Sam & Sarah's family joy 'OUR TWINS TURN FIVE!'

The couple reflects on pushing through the hard years and creating their dream business together

- Fluer Guthrie

Do you hear that?” asks Sam Wallace, welcoming the Weekly team into his North Shore home just after lunch.

Amongst the chirp of cicadas, he's talking about the glorious sound that many parents will attest to after the long summer holidays - the sound of serenity.

“Day three of all the kids being at school - oh, mate, we were dying for them to start,” grins the Coast FM breakfast co-host, who is always refreshingly candid when it comes to the reality of having young children.

As his radio listeners and social media followers will know, Sam and his wife Sarah's twin girls, Sienna and Cosette, along with older brother Brando, seven, have always been full of personality.

In those early days of survival-mode - laying two sleepy heads in bassinets and training tiny mouths to be on the same feeding schedule - the couple just couldn't comprehend getting more than three hours of sleep a night.

The girls' fifth birthday on January 21 (which was also Sarah's 43rd birthday) felt like a date they'd marked on their mental calendar since they were born.

“It's a real full stop on that phase of our life,” Sam, 45, reflects. “We spent the last year thinking about them starting school - and how much more time we'd have - but we also didn't want to wish it away.

“But there's no denying it's a bit of respite from how hectic life has been with them doing everything at the same time.”

The anticipation of the twins' first day at primary school was all going well until the night before. Sam's father Barry got rushed to the hospital with pneumonia, brought on by catching influenza A on holiday in America (but more on that later). Then barefoot Brando stood on a piece of wood on the driveway that ploughed one centimetre deep into his heel.