2016: A Retrospective

If 2015 was a pretty rough year, 2016 was a lot better.

This summer, we finally bought a house.  It has twice the square footage of the on-campus house we originally rented, and three times the square footage of the last house we were in.  Moreover, it was $20k less than the house we made an offer on in 2015.  Despite some minor repairs we had to do over the first few months, we've experienced no buyers' regret.  It has everything we need and most of what we wanted, for an affordable price.

Waiting until this year to buy a house was really a good decision.  We got a lower interest rate than we would have last summer, and we were able to finally pay off our student loans.

But the best part about 2016 came just about four weeks ago:  my daughter Genevieve was born.  She's the first full-term baby we've had (out of three), and the labor and delivery went like a dream.  My wife had a natural childbirth at the hospital, with no pain medication, and we were able to go home two days later.  Genevieve's two older brothers adore her.

There were some serious bad things that happened this year, but nothing as bad as the good things are good.