all of that and kind of accept the roller coaster.

Lara Trump: And you’re not just doing it as a couple. You go together as a family and we see that and I think people are so happy to see the truth of what it means to be a family because sometimes it’s not perfect.

JD Vance: We try to just let the kids be kids and it’s always a little bit challenging when there’s so many cameras and so many security personnel around. But like when we took our kids to the Olympics and it was sort of a mixture of diplomatic meetings and the opening ceremony and all the pomp and circumstance that comes along with that. But it also gave us an opportunity to like go watch a hockey game with our kids on a Saturday night in Milan. I had our four-year-old in my lap the entire time. And on the one hand, I’m like, okay, the cameras are on. Maybe I should be like a little bit careful about, you know, her dancing to the Spice Girls during the breaks. But on the other hand, it’s like, well, she’s four years old and she might as well have a good time. And if people see her having a good time, there are much worse things in the world.

Usha Vance: But I think the way that we have approached it is to allow them to have their full normal private life and then…