Welcome to my blog! I’m so excited to share some insights into my everyday life with all of you! I’ll be sharing fun tips, ideas, real-life glimpses at mommy-hood, fun products, as well as sharing my music!

So I wanted to share an insight I have lately on my daily routine with my family. So here are five things that have worked for our family, to make us all a little bit happier and more productive each day. We are basically……getting back to the basics! My wonderful, hard-working husband who works in commercial construction, has been really busy with work lately. Consequently, it is up to me to ‘hold down the fort,’ so to speak! I decided that in order to do that successfully, I have to really decide what is necessary and most important in our daily life. Here’s what I have tried to do daily that has helped our little family, and perhaps it can help you, too!

1. PLAN. I feel that a plan for what your day is going to entail is a must! This includes dinner, bedtime, children’s lessons and activities, events, Family Home Evenings, etc.!
I also plan for when I need babysitters while I’m teaching piano, or writing or working on my new music. In the morning, I write out my list of things to do and write out a little note for anything that I need to remember. I also include a dinner plan! By just making that decision ahead of time, it helps to stop the worry of ‘what’s for dinner’ in the late afternoon. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’

Here’s a picture of my planner, and yes I’m probably the last person in the world to use an actual, physical planner rather than the one on my phone, but this just works for me, haha!

2. PRAYER. My husband is gone to work by the time we get up to get ready for the day. It’s up to me to make sure that my daughters have said their morning prayers. Often we’ll play “Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moe” and pick who says it. Half the time, we are in the car while we say it! (What can I say, it’s real life for us!) But the fact is, we say it and we feel better that we have said thanks for blessings and asked for blessings we might need that day. It really makes a difference, and the more you do it, the easier it is to be in the habit of daily morning prayer!

3. ROUTINE So a routine can look really different just depending on what you have going on in your life, but for us, we have a few little routines that help keep us running! Some of these are our after-dinner routine. We have set up a system where one of the older daughters (my 9 year-old or 7 year-old) will either help with the dishes, or practice the piano. They alternate who helps with dishes every other night to keep it fair. This way, they are expecting who is hopping up to the piano, and who is helping mommy with dishes, and there isn’t a fight! The other routines that we have is our bedtime routine, where we pick out outfits the night before so there’s no drama in the morning when we’re in more of a rush, and they have to be in bed by 9:00. (Again, that’s our family for you…we are up a little later in the Hansen house!)

4. FUN. Oh yeah, you gotta have fun…that’s a basic necessity, right? So for us, we fit in fun-time with playdates so mommy can talk to another adult, and my 2-year old can get our her energy! We also like to do fun family activities, especially on the weekends.

Here’s a picture of us (and our family friend) at the Ice-Castles in Midway, Utah. It was such a fun activity and memory for our family! One of my daughters’ favorite activities that they love to do is a family ‘movie night. We make popcorn, go to the dollar store and buy candy, and the girls like to make tickets for the show that we rented from Red-box, or on the Apple TV!

5. FOOD. Yet another ‘basic’ necessity, we have to eat! Although I will be the first one to admit we are not nutritionally perfect and we are not complete strangers to McDonald’s, I do try to provide wholesome meals and snacks for my family to eat. Lately I’m on a ‘no white sugar’ kick. I’ve tried to incorporate honey or organic coconut sugar instead of white sugar into my recipes. And guess what? It’s really worked out well and tasted pretty good! My children have liked mommy’s concoctions and we haven’t had to throw away the inventions that I have created, mwahh ahh ahh!

So there you have it, my little take on how the Hansen’s are making the whole family thing work! And that’s by getting back to the basics with planning, prayer, routine, fun & food!
I hope that you can become more enriched by implementing some of these ‘basics’ into your family life!

I’ll keep you updated on my next blog posts coming soon!

XOXO,

Amy