In which Charissa updates her blog

Mount Hood and the Columbia River~photo by Emma Sobel

Well, I've almost failed at updating the blog once again. My inspiration for posting today is for my Ali who is ready to give birth to her first any day now. These are meant to be distractions for you, friend, along with a little life update for all my others friends and family out there. This will be a wordy post and I'll hopefully get some photos up soon.

This summer has been full and steadily flying by. We've been married for 7 months now and are so happy that we are--even through the challenges.

I've found a lot more time to read these days and even joined a book club! I am so happy to be able to have reading for homework behind me and reading for pleasure ahead of me. I have cranked out several books in the last few months and should probably dedicate a post to that--not making any promises though. :-)

Chris has been working full time again since July. It has been good for both of us and we are so thankful for God providing for us in his job. He'll be deploying for a few months this fall so we're starting to relish our days off together.

I've been loving this not-working-thing myself and definitely recommend it if you can. Although I have always been blessed with interesting and laid-back jobs, you can't beat this! It's been nice to have time to keep up my home and be able to help others out when that's needed. I spent a few weeks helping a family from our church who was moving to Papua New Guinea to be missionaries for the next 4 years. It was such a blessing to me to be around them and to serve them with my time. It's amazing how quickly you can come to love and cherish a friendship and I was definitely sad to see them go. I'm looking forward to hearing how God will work through their family in that place though!

We've had lots of visitors over the past few weeks. My parents are able to get down here every few weeks to see us as my dad fills in preaching at a church in the area about once a month. Its been nice to spend time with them and they usually come bearing gifts of produce from their garden or canned fruit and jam that my mom prepared. It's been great! We like seeing them even if they didn't bring gifts but those are nice too!

Last month we had 4 precious little visitors. Some of my nieces and nephews came to stay with us for a week while their parents went on an adventure to Ethiopia to meet their new brother who will be coming home for good soon. It was a good little lesson in parenting for Chris and I and made us grateful that kiddos (usually) come one at a time. We had so much fun with them though and were really blessed by their sweetness and our special moments of talking about God with them. It is such a special thing to see their faith and trust in God even at this early age.

We also had visits from my cousin Grace for a day (which we filled with garage saling), Chris' sister Emma (had an amazing week getting to know her better and having adventures around Vancouver and Tacoma), and my sister Debbie and her family (their first time to see us--we celebrated by going to Joe's Crab Shack).

I saw Les Mis in Portland. My 3rd time but still amazing!!

Last weekend my friend Erin and I did a yard sale together. It was successful but Saturday was HOT so we ended up closing early. It felt good to finally get rid of things that were moved down here but we don't actually need. yay for purging!

I spent a couple days over the past week babysitting a sweet 5 month old baby girl which was fun. She was a cutie while she was awake and slept so much that I got some thank you notes written and more books read. Yes, I'm still working on thank yous. I have a year, right?

So those are just the main bullet points from the last month but hope that gives you a better understanding of what life is like here in the 'Couv for me. Would love to hear from you. Photos to come! Don't be shy on your comments.