I’ve called a lock down

The week of Valentine’s Day, huge plans, lots to do…and the entire house gets sick!!

It started off with my oldest son’s birthday party. He wanted to go to the swimming pool (which I don’t like because of so many gross reasons 🤢) which is an hour drive away. We went, had a great time made it all the way home and woke up Sunday morning to sick middle child. She missed 3 days of school this week. My youngest was next, starting Monday, and he stayed down for 2 days. My oldest got it Thursday morning but still went to school and ended up missing half of Friday.

Fevers of 38.4 and up, eye infections, ear infection, flus and chest colds going back and forth in a household of 5! Yuck. So needless to say all of our valentines stuff was put on hold but none of us has had the energy to miss it.

There’s no school all next week so we should be able to get over this hump and move into the next project 😊

So this is a short little check in and now I must go back to lying down so I can get enough rest to make it through the next 3 days of work.

Hope everyone had a great Valentine’s Day!

Ang

Why Do I Live Somewhere Where The Air Hurts My Face

I woke up this morning and checked the weather (something I always do so I know what to send the kids to school in) and my jaw hit the floor!

I live in Canada.It’s February. It’s cold. This is normal and since I’m not a young chicken anymore, I KNOW this! When I saw the temperature though I couldn’t even believe it. We were sitting at -48 degrees (-54.4 Fahrenheit) and with the wind chill it was -53 (-63.4 F). I mean, it literally hurts to breathe! It’s now 4.5 hours later (almost lunch) and I am sitting in front of my window enjoying the warmth from a beautiful sunbeam and the temperature is sitting at -36 haha! It almost feels like summer out there!

Yesterday the only bus out this way that was running was the one my kids take. Today there were no buses running. So now I know how cold it has to get for our 70 year old bus driver to stay at home and for this little neck of the woods to shut down 😀

So What’s For Lunch?

I figured I would make some delicious waffles for lunch with some home made syrup. It’s to cold to go tap my trees (I’m just kidding! I can’t really tap trees here 😉 I wish I could though!) Every time I attempted waffles in my earlier mom years, they would be 3 inches thick and running out of the waffle maker! It was frustrating and now looking back on it, a little bit funny! I’ve got under control now haha

For supper I’m making home made Chicken Pot Pie. The kids love it! I’ll be making two today because the last couple time I made it I realized that with a nine year old boy who’s growing I need to make more food! This guy eats so much!

I better run and get these waffles going before my kids tear each other apart 😀 Hope you all have a great day and that you’re warmer than all of us!

Ang

Simple Self-Care Tips And Tricks

Over the past 18 months or so I have been on a self healing journey. Part of this journey involved learning about self care and learning to love myself. I had no experience in self care prior to this and so I really had no idea where to start and how to make time for myself in my busy life.


This seems to be a common opportunity among many of us. I wanted to share with you the small things that I started with.  Before I began I needed to FIND THE TIME I so desperately needed for myself. My first stop was at Micheal’s and my first purchase was a Happy Planner. Once I managed to figure out a good system for me I moved on to my next step. 


I tend to lose my focus quite easily so I found if I wrote down a few things each day that were my priorities, then when I found myself wandering and lost in some other activity or just staring out the window, I could go back to my planner and REFOCUS!


I realized I needed to schedule myself into my daily to-do’s otherwise I was just always too busy to take a few minutes to sit down or even just breathe. The first thing I scheduled in was a bubble bath night. As soon as I got the kids to bed and settled (so I was sure they wouldn’t get out of bed and disturb me 300 times while I was in the bath) I would run the water, add the bubbles, grab a drink and a book or my phone to dive into my Facebook.


I’ve always had a fairly good night time skin care routine but I decided to spoil myself and get some Arbonne which I highly recommend.  Check out the Energy Fizz Sticks as well, better than coffee 😉 Another important part of a good night-time routine would be moisturizing the feet. Our feet are extremely important and yet probably the most neglected. 


Positive self talk. Gratitude. Boundaries. These are a few things that may also need to looked at. I have a really hard time with the positive self talk (always have) and I found that leaving myself little sticky notes throughout the house helped tons! I wrote little reminders to myself like: You are an amazing mom! You are enough! Set your limits, Stick to your limits, etc. Sounds silly, I know but you would be surprised how much it can help raise your vibrancy to read that every day. I had them in my medicine cabinet, inside the cupboard door with my coffee cup, by my bed and even in my car. 

-Gratitude is my easiest out of these 3. Since it’s the easiest, its also the one I turn to in a pinch because I can think of 3-5 things I’m grateful for each and everyday. I write these down along with one thing I found through the day or week that I feel I need to work on (not in a negative way!) An example of this would be: Today I realized I need to work on ending phone conversations after a short time instead of being on the phone for 2 hours. This is a boundary goal.

-Boundaries are a new concept to me. Something I never had before. This is a hard one personally. Something I’m continuing to work on daily. Basically I had to gain some self-confidence first before attempting this area. It is definitely becoming easier as I gain my confidence with every new boundary made and respected. 


Meditation may not be for you, I know I certainly didn’t “get it” and so every attempt was a failure. I never understood what I was supposed to be DOING while doing nothing! Someone finally explained very simply that you concentrate on your breath. Wait, what? Really? That’s it? And then I realized that it really wasn’t that easy. Since my thoughts jump around so quickly this “focusing on the breath” thing proved to be pretty difficult. I find it much easier with a free app called Calm. I use rain sounds or thunderstorm sounds for 2-5 minutes depending on how much time I have.


One last thing I’d like to mention is about compliments. Write down any compliments you receive and keep them all in the same place. Maybe write each one on a different piece of paper and stick them on a cork board. Or on a dry erase board. Make it pretty, make it creative, make it all about YOU! You deserve it.

When The Anxiety Gets To Be Too Much

Where Do We Turn To First?

In the last year I’ve learned a lot about myself but I’m no where close to where I want to be in that department. I still have a long way to go but we all need to look at how far we have come, at all our progress, instead of how far we still need to go.

When my anxiety starts getting too overwhelming the first thing I do is remind myself that it is OK to take a time out. This time out for me is to only do the basics in my home and not much more if I’m not feeling it. 

Give yourself some grace! No one can give 100% 24/7 and that’s totally ok! This is something that is pretty difficult for me to convince myself. Being a perfectionist is a hard job 😆 Seriously though, you really do need to remind yourself that even Superman has days off and time to chill and time to go out with friends and time to read etc

Part of my self care practice has been to dedicate myself to reading more. I love books and if I can’t physically read them then I get a book on cd to listen to in the car. I spend a lot of time travelling between work and extracurricular activities with the kids. Having something to listen to has really helped to decrease the anxiety! As long as I can stay focused on the book (or podcast etc) and not let my mind wander like it loves to do!

If you have someone to talk to then let it out. We’re not always looking for advice or a conversation. Sometimes all we need is to babble and make sense of all our thoughts out loud. Let your person know they aren’t required to respond (or even fully listen lol) and it will help them to relax about it. Listening to the anxieties of another is often pretty mentally draining for some and if they don’t feel pressured to have the “perfect” response afterwards then it’s a lot easier on them. I personally talk a lot and pretty quickly when I’m anxious and I can jump from topic to topic without a breath in between. Hard to follow for the listener AND myself 😉.

After We Figure Out Our Fears…

If we can keep our stress levels down we can have a bit more control over it. My anxiety stems from my PTSD and many years of abuse. It didn’t always show itself in this form though so I didn’t realize I had such bad anxiety. 

I can’t stress this enough:

Self-care is essential for our survival. This can even be as simple as a 10 minute nap in the afternoon. Listen to your body. Meditation can help determine what our bodies need. This can mean a 10 minute walk around the block. A quick bubble bath. Taking a moment to drink a glass of water can do miracles as well!

Too many people think of self-care as a selfish practice and don’t allow themselves to show themselves love. It doesn’t have to be spending money on nails or hair or shopping for new clothes. If that’s what you want, need and can accomplish than go for it! It can just be watching a movie in the afternoon by yourself on the couch while the kids are in school or napping.

Writing in a journal is very therapeutic also. Getting it out onto paper is a great way to get it out of our heads so we can stop thinking about it. A brain dump is another interesting way to rid all of those thoughts overwhelming the mind at night to help the sleep come easier. Just jot all of it (to do’s, don’t forgets, and everything in between) onto a scrap paper, into a notebook or whatever you have handy.

Getting enough sleep is so important to our mental health. If one doesn’t get enough sleep then the mind just doesn’t work as well. The decision making skills just don’t work.

The last thing I want to throw out here is that therapy or counselling is a great place to start. Be sure to ask what kinds of tools they could give you for anxiety, other coping skills they suggest and if your anxiety stems from trauma or abuse be sure to let them know this as well. If they don’t have experience in trauma therapy this could cause you to relive this at the wrong time and cause more damage, putting you further back in your recovery or losing any progress you have made so far.

Good luck! And don’t forget that YOU ARE ENOUGH, PROGRESS NOT PERFECTION. You’re doing great no matter where you are in your journey. Keep going 💖

Have a blessed day 🙂 

Ang

It’s Time To Show Some Love

I’m that girl who hated Valentine’s Day. The one that always said it’s too commercialized and I didn’t want to celebrate.

I now have three kids and I want them to know how important it is to show others love ans kindness always. For my family I want to teach them about serving others and how that can change the lives of others.

Make your sister’s bed for her and leave a surprise on the pillow 😊 Watch how her face lights up when she finds it. How do you think her heart feels when this happens?

Surprise your brother with a note on his door telling him how great he is or your favorite part of the day with him. How do you think he will treat others when he knows how much he is appreciated?

Make a special card for someone you don’t see very often and mail it away to them. What do you think they will say when the see it’s from you?

There’s so many different ways we can help make others feel appreciated and loved. There’s so much hurt out there, so much bullying, so much negativity. Let’s work together to teach our kids that helping others and building up each other’s confidences is the cool thing to do 💕

💋Ang

Winter Storm

Yesterday before I left the City to make my hour long drive home, I could see that the plows were getting ready for the imminent post-storm cleanup. Almost a week ago we were hit with some absolute beautiful weather and tons of rain. Then cold temperatures and blowing snow. And now we’re looking forward to anywhere between 15 and 30 cm of snow depending on where you live! The salt trucks didn’t salt our highway yet and so under all this fun blowing, swirling snow is that good old black ice.

What’s a great way to spend the day while this winter storm gets underway? I warmed up the truck, cleaned off all the snow, froze my butt off, bundled up the youngest and drove to the nearest town to go to the library! The librarian called me crazy but if I waited any longer then we wouldn’t have any books left to read 🙂 If I’m going to be snowed in for the next 2-3 days with three kids I wanted something to help pass the time!

Last summer we averaged 10 books a week but during the winter is more difficult to get all that reading in between work, school, dance, martial arts, speech appointments, orthopedic appointments, and numerous other doctor visits. This mom business is a busy one!

I’m going to go refill my coffee and take a few minutes to catch up on some never-ending laundry. I’m attacking the towels today 😀 Hope you’re having a great day and I just want you to know that you are doing a great job! Now don’t roll your eyes. I know I don’t know your situation but we are all doing the very best we can and that’s what matters most. Let’s support each other in crazy parenthood journey and laugh at our mistakes together!

With Love,   Ang