My Favorite Things In 2016

2016 has, overall, been a pretty crappy year for the world at large. For me personally (devastating heartbreak aside), 2016 was full of good things. In an effort to stop wallowing and appreciate life, here are my favorite things in 2016 (in no particular order): 

• I quit my job! I very rarely use an alarm clock, I have time to prepare slow cooker meals in the morning and not think about dinner again until it's time to eat, my house is super organized, I'm working on a Mormon history project (so I have an actual real reason to read all of those Mormon books ...), I don't spend an hour and a half or more a day commuting, and I have two dogs as office-mates. It's awesome.
  
  
• I made pickles that taste just like my late grandmother's with cucumbers I grew in my garden. My grandmother was incredibly talented, so doing anything remotely close to her is an achievement in my book.
  
• Me quitting my job meant that we got to travel a lot more this year, including a month-long trip to Scotland and Ireland. (It was wonderful, but two weeks away from home is long enough). The trip included a visit to the Laney River in County Cork, Ireland, a place I've always wanted to visit.
• We got a National Parks Passport (the centennial edition to boot) and acquired several stamps. This is the nerdiest thing in the world, and I love it.
  
  
• We traveled to upstate NY to visit numerous religious history sites. This is not a trip my husband would ever endeavor on his own, and he was game for everything. He also encouraged and made the whole quitting my job thing possible, which is pretty huge.  
• I got to vote for my real-life Hermione.
  
• Favorite new guilty pleasure TV show: American Housewife
• Favorite non-fiction writer: Rebecca Traister
• Favorite new kitchen gadget: it's a tie between my new waffle iron and the Ball Tech Electric Water Bath Canner.
  
• We hired a house cleaner. Life changing. 
• It snowed in Portland two weeks in a row!
  
• All of my siblings were in the same place at the same time (and my husband finally got to meet them all), which is rare and wonderful. 
• Our niblings (and their parents) visited us in Oregon, as did many other friends.