Sitting down to write this year in review remains one of the most daunting things I write all year. It's incredibly difficult to encapsulate 365 days into a single post without making it as long as a George R. R. Martin novel. I have this constant fear that I'll miss something, or mis-represent something. And yet just like I have for the past eight years here I am to try and put a bow on what was one of the best years of my life. 

Welcome to our sixth annual favorite things. Its an opportunity to look back on all of our favorite things we've watched, ate, and experienced in the year that was. Each year you can see our tastes begin to change, our bodies grow older, and our hearts younger. It was a great year and I'm excited to share with you our favorite things from 2016. 

Each year I put together a list of a handful of goals for the upcoming year. I try to make the goals realistic but also things to better me as a person whether physically or mentally. For goals I've found that looking back on how I did, not only at setting goals, but also achieving them can be just as important as actually accomplishing them. So how did I do?

There's something magical each year when Jenn and I bring the multitude of Christmas boxes out of storage and into our home. This year we decorated (like we have for many years) the Saturday following Thanksgiving. After renting out the freight elevator and taking up our boxes of Christmas trees and decorations Jenn went to work on making our home beautiful. I helped where possible (building the trees and lugging boxes up and down from storage) but for the most part I stepped back and let Jenn work her magic. 

On the night of the election I wrote a post titled Election 2016: Completely and Utterly Devastated. It was written only minutes after the official word came down that Donald Trump would be the next President. In the last week I've felt an immense sense of loss that I can only compare to that of losing someone close to me. It appears there are many in this country who feel the same way. As I write this there are protests happening across the country in protest of the President elect.

The clock reads 11:40PM and I just saw a tweet from the Associated Press that they’ve awarded the election to Donald J Trump. It’s a sentence that I have a hard time trying to fathom. When I got home from work a little after 4:30PM the first state results were coming in and everything just felt slightly closer then polls were suggesting pre-election. I spent so much of the last three weeks reading websites like 538, New York Times, Slate, Politico, and the like. All polls and signs pointed to a Clinton landslide, if not that then a solid victory. Nothing could prepare me though for the devastation of learning that Donald Trump will be our next President.