I’ve always considered myself to be a grateful person. When I give thanks while praying, my list is long and varied and I do my best to recognize God’s hand in all of these blessings. I also try to express my gratitude to my wife and my family, though I could do better there. For the last several months I have been feeling particularly blessed. For a million reasons. My last post, Thirty-Seven, was very short because I spent two and a half hours or so writing an in-depth catch up of my 37th year only to have it all disappear …

I just wrote a huge post. It took two hours. I went to add a featured image and it all went bye bye. That sucks. I’m in no mood to retype it all. So here’s what you get. We bought a new house. I got a new job. I ran a marathon. Katrina and kids are great. I’m getting fatter. [envira-gallery id=”660″]  

Go Nilsy, it’s yo’ Birfday! While my blogging has been sporadic at best, I’ve been pretty consistent at posting around my birthday each year lately, so I thought I’d get up early and continue the tradition. My 36th year of life has been pretty great. Here are a few facts, stats and updates that may or may not recall ten years from now. The Fam: We made it through another year of school, lots of fun as a family and even a successful road trip with no vans breaking down. The kiddos, now aged 11, 9, 7 and 4, are all …

Anders chose this week’s post as well. The assignment: Did anyone in your family do handiwork? Needlework? Wood work? Was anyone particularly mechanical or artistic? Our family is full of talented folks who have done a lot of impressive work in many areas. My Mother, for example, has done a lot of cross stitch, sewing and art. Each Thanksgiving we place a ceramic pilgrim couple on our table that my Mom painted when she was younger. My sister Saren and my brother Shiloh are two amazing pianists, each with their own styles and abilities. My brothers York and Grove have …

Today’s Nils History question: Did you have a lawn? Have to mow it? Did you have gardens of flowers, vegetables or herbs? Did you help care for them? Assuming that this is referring to our lawn growing up, we did have a lawn. As I recall, our house sat on either a third or half acre of land. Probably one third. Our lot was a rectangle in the middle of the bock so we accessed our house via a very long driveway. I think it was about 360 feet long (we had to shovel it every winter – bleh!). Our …

Just a few of the sections of our five hour trip from Utah County to Nevada. Shot on an iPhone 5 with the Lapse It app (one of my favorite toys lately). Between my wife and I driving, this video makes us look like a couple of speed demons, even though we were never more than ten over the speed limit. Eh hem – I mean we never quite reached the speed limit. Yeah.

I was pretty excited to come home to a set of three ‘Official Guidebooks’ for the state of Montana today and to open them up and see one if my photos across two pages. The guys at the Montana Office of Tourism have been awesome and have paid me some nice sums to use my photos and videos over the past couple of years.

What did you ever do that got you into trouble with your parents? At school? What were the punishments? It’s been a really long time since I wrote any Nils History posts (whoa – actually it’s been three and a half years!) and, now that I’m trying to be more active with the blog again, I thought it would be fun to do another. I asked my son to pull a question out of the jar and he looked at a few and then brought me this one and said “I want to find out what you did and how …

I’ve been enjoying using an app for my iPhone called Lapse It (also available for Android). Here are some of the videos I’ve taken at work recently. Your browser does not support the video tag

My Dad just emailed this photo, challenging us to identify when and where. I’m guessing 1994, Vermont.