Wife Swap Episode 5.08 Cooper/Kukta

The Cooper family from the Florida Keys live their lives as if they were on permanent vacation. Jim (43) and Joanna (41) quit their normal 9 to 5 jobs to relax and enjoy life with their two kids, Caya (11) and Andreas (3). They run a DJ and wedding video business so they can make a living off of their love of partying. The Coopers love the Keys so much, they convinced Joanna's parents to move in so they'd always have someone around to baby-sit. With the kids taken care of, Jim and Joanna can bounce from party to party and stay out until the sun comes up. For the Coopers, life isn't about keeping a clean house or enforcing boring rules; Jim and Joanna see no need to wear watches, and are content carousing around the island of never-ending fun.

The Kukta family from Utah are obsessed with the exhilaration of the "sweep." They enter raffles and contests and travel from supermarket to supermarket buying products tied to competitions. They have piles of packets of cat food with competition panels snipped out, but they don't own a cat. Wife Heidi (40) never goes anywhere without her "sweeping tools," two telephones on separate lines, and husband Andy (40) wakes up at 3:00 a.m. to play online contests because, "while you're sleeping, he's sweeping." The house revolves around Andy and Heidi's shared daughters Catherine (4) and Aimee (3), while Heidi's two older daughters, Jennie (17) and Miranda (12), fight for step-dad Andy's attention. The older girls do endless chores and cater to their younger sisters like two modern day cinderellas. At 9:00 p.m. the house goes on "lockdown" so the younger girls can get a proper night's sleep. A social life outside the family is out of the question. Instead Heidi and Andy feel that any spare time should be spent collecting old bottle caps from the trash cans in the neighborhood so they can enter prize draws.