My 11-year-old son convinced me to buy a Lotto ticket after a rough month. We used our winnings for a family treat.

Last month, my family had a particularly bad run of luck. I ended up quite ill with COVID. My mum had to go to the hospital with a lung infection. We had a few issues come up with our old home in Melbourne, including a major water leak. Then, as an added bonus, a family member accidentally drove into the back of my car.

I was feeling pretty annoyed with life when my 11-year-old son asked if we could buy a Lotto ticket for Australia’s $60 million AUD Powerball. I’m not much of a gambler, but I said I’d talk to the clerk about it, and we wandered into the store.

The woman pressed a button and produced an eight-game dummy ticket to explain how it worked. As I looked down at the ticket, I realized a lot of the numbers looked familiar.

I told the woman I would go ahead and buy the ticket, but I wanted that specific one.

I asked my son to check the ticket, and it had all our family numbers on it

On the way home in the car, I asked my son to look for certain numbers on the ticket.

Three for my youngest daughter’s age, then the numbers in her birth date. Tick, tick, tick. Next, I asked him to look for his and his other sister’s ages and birth dates. My husband’s and my birth date and month (we’re too old for our ages or years to be in there). They were all there.

“Let’s try Nana’s and Pop’s,” I said. Sure enough, their days and months were on this randomly generated ticket, too. As were my parents-in-law’s. I’ve always been a little woo-woo and into signs, so I started feeling pretty excited.

On the night of the Powerball Lotto draw, we all gathered around the television with bated breath. The tension in the air was palpable.

It was so exciting watching the Lotto draw

The first number to be drawn was 27. Bingo. Next was 5. Yep, it was one of ours. The third number was my youngest daughter’s age.

By that point, I was on the edge of my seat. Seeing how excited I was, my son tried to calm me down and told me that to win the jackpot, you needed to match all seven winning numbers plus the Powerball number on a single game panel. He’d gotten the rundown from Pop about how it worked.

I told him to pipe down. Not my finest parenting moment, but I wanted him to be quiet so that I could hear those magic numbers.

I don’t know if I jinxed it, but three of the next four numbers weren’t ours. The final Powerball number was.

We didn’t win much, but it felt like a turning point

After the draw, we punched our numbers online, and sure enough, we’d had two Division 9 wins. It wasn’t the jackpot, but at least it was something.

“Mum, did we win?” my 7-year-old daughter asked.

“Yes… $28.40, to be precise,” I said with a laugh.

Afterwards, she sobbed and said she wanted us to win the $60 million. I explained that maybe there was another family who needed the money more than us, and made a mental note never to involve the kids in lottery hype again.

We might not have won the millions, but I feel like that was a turning point in our luck. Since then, we’ve received two other pieces of positive news about our house in Melbourne, and I think Lady Luck might once again be on our side.

I probably won’t bother with a Lotto ticket again, but it was a fun one-off experience. We spent our big $28.40 win on ice creams for the whole family, and that gave my daughter a smile from ear to ear.

Editor’s note: $60m AUD is roughly $41,470,000 USD, and $28.40 AUD is roughly $19.64 USD.