Lovely November

The Sunday after Halloween, a rather remarkable thing happened: Craig got released as bishop!!!  He's been serving in that calling for over five-and-a-half years, having been called just a month before the Infamous Covid Lockdowns of 2020.  In some ways, that doesn't feel very long ago, but let me just remind you that at the time, my family looked like this:

It turns out that 5.5 years is a LOT of time!  (And when you were expecting only 5 years, those extra nine months tacked on at the end feel really long!)  (In all fairness, I should say that Craig did tell our stake president that he wouldn't mind staying bishop through the summer so he could do all the summer activities he'd planned with the youth.  But then our stake president ended up going to Denmark on a sabbatical, and couldn't call a new bishop until he was back.  So Craig was released literally two days after Pres. Papin returned home.)

It's really wild to reflect on all the things that happened over this time.  Having your husband be the bishop is hard (probably not as hard as actually being the bishop, but I really only write my own experiences here; Craig can start his own blog if he wants to delve into all of that), but I can also see so many ways that we've been blessed over the years, financially, spiritually, mentally...  If I really try, I can probably think of things I wish we had, but truly we've had all our actual needs met and then some.  It would be churlish of me NOT to be filled with the utmost gratitude for all we have.  

So this was the end of an era, for us.

Now-- they just called Craig into the Stake Young Men's Presidency, so it's not like he'll be resting on his laurels.  But I sure am enjoying getting to sit next to him during sacrament meeting again!

So that was our BIG news for the fall.  Other stuff was pretty average (and by average, I mean, pretty great)...  Oddly enough, things stayed just as busy?  I mean-- maybe they weren't as busy, but it wasn't like we suddenly had oodles of time to wile away...  But, Craig did get to skip the YMs camp out, which gave him time to (almost) finish rebuilding our deck steps, so that was pretty great!

The weather continued to be gorgeous on into November, as it usually is...

Playing pickleball in the Palmer's driveway (that really pretty tree in the background is ours!)

Here's that same tree from our porch!

One night Camille and I went walking while everyone else was at their Tuesday activities.  The moon was so pretty through the clouds so I snapped this picture (and caught that plane going by).  A minute later the clouds had completely cleared away and I was glad I'd caught this!

We also made sure we attended the last football game of the season because it was Kendra's Senior Night!!!  😱

A bunch of friends from the ward had come to cheer her on-- such great people!

Megan, Missy, and Anita

Oh hey-- there's our new bishop, Bishop Huff!

And there Kendra is with her bass drum

She's in the white coat directing the Star Spangled Banner

Still enjoying temple date nights!

And then lucky Craig got to take the teacher's quorum on their temple trip the very next morning!  (They mostly needed him for the van, but we're fine with that!)

And we're not above sweetening the deal to make it even more fun!

And then when Craig changed into something more comfortable, we realized he and Colton were matching in the most awesome way!

I'm not entirely sure where this picture came from?  But that's Colton and Camille playing in the creek behind our house!

Trying to build a fire in the rain

Getting ready to go camping (without Dad!!!)

My parents came to visit for a whole week which was awesome, and still went by too fast!  During that time we managed to go to the temple

and it just worked out for us to invite Sarah to come along, too, so that made it even more fun!

And then we ran into my Mother-in-Law in the chapel and got to do the session with her!  And THEN, Sarah's parents came and visited with us in the celestial room!  Quite the family reunions going on there!  (And then we got lunch at Chuy's, which was so good, but maybe not as exciting as family?!  But a very close second!)

My parents managed to be here for both 5th grade music night AND the high school band concerts!  (Which were on the same night, but we managed to not miss any of the times our kids were performing!  Parent win!)  First up was the entire 5th grade singing "Take on Me" (yup, from the 80s!):

She's on the right, second row

There, you can see her better!

And then they broke out into smaller groups where they got to pick their own song, so here's Camille with Mara (completely hidden behind the music stand) and May (singing, mostly hidden behind her music) performing "Stargazing":

I'd told the music teacher that we needed to make it to the high school band concert pretty quickly, so he helped us out by having them perform first.  It was so nice of him!  If we hadn't been in a rush, I wouldn't have minded seeing some of the other kids perform, but we needed to dash!

There's Kendra!

And there's Ryder getting set up!

They were both trying to be taller than the other!  (I think my Dad still has Ryder beat, but probably not for much longer!)

We also dragged my parents to the Huff's Pie Night (now an activity for the entire ward-- welcome to being bishop, Scott!), where Craig got this adorable picture of Camille and Peter hanging out together:

(And we got Torchy's after!)  I also got to bring my mom to my choir practice, which always makes me happy!  (And right before that, we got dinner-- just the grown ups-- at Timberwood Taphouse!)

And before we knew it, the week had flown by and it was time for me to bring my parents to the airport!  We managed to get some pictures of them with the kids before they left for school (WHY am I so bad about taking pictures???):

Which was when we discovered something...

Colton, who grew four inches since their last visit, is now taller than Grandma!!!  😱

My short mother!  😂

Right as we were approaching the Richmond airport, I got a text from Craig's brother Jason-- guess who had just landed at the same airport?