Spotify Wrapped

I do enjoy seeing my year summarized by Spotify Wrapped-- that's where they break down all the stats of what you've listened to the most.  I even got the little videos from Taylor Swift and Joe Rogan thanking me for being a *fan!

However, based on my top songs, I might just be certifiable.

Seriously. I don't usually feel the need to apologize for the things I love, but even I look at this and think, What a weirdo!

What's especially funny is that "august" isn't really one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs ("How Did it End?" and "Maroon" definitely ARE, though!), but for whatever reason it's just one that plays a lot when I have my playlists on shuffle and I'm usually too lazy to skip it.  (Craig is more cynical than I am, and he would tell you that it's probably cheaper for Spotify to play that one.  He's probably right...)  If I were to rank all my favorite songs by Taylor, it wouldn't even be in the top twenty!  I DEFINITELY love Bach's B Minor Mass, though, so that was (dare I say?) spot on!

Here's to more great music in 2026!

*I actually dropped in my Taylor Swift rankings-- last year I was in the top .05% of listeners, this year I'm just top 1%.  Sorry, Taylor!  And Joe Rogan must send his video to anyone who's ever listened to his podcast, because I didn't think I'd listened to him at all since last year's election!  Who knew?

Ryder is Fifteen!!!

The day after Thanksgiving was Ryder's birthday!!!  It's also the day we begin decorating for Christmas, so that was busy!  (It's also a day I get to be lazy and not cook at all.  Hallelujah for getting a chance to catch my breath!)

Who doesn't love a Christmas beardie?

Ryder swore up and down that we had promised him he could spray whipped cream right into his mouth on his birthday.  Craig and I have no memory of this, but we decided to let him go for it.  Actually-- Craig sprayed the whipped cream into Ryder's mouth and we made him hold it there while we all sang (progressively slower!!!) to him.  It ended up being a LOT of whipped cream, but Ryder didn't seem to mind at all!  

Tom and Donna were going to come and take us all to Five Guys for Ryder's birthday dinner, but they were having car troubles, so we ended up going to Culpeper, which also has a Five Guys, so it all worked out!

We had a a bit of a snafu with the present we got him-- a game called "Bad Therapy," which, I realized when I went to wrap it, was labeled for Ages 17+ with a big Explicit Content Warning!  OOPS!!!  I had no way of knowing what exactly that meant without opening the game, so we opted to just return it and get him something else.  So we handed him a present as we explained that he wasn't going to get to keep it!  Poor Ryder!  (We did replace it very quickly!)

And then the next day I made his dinner and dessert of choice (fried ramen and red velvet s'more brownies)-- which was still a lot more cooking than I normally do so quickly after Thanksgiving!  He also got trick candles on his brownies, something he said he always wanted and probably regretted as soon as he actually tried to blow them out.  We all tried to not think about how much spit ended up all over our dessert...!  😂

Anyway, A very happy birthday to my favorite middle child, Ryder!!!  It's so fun watching him growing up so quickly and turning into such a fine young man!!!  My friend Samara commented that Ryder looks just like Craig, but with my coloring, and I think she nailed it-- that's our boy!!!

Thanksgiving!

If I would have been trying to pick up Jason and Jeni from the airport, that would have been the most amazing timing ever!  But they actually needed to wait several hours for Maya to arrive, and they had gotten their own rental car, so I actually just dropped my parents off and sped right back home again.  I only had a few hours to change the bedding, wash towels, and vacuum before I had company again!

In addition to Jason, Jeni, Maya, and Eli (Lindsy and Kamryn were spending the holiday with their respective in-laws), we also got Craig's Aunt Lynda and Uncle Greg (who stayed with Tom and Donna in Culpeper), so it was a nice, full house!  Is there anything better?

We spent Wednesday doing as much prep work as we could-- brining the turkey, and making all the desserts (super jell-o, carmel pecan pie, apple crisp) and boiling all the potatoes (both russet and sweet!).  We got pizza from Papa John's (and made Kendra and Maya pick them up, which was super helpful and went perfectly!) and I'd gotten frozen GF pizza from Costco for Jeni.  It was a really nice day!  Before we went to bed, Craig managed to wash all the china, so that was really nice to not have to worry about!

Lynda gets to meet Charlie!

The next morning Craig and his brother were up early to play in the ward turkey bowl.  (They also took most of the kids-- only Kendra and Maya were smart enough to stay in bed!)  I started a quadruple batch of rolls and then met up with some friends to walk the neighborhood 5K.  (We cut a few corners and didn't quite make the full 3.1 miles, but it was still better than not moving at all!)  Everyone got home around the same time and I took a quick shower before the hot water got all used up, and then Craig helped me roll out my dough and bake all the rolls.  Then I kept sneaking them as we worked on everything!

Some day Craig and I are going to get themed t-shirts to wear together!

Colton kept joking about wanting to see the turkey's heart, and then was completely grossed out by it.  Of course.

Playing games with the grandparents!

And then from there on out we were mostly just cooking all day!  Everything turned out really well, I was really happy!

Yay for Thanksgiving!

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?

Halloween

I felt like I missed a lot the weekend I was gone, but at least I hadn't missed actual Halloween!  So we got to carve pumpkins

and I made them pull out all the pumpkin seeds for me so I could roast them!  (And the chickens enjoyed eating all the pumpkin guts!)

And here we have the finished products: a huge-mouthed face, a dinosaur, and an octopus!  They turned out so cute!

And here's everyone in their costumes!

Camille (still a deviled egg) with Sydney and Beth (and Lexie)

A secret service agent(/Men In Black) and Napoleon Dynamite

And a Chick-fil-A cow!

Colton's costume is even more fun when you see him with his fast food-themed friends!

I made a big pot of chili and once the kids had dispersed, Craig moved our fire pit to the driveway and we sat out with Adam and the Gaskins giving away candy and having a lovely time of it!  It was a perfect night-- chilly enough that the fire felt nice, but not freezing.  Kendra and Emmett were in the kitchen making cookies for the band bake sale, and once the trick-or-treaters stopped coming around we watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog with them (apparently Emmett was shocked that we found it funny-- oops?) and then finally picked up Ryder and Colton, who had trick-or-treated with their friends in other neighborhoods.  

Does it get any better than Halloween on a Friday?