So I’ve noticed that recently, my youngest daughter Ava Jade, is really taking off with her vocabulary! It’s been so fun to see her personality bloom, and it’s so nice to have a better understanding of what she wants and needs! One of her new favorite phrases is ,’OK’ I love it when she says, ‘OK Mommy!’ This is how it usually goes…
“Ava, let’s read two books before naptime. You pick.” Ava responds,”OK, Mommy,”
“Hey Ava, let’s go for a walk outside, ready?!” Ava loves that so again,”OK, Mommy.”
And, “Mommy will catch you at the bottom of the slide.” Here comes Ava, “OK, Mommy!”
I just love it and I get that a lot lately! Hopefully it lasts–crossing my fingers!

Well as I thought of my sweet little Ava’s cute phrase that she’s coined, it happened to remind me in a subtle way that we as loving and diligent Mommies, are in fact, OK! We’re trying to love, nurture, and raise our children in our own special ways.

So what I wanted to say to you wonderful women out there raising your children to the best of your abilities is this: “Moms, it’s OK!”

Here’s a list of things to keep in mind are ‘OK’ while raising your family:

1. It’s OK to….Be honest with your emotions!
Sometimes being a mother can be hard work! We experience frustration, anger, sadness and guess what? That’s OK! I remember as a new mother with my first daughter, I felt guilty that I wasn’t in a motherly bliss while changing dirty diapers and nursing my new baby through the night. We have permission to feel all of those emotions without guilt, along with the good (thankfully)!

2. It’s OK to……Take care of yourself!
I have an analogy that helps us illustrate this point. Have you ever heard the flight attendant on an airplane tell you that you need to put on your oxygen mask before you help others put on theirs? Well, the same goes for us in regards to being a caretaker. If we take care of our health, our appearance, our sleep, our spirituality,and our emotional needs, etc. then we are better able to take care of our children and families in return!

3. It’s OK to…..Keep your identity!
What is your purpose? Your passion? What drives you? I feel like sometimes we feel pressured that we need to resign our former identity and focus 100% on our new little bundle of joy. If that works for you, then great! If you feel like you need to stay involved somehow in your hobbies or work previous to your title of ‘Mother,’ then great, too! I personally feel that I NEED music and other joyful things in my life. It really fulfills me! As a result, I feel that my ‘tank’ is full and there’s more of me to give! I also would like to refer you to this amazing article I read by Dr. Julie Hanks if you’d like to read more about this!

4. It’s OK to…..Accept help/love/kindness!
Often times, us mothers’ feel like we have to do everything, and I mean everything, by ourselves! We are the caretakers, chauffeur, chef, maid, tutor, piano teacher, coach, and the list could go on and on. After my third child was born, I had a hard time getting my oldest daughter to elementary school in the mornings. After being stressed out too many mornings, I finally reached out and asked for help. I just needed someone to at least help get her to school and then I could handle the rest! It has brought me to tears sometimes thinking about the kindness of our dear neighbor who offered to drive my daughter for a few months when I really needed that extra help and kindness.

5. It’s OK to….Stick to the essentials!
Some days, we are on the ball! We’re on time to school, we have our homework and reading done, and we have practiced the piano and done the chores, and followed it up with a healthy dinner and a fun family activity! Other days, we wreck the house, pile up laundry and dishes, throw tantrums, and have silly dinner–i.e. toast and chocolate milk. The key is to stick to the essentials. Some of the essentials to stick to are: nurture, give love, bond/interact/connect, play, teach, provide a safe environment, provide healthy meals/snacks, encourage healthy physical activity, to name a few. Not essential: perfectly sparkling and clean home at all times, and everyone photo-ready especially first thing in the morning.

6. It’s OK to….Adjust your expectations!
Sometimes I hear my friends say they are such failures as moms. But to me, I observe that they are just seeing in black-and-white terms. If their expectation of certain parenting situations are not met at 100%, they consider it a failure! So I feel like we should simply adjust our expectations, (not throw them out the window). For example, if my two-year old is not sharing, I can adjust my expectation of “my child should share perfectly and happily” to “my child is learning to share and I will help them with this process.” By re-framing and adjusting expectations, we are able to lessen our perfectionist tendencies where it does not serve us.

7. It’s OK to…Pray!
If ever we need heavenly help, it’s in our role as mothers. So mommies, go ahead and use this help! I feel that we are on a special errand, and with such a task comes special privileges as we ask. I also make it a point to teach my children to pray to their Heavenly Father. We pray every morning before school, and every night before bedtime, as well as on our meals, and during our Family Home Evenings each Monday night. This helps us to have increased peace and love in our family. Also, in the middle of heated situations or arguments between the children, I will often find myself praying out loud so that they can hear that i’m asking for help! Sometimes I don’t know what to do, but then as I ask in prayer, things become more clear.

I hope you liked these tips! I just have so much love for all of you out there doing your best! And in the words of my little Ava Jade, it’s “OK Mommy”!

XOXO,
Amy

So a few months ago, I went to my gym to try out a new class. I had looked at the class schedule I had on my fridge, and decided to try it out. Well, when I arrived, I realized that I had the schedule I had referred to was out of date! So since I had a babysitter all lined up, and I was already at the gym, I decided to attend the yoga class! Why not?!

That’s how I stumbled upon my new fitness hobby! 

And boy was that a happy mistake though, because I ended up loving the class and the teachers, and I kept going! 

The yoga bug had bit me! 

My friend, Jesse, who is very athletic herself, would go with me almost every week depending on our busy mommy schedules! It’s been really fun to gain more flexibility and strength while practicing my new favorite fitness hobby! I’ve even introduced my daughters to yoga, and we all like to practice kids yoga videos on youtube for fun! They love it, too!

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to receive private instruction from an amazing and dynamic teacher, Ali! I’d like to let you know a little about her….While she is not practicing yoga, she teaches French at East High School. She also teaches paddleboard yoga, amazing right?! With her extensive knowledge and skill which includes 17 years experience as a yoga instructor, along with her fun personality, practicing with her is a delight! She really knows how to make you work and challenge yourself!

I’m really excited to continue my yoga practice and see where it takes me! What’s your fitness hobbies and interests? What do you find inspiring in regards to your fitness routines?

I hope you enjoy these pictures that we took for fun at the end of our session! It was a blast! Thanks to Lisa (my sister), and Jesse (my awesome friend) for being such amazing yogi’s, too! 

Namaste🙏 and XOXO,

~Amy

*If you’d like to contact Ali about a private yoga instruction session, or a small group yoga session, you can contact her at butterflyogini@gmail.com, Folllow her on Instagram @butterflyogini, or on Facebook, Ali Mills. 

I’m really excited to do a post on one of my passions in my life….music! Ever since I was 5 years old (and actually even younger as I discover old family videos of me singing little children’s songs and such) I have had a love for music! It is just in me! It’s also a big part of my family. Even my parents met in University Choir, where my mom was playing the piano!

What can I say, it was meant to be, right?

I think the thing I really love about music is how it can affect us. I love that it connects us and that I can share parts of me that are very personal, but yet very deep and important. Music helps me to express my creativity, and also allows me to have my ‘outlet.’ I can always turn to it, whether I want to have fun dancing with my kids, or listen to a motivitating song as I work out, or if I want to tune my thoughts to higher things. 

As we turn on our radios, or play our itunes playlists, I feel like more and more, our music choices are turning towards what the media wants to promote, such as immoral lyrics, questionable subject matters, and profane language. 

Contrary to this trend, when I write music, my end goal is to uplift and inspire! A majority of my arrangements and music compositions are religious in nature, but I always try to keep it upbeat and flowing so anyone could enjoy it, even if they’re not familiar with the original hymn, or not of my faith. I frequently do not include lyrics, since my music is often purely instrumental, and so the listener is free to enjoy the beautiful melody lines and different musical themes that I include in my arrangements.

Below is the video of one of the first songs that I wrote after I decided to start composing music again. I had gone on an extended ‘break’ from writing music when I was 12 and decided to study piano more seriously. I used to compose music all the time on the piano and my Mom even helped me write down my music and has saved my little songs from when I was young! After making the decision to study classical piano, that eventually led to me down the path to receiving a degree in Piano Performance from BYU, which I will always be so grateful for! Not long after I graduated, I was playing in my church’s ward choir as the pianist, and I had the idea to try to write some of my own arrangements. After submitting some of my songs to record labels in Utah, I was fortunate enough to have Covenant Communications, which is owned by Deseret Book, sign me as an artist and I have since created three albums! 

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts and feelings about music and what it means to me! I hope you enjoy the song and that you become more uplifted and inspired and happy after you listen to it, Because that’s the real reason for music.

XOXO,

Amy

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope everyone has a great day, and that hopefully you can spend it  with your loved ones! I think this time of year helps us pay more attention to our close relationships. It helps us focus more on those we deeply love and care for. There’s a wonderful quote by Gordon B. Hinckley that speaks concerning the power and gift of love. 

‘Love is the essence of life.’ And, “Love, like faith, is a gift of God. It is also the most enduring and the most powerful virtue.’  

It is also a commandment of God, to ,’Love One Another.’ (John 13:34) 

What does that mean to you? To me it means that I can show more love in my day-to-day life. It means I can reach deeper when it’s hard to love someone, and that I can ask for the gift of more love and understanding in hard situations. It means I can replace contempt with understanding and compassion. I think it really means that we can become more like the Savior as we replace anything negative and fill it in with love. 

I wanted to share an arrangement that I wrote of the song, ‘Love One Another’ and ‘Where Can I Turn For Peace?’ I really put my feelings (and love) into my music, so I hope you can hear and experience that as you listen to an excerpt. Thanks for letting me share!

XOXO,

~Amy

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So I have a new favorite ‘toy’! Apparently I was a good girl this year, and so for Christmas, Santa gave me a Blendtec! For a while now I’ve been searching for the perfect healthy treat that I can make using my new favorite kitchen gadget! I also wanted to find a recipe that I’ll enjoy, and one that my kids will actually eat! Well, I’m happy to say I’ve finally found ‘the one’! It’s a super easy and delicious ‘Blender Brownie’ recipe, and it also happens to be packed full of nutritious ingredients! Win-win!

There are a couple of things that I like about this recipe:

1. It’s fast! You basically take all the ingredients and throw it in the blender. Easy-peasy! No mess with extra pans and bowls = less dishes for mommy to wash, yay!
2. It has no white sugar (unless you add the optional dark chocolate chips)….on my last blog, I mentioned how I’m on a ‘no refined sugar’ kick, and I’m really committed to trying my best to minimizing my family’s sugar intake.
3. The recipe actually tastes good, even though it is on the healthy side. My kids asked me to make more! My oldest daughter, Madison, said that these brownies were her new favorite!
4. There are nutritious ingredients, including eggs, coconut oil, protein powder, honey, and the secret ingredient….black beans, what?! I promise you can’t even taste them, though!

Ok here’s the recipe:

4 Tbsp Organic Coconut Oil, melted
4 organic cage-free eggs
1/2 cup raw unfiltered honey
1/4 tsp. pink Himilayan salt (or sea salt)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp. vanilla
1 can organic, no-salt added black beans; drained/rinsed
1/3 cup powdered stevia
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)
*you can add 1/4 cup of Kodiak Cakes-Power Cakes Flapjack and Waffle mix for a more cake-y brownie

Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9″ rectangle pan with coconut oil cooking spray. Put everything in blender and blend, and then pour into the greased pan. Except for chocolate chips, don’t blend those. Just sprinkle ’em on top of the batter. Check at 30 minutes, but if you like them goo-ey, take them out. If not, let them cook for 5 -10 minutes longer.

I hope that you have fun trying out this these easy-to-make brownie recipe! Oh, and they’re even good the next day if you keep them moist in a container (if they last that long). Enjoy!

XOXO

~Amy

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

Hello, and welcome to my brand new site! I’m so excited for you to get to know me, my music, and my everyday life right here! I’ll be blogging about all sorts of things, from music, to recipes, to fitness, family, and more! Contact me if you have any questions, or want to book me for a speaking or musical event.

I look forward to meeting all of you and getting more involved in the blogging community. Reach out to me for guest posts, swaps, giveaways, or anything else you can think of!

Thank you so much!

XOXO

Amy