The Perfect Thanksgiving!

Yesterday was the perfect Thanksgiving! Wednesday night I drove up to James and Martha's house and Phil, Abrianna and Chloe drove down to meet me. We spent Thursday with them. It was so nice spend the morning sleeping in with my husband, then cooking all day with Martha and listening to the kids run around the house so happy and having Phil there beside me all day. The meal was wonderful and it was so much fun to be with family. I haven't had a family Thanksgiving since before I moved to NY! That made it all the more special.

After dinner we drove back to Phil's house in Canada where I'll be spending the next few days. Last night Phil and I were cuddled up on the couch watching a movie and it was so nice and relaxing and all I could think about was the same night last year and what a massive difference a year can make.

Last Thanksgiving came just a few weeks after we found out Phil's divorce was delayed and he would have to refile. We'd been talking to each other a long time, but had been advised by our bishop's not to meet in person until after the divorce was completely final. When things got delayed, I started having the feeling we shouldn't be talking until everything was once again filed and out of Phil's hands. The night before Thanksgiving we talked about it and prayed about it. Thanksgiving night we decided we would stop talking to each other completely until the divorce was refiled...and we weren't sure how long that might be. When we hung up Skype that night I cried and cried and cried. The next month without having Phil to talk to each day was one of the hardest months of my life. So many fears, so many doubts and so much lonliness during a time of year that is usually my very favorite. I remember hoping that all would work out and that by the holidays the next year, we'd be able to spend them together.

I wish now that I could go back to Amanda 2009 and tell her that everything was going to be okay...that next years Thanksgiving would be nothing but happy smiles...that next Thanksgiving night she'd be falling asleep in Phil's arms instead of crying herself to sleep alone. I mentioned this to Phil and he told me I'd never believe myself...he's probably right haha, but still, it would have been nice to have some real hope in my heart to combat all the doubts...but I guess it was our love that gave me hope back then.

Applying all this thoughtfulness to our current situation...I wonder what Amanda 2011 would have to say to me now if she came back in time with a message. Hopefully she'd tell me that by next Thanksgiving I'll be living in Canada with Phil and that we won't have to say goodbye again after the holiday weekend is over. Looking forward to the future, it seems so very far away. I remember how very far away meeting Phil in person seemed while we were waiting for it. But now here we are, married! Where will we be a year from now?

Probably most important to me about all this...by looking back to last year and remember how hard it was and how much it broke me inside to have to let Phil go for that month and just hope and pray that he'd come back to me, it helps me to keep the now in better perspective and to be so much more grateful for all that we're blessed with. Its so hard now being apart, but we are so blessed to have each other, to be sealed for eternity, to have the technological means to talk to and see each other each day, even from different countries, to have the means and ability to travel to see it each other regularly and to know without a doubt how very much we love each other. Being apart is hard...but we have been through SOOOOO much worse...we've been through it, we've survived it and we've fallen more in love because of it and remembering the hard stuff makes me so thankful for what we have now and makes the trials we're now facing seem a lot more manageable.

I have so much to be thankful for!

My wonderful loving husband who makes my life special every day
Our temple marriage and our family friends that got to be there to share it with us
Our family who loves us
3 beautiful amazing girls
James and Martha living so close now
Our wonderful wards
Our great friends
Our jobs that provide for our needs
Our immigration papers...slowly but surely coming together
Our house and all our temporal blessings
The gospel and its presence in our lives each day
Our Savior and his incredible love for us
For The Atonement and its healing affects in our lives
For our Heavenly Father who loves us and brought us to each other

We are so very blessed!!!

Pretty much the best Christmas song ever HAHA

Home Remedies

I'm not a fan of going to the doctor...not because I have anxiety about doctors, but because I have anxiety about the bills. Due to the nature of my work I've never had decent health insurance and have even been completely screwed over by a fraudulent insurance company. Because of lousy coverage, simple illnesses end up costing me a lot of money.

Luckily I don't get sick often and rarely is it enough to need a doctor, but there are a couple exceptions. The 2 biggies working with kids are pink eye and strep throat.

A couple years ago I got pink eye, went off to the doctors, and $150 later I was back home with a perscription. The perscription worked and I got better, no problem...except I was $150 dollars poorer. Not cool!

A year later I got pink eye again, this time I didn't want to part with another $150 so I started doing some searching online. I found a lot of home remedy ideas. Some of them, like rinsing your eye with lemon juice or honey and water, seemed just plain stupid. Maybe the really work but I wasn't keen on dropping citric acid into my eyes so I kept reading. I came across one that I felt confident couldn't hurt to try. Saline solution.



According to the website, using saline contact solution as eye drops will clear up pink eye. Since contact solution gets in your eyes all the time when you wear the contacts you've just rinsed with them, I decided it was a safe option. I started dropping saline solution in my eyes several times through the day and just as quickly as the antibiotics from doctor had done it, my pink eyes started to clear up. Within a few days it was totally gone. Awesome!!! One bottle of saline solution: around $6-10...an easy home remedy for pink eye...priceless! :)

I was thrilled! But what about other home remedy ideas? The next time it crossed my mind was during a visit to Canada when I got a UTI - miserable! I'd had one before after a kidney stone (even MORE miserable!) so I knew what it was. I was in Canada and not sure how to even go about seeing a doctor and getting a perscription in a foreign country, let alone how much it would cost me! UGH! So I turned back to the internet...Once again I found lots of suggestions and a lot of them seemed perfectly easy. The two I decided to give a try....drink lots of cranberry juice and water mixed with baking soda. Phil ran out and got me a giant container of cranberry juice and I started mixing glasses of baking soda and water.



I drank and drank and drank and again, within a few days I was back to normal. Yay! I was becoming a BIG fan of home remedies!

My most recent illness...the dreaded strep throat, courtesy of the little girl I nanny. I did a search online but didn't find much. Most things I read said that there were the potential for a lot of complications and worse things to come if left untreated....hmm, didn't sound like something I should risk on home remedies, especially as what was being suggested didn't sound like anything more than preventative stuff or pain control. So I went to the doctor...$150 more...gross. But I got better and all was back to normal.

Until yesterday, when I woke up with a sore throat again. Not a big deal I figured because I get sore throats a lot in the fall and winter. But it didn't go away all day. My tonsils are swollen and my throat is red...no white yet and not as painful but ugh...what I'm getting strep again? My other nanny kiddos class had another case of strep this week so what if I've been exposed again? So totally uncool! And right before Thanksgiving and my trip to Canada...NO!

Since things were in early stages I decided to go back to online remedies and try to stop this in its tracks...Drinking tons of OJ, gargling salt water, taking echinaesea and zinc...all that jazz. But there was another couple suggestions I hadn't tried before. Yogurt apparently could help so I've had some of that, the other was to gargle with apple cider vinegar



Ewww, that sounds unpleasant. But it doesn't sound too hazardous either so I decided to try. BIG mistake!

Seriously, that was one of the worst things I ever tasted...I immediately started gagging and it took about 10 minutes of mouth rinsing and drinking juice to get the flavor to go away so I didn't feel like throwing up anymore. So SOOOO gross!

Maybe it would really work...but I can NOT handle it...too gross for me! So I'll just keep to the vitamin c, zinc and yogurt and hope for the best!

How do you know if its love?

If you know me, you know I love Harry Potter...well maybe love is a bit of an understatement! Previous to my obsession with my wonderful husband, my obsession was the boy wizard. I love the books, love the movies, love to discuss the canon to death! Love fan art, and wizard rock, and Pottercast, and fan conventions...I love it all! As I've "grown up" the obsession has had to dwindle of course but the love is still very much there.



The point...Part 1 of the Deathly Hallows movie opens this Friday! The final book...the final movie (well the first half anyway) and where will I be this Friday at midnight...not watching Harry Potter.

No midnight showing for me...won't even be seeing the movie on Friday. Why?

See I have this husband now, who I love very much and I really want to see it with him! So much so in fact that I made him listen to all 7 books so he'd be Potter "worthy" to watch this film with me (haha) and being a wonderful, loving and supportive husband he did just that. He's listened to them and really liked them. We've watched other HP movies together and he even took me to the Harry Potter movie exhibit in Toronto while we were dating. One of the best things about Phil is how he loves that I'm a nerd. He thinks the fact that I have a robe and a wand and go to conventions and play video games is one of the best things about me.



And so I will be waiting an extra week until we're together for Thanksgiving to see Deathly Hallows with my Phil. As my friend Kate put it last night..."Now that's love!"

Yes...Yes it is!

Focusing on the Happy

Yesterday was hard (as per my depressing blog entry) and today is hard too...basically every day is hard. Some I handle better than others...these last few haven't been in that category. I read an entry on a friends blog yesterday discussing all the "What if" questions that we beat ourselves up with. I have a lot of them:

What if Phil dies?

What if Phil leaves me?

What if I'm never good enough?

What if I'm always fat?

What if I get pregnant before I'm in Canada?

What if when the time is right we can't get pregnant at all?

What if there's a complication and immigration takes even longer than it already is?

What if my employers find a new nanny before I'm ready to go?

What if I never see that money that's owed to me?

What if I moved in with James and Martha to be closer to Phil now? Would the job stuff work out or would it be a huge mistake?

What if I'm a terrible wife and mother?

The list of negative "What ifs" goes on and on and can drive a person completely insane. So yesterday as I considered these and many others I also started to consider positive "What ifs":

What if Phil and I had never found each other?

What if I'd settled for someone or something else that could never be as perfect for me as he is?

What if I'd gotten the job in California? Would Phil and I have made it?

What if we were still waiting on the divorce? How much better the waiting is now!

What if we hadn't been able to be married in the temple?

What if I didn't have a job at all?

What if we had to spend another Christmas apart?

So many things could be so much worse and we are so blessed that they're not! We're so blessed to have each other, to have an eternal marriage, to have jobs, to have Phil's 3 beautiful girls...so many blessings. Its not always easy, but I'm trying to focus on happy things.

The most happy thing of all is my wonderful husband. Last night after feeling miserable and depressed all day long my sweet Phil did the very best thing he could while we're apart...he got me talking and he listened. I was able to pour out all the negative emotions that had been tormenting me all day long and know that the ears that were listening love and care about me and probably feel the same things I'm feeling. I asked him in the end how he was able to face it all without letting it bog him down the way it does me. He told me that you just have to rid your mind of the negative thoughts and fill it up with positive ones. You can't sit and stew over the bad things we can't change, the trials we can't avoid...it is what it is and obsessing won't change it. You just have to be positive, be grateful for what you have and look forward. Easier said than done for someone like me who focuses on the bad way too much to be healthy...but good sound advice. I'm so grateful to have such a loving wonderful man who listens when I need it, offers good counsel, is a worthy priesthood holder and loves me so very much.

After I vented Phil managed to do something miraculous...he cheered me up. As we talked about other things he had me smiling and laughing and feeling much lighter than I had all day long. It was only a short time of the day we got to spend together but he made it really count and really made a difference to end my day on a good note...I am so grateful for Phil. Even though we can't be together now, he is the most wonderful blessing and the most loving husband. I love you baby!

Rain & Hunger

Have you ever seen the movie Men in Black 2? One of the characters discovers she is from another planet and that she controls the weather with her mood. Whenever she's sad it rains, but her whole life she just thought the rain made her sad rather than her sadness making it rain.

I feel like that...I always feel so gloomy inside when the weather is dark and rainy. Yesterday was great, sunny and cool...a perfect fall day. I got lots done and felt great. This morning when my alarm went off all I wanted was to stay in bed, and when it was time to tell Phil goodbye, turn off Skype and head to work it nearly broke my heart to leave him. I always miss him, I always wish we were together, but sometimes the want becomes a need...its physically painful to be apart from him and I miss him with every bit of my heart and soul. Why am I married but still so painfully alone all the time...

I felt that way this morning and have no idea why. When I did finally go to work I walked out of my room and looked out the window to find that it was dark and gloomy and rainy outside. Its like my body knew it before my mind did. I guess everything just seems more hopeless in the dark and rain. Every sadness seems magnified somehow. I find it interesting how much weather can affect me. It would probably be an interesting psycological phenomenon to study.




Changing subjects...This week I finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy. Crazy, intense and thought provoking books. Aubrey pointed me in their direction and as I heard other people talking about them I got very interested and wanted to start reading them. I read the first book in just 2 days. They make you think a lot about all we take for granted, how government is run, whats right and what is wrong, war, media and all we as a society see as "entertainment". Its easy to judge the characters in the book, the country that is finding entertainment value in something so despicable and then you stop and think about how you're reading the same thing in the name of entertainment. Very interesting...

Homeless

As I've gone to visit Canada over the past 7 months a lot of things have come as a surprise to me. While it doesn't always feel like another country because its right there and seems pretty much the same as the US I'll start to get comfortable and then WHAM! Something shows up that clearly doesn't belong in the life I'm used to and I'm reminded that I truly am in a completely different country. Some of these things are funny...

Ketchup chips of course came as a surprise to me...


Poutine is now one of my favorite comfort foods...


And it struck me as very bizarre to discover there's a pizza place called "Pizza Pizza" that has nothing what so ever to do with Little Ceasars (and odder still...they have those too!)


Some things frankly just frightened me, like the demon black squirrels (just not natural, I'm telling you...squirrels are grey...maybe brown...but not black! Demons I tell you, DEMONS!) Not sure if they are hiding in some parts of the US but I'd never seen one until I was in Canada and it really shocked me!


Other things aren't so much funny as just plain annoying. Trying to adjust to kilometers vs. miles or liters vs. gallons is a real pain in the butt. I still get a little twinge of shock when I'm driving down the freeway and the sign says 100 instead of 60 or when I go to the gas pump and the price is a dollar something instead of 3 something (and thanks to liters being less than gallons, it still costs more in Canada! LOL)


I discoverd another severe annoyance last time I was in Canada. I've been making Lipton rice my entire life. You throw it in the pot, add some water and butter, boil uncovered a few minutes and let it sit to absorb all the water...boom, rice! Not so in Canada...


I was making my famous enchiladas for Phil for the first time and like I always do, I planned to serve it with Lipton Spanish rice. I was thrilled to see he already had a pack in his cupboard. I went to making it like I always do, but after about 10 minutes of cooking it still looked exactly as it had when I put everything in the pan. Baffled I asked Phil about it. He grabbed the package I'd tossed in the trash and informed me that I was supposed to cover it for 20 minutes....Cover it? 20 Minutes? What was he talking about???

"You've got to read the directions baby" he said and though he didn't mean anything by it I just about burst into tears feeling like a total idiot. It was just rice, nothing of any importance in life...but why one Earth would I read the directions for something I've been cooking perfectly for years? That's just stupid. And that's what I told him, to which he replied something about how I'm in a whole different country and things aren't the same here.

Over the weekend I'd already had other mishaps...putting things in the wrong trash bins, breaking dishes, using the washer at the wrong time of day...the bottom line is, not only am I having to adjust to a whole new country, I'm having to adjust to a whole new household. A household that isn't even really mine yet despite being married to the guy that owns it. It was a silly epiphany being brought on by a package of rice, but in that moment it just all hit me. I'm homeless. I have NO WHERE in his country or mine where I really belong and feel comfortable in. In CT I live with my employers, and every nanny knows that you NEVER feel at home there. You're forever feeling weird and awkward about the dumbest things...grabbing a bowl of cereal, going to the kitchen for a glass of water, leaving to go out on Saturday using their car...no matter how welcoming the family is, its just not your house and you know it and you never feel 100% at home there.

I've been away from Utah so long that my parents house doesn't feel like home either...its there house now, and when I'm there (which isn't often at all) I'm a guest now. Though I grew up there, it no longer feels like home to me anymore...I've grown up to much and lived away from there too long. That's normal and part of life but just one more place that's not home.

And then there's Phil's house...Phil's home...not our home...Phil's home. I don't live there yet. When I'm there, I'm a guest. I'm surrounded by stuff that isn't mine. Surrounded by rooms I'm not really familiar with yet. I can't hardly even get the tv going without assistance. Every move I make I feel like I'm intruding or wondering if I'm doing something wrong. And its all the more awful because the one person in the whole world who's opinion of me really truly matters is Phil's. I hate feeling stupid in front of him. I hate when he sees my faults and my insecurities and my mistakes. And standing in his kitchen that night, feeling stupid about rice all I wanted to do was run away and hide somewhere safe...and I realized no such place exsists for me. I went downstairs, locked myself in the bathroom and just started crying. It seems like my whole life is trying to be perfect for people and I'm so terribly bad at it. And there's no where to hide and just be imperfect, clutsy, stupid me where no one else can see.

Phil of course noticed my absense and came down to find me. I didn't know what to do or say. The whole emotional thing was stupid in and of itself, crying over rice. But it was so much more than rice and how could I explain that right. I came out of the bathroom and Phil was sitting on the couch. I crawled right up in to his arms, layed my head on his chest and trying to control the tears long enough to try to make him understand. I don't think I managed very well but he held me anyway.

Eventually I was fine and got dinner finished (though the dumb rice was beyond repair) but it didn't change the fact that I still feel very much homeless. In fact, the only place I do feel safe and like I belong is in Phil's arms and despite my hearts true desire, I can't spend my whole life there.

I hope someday soon Phil's house will become my house and that someday after that, I'll begin to really feel like its my home too. Homeless till then...

And now...back to me

As my relationship with Phil began, developed, and eventually lead to our marriage, this blog went from being just me and my random thoughts to being all about us and the wonderfulness that is having Phil in my life.

Now that we're married, I decided to make us a brand new blog for our relationship and our family. You can visit it here:

http://macdonald123.blogspot.com/

When I originally started this Nanny Poppins blog, it was just for me and my thoughts and I've decided its time to go back to that. I find it very theraputic to get my thoughts out into the world, even if no one is reading it, its just nice to put them out there...sometimes it helps get them out of my head or helps me deal with them or face them or share them when they're wonderful. Whatever the case may be, I liked having that space that was just for me, where I could be a little whiny or self absorbed or go on and on about some silly thought that I don't want to bore a real breathing person with....so that's what this will be again...

And now...back to me!