~October~

Wow, a month has gone by and you haven’t heard much from us! That is because we are in a CRAZY month of life right now! We have been working on many details for our upcoming trip, packing up our little apartment, training my replacement at work (Naomi), taking a few weekends to visit friends and family and going to a few conferences, all while we both continue to work full time. I have decided that working really takes up a lot of time and energy…it can be exhausting squeezing extra activities into our regular schedule.

But besides the busyness, October was a lovely month! I, like many Oregonians, love the fall and celebrate it as if it were its very own holiday. Pumpkin lattes, apples & pears, crunchy leaves on the ground, crisp cool air, pumpkin desserts, beautiful trees changing into a rainbow of colors, every kind of squash imaginable from local farms, down blankets and candles, and, of course, more PUMPKIN!!! What’s not to love about fall? Even the rain is welcomed and accepted since we haven’t seen it in three months ;-)

We have a list of fall activities that we want to do this fall hanging up in our apartment and so far we haven’t done a single one of them yet! (well, ok, we did go to the apples festival but, confession, we wrote that on the board after we went just so we could cross one off! And I have had a few pumpkin lattes but not with Andy, so they don’t count…:-) 

We have definitely done some other memorable things this month, though! A few of our highlights were going to two festivals with our awesome friends the Tegtmeiers! We have dubbed each other our “festival buddies.” The first was to the Portland Polish Festival (we actually went to this at the end of Sept) which was fun and entertaining (though a lady did come up to me while I was holding Jadon and the conversation went exactly like this: “Awww, so cute, is he Polish?” Me: No “Half Polish?” No “Quarter Polish?” No “Are YOU Polish?” Nope “Then what are you DOING here?!” Oh my. haha.

Polish man and us!

We also went to the Apple Tasting Festival in SE Portland. Now that was a fun one! We got to try 50 different kinds of apples and pears and then pick out our favorites to buy for only 99 cents/lb.  The mandatory ‘head in a cut out’ pictures:

Andy makes the cutest sunflower, doesn't he?

Our beautiful friends, Sarah, Jadon & Mark

Can you resist that sweet little bear?!?! I can't!!!

We finished the month by getting to spend the weekend visiting our dear friends Cass and Calvin and seeing their new life in Bend! They recently moved from PDX and we miss them terribly (Andy and Calvin used to carpool to work every day, we were in the same small group,  and we only lived 2 mins apart…and Cass and I have been super close friends since we were little girls! We definitely feel a huge hole in our lives without having them here!)  But they have started an amazing new chapter in Bend and graciously hosted us in their cute new home! It was the perfect time of rest from our crazy lives that Andy and I desperately needed. And, of course, as God works things out, we were able to coordinate our trip with a get together with part of our Uganda team! Also, a lovely and very encouraging time! We headed back to Portland feeling very much at peace.