The 16 Year Highlight Reel:

In celebrating our 16th anniversary, Mr. Nielson and I retraced our steps.

First, we attended the temple where we were sealed (married).

We visited the room where our marriage ceremony took place and 

spent a few sweet moments there together.

After the temple. we drove to The Homestead in Midway, Utah 

where we had our wedding luncheon.

This time we stayed the night. (In 2000, we had our luncheon then split to

Salt Lake City where we caught a plane to the Caribbean).

The Homestead was cozy and welcoming and the best part about

 (besides the delicious fudge in our room), 

was the snow that was falling when we arrived.

Mr. Nielson and I stayed in one of the cozy homes on the 

property and had dinner in the main house.

But the best part of our anniversary was discussing 

 16 years' worth of beautiful memories.

We came up with a list of life-changing events that happened each year:

2000- Buy a house/Marriage/Teach skiing at Sundance/Pregnant with Claire.

2001- Claire born/New job for Christian/We become parents.

2002- Pregnant with Jane/New job for Christian.

2003- Jane born/Buy a new house/Graduation for Christian.

2004- Move to New Jersey/Pregnant with Ollie. 

New house. New job/Began writing my Blog.

2005- Oliver born/NieNie Dialogues is born.

2006- Pregnant with baby boy/Nicholas Born/Move to Arizona/ New job/

Mr. Nielson fly's for the first time.

2007- New job for Christian//New house/

Claire begins Kindergarten

2008-Jane starts kindergarten/I start teaching yoga/ Airplane crash

2009- Rebuild life/Move to Utah/Claire gets baptized.

2010- Surgeries/ Hunchie, and recovery/Move to AZ for the Summer/

 Oliver begins Kindergarten.

2011- Pregnant!! /Buy piece of land to build a home/ Nicholas begins Kindergarten/

Jane gets baptized/ I ski again.

2012- Charlotte born/Claire graduates elementary school/I write a book, 

2013- We move into Fox Hill!/More surgery/And then some more surgery/We travel to Denmark/

Oliver gets baptized/Jane graduates from elementary school.

2014- Pregnant! /Miscarriage/Nicholas gets baptized.

2015- Slowly I begin building a charity/Claire is a freshman in High School.

2016- We celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary/Christian starts a new

job adventure and begins a cattle enterprise at the ranch.

Here's to many many more years of wonderful life events!

We ended our anniversary date together on Saturday evening 

at Costco- which was pretty appropriate for us.

We came home with pizza for our children,

and found Lottie in the kitchen examining our wedding

photo book with great detail.

I sat down on the kitchen floor with her looking at the photos and

told her how much I loved her, how much I loved our family, 

but especially how much

I love her father, and God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ 

for making our marriages possible.

 Then I told her that no matter what, our marriage could never be broken-

not even by death.

And she listened intently with her big brown eyes.

I am not sure she completely understood, but we were connecting, and I 

knew that she believed what I was saying.