And now for the rest of the story...

And now...the moment you've all been waiting for!

The view from our front porch to our street...that truck is a staple of Melrose Avenue

it belongs to our neighbors across the street, I totally could have sworn that it had a "charleton heston is my president" sticker on it, but I checked again the other day but nope, wasn't there.

maybe i'll get Denny (our neighbor who owns it) one...i guess my imagination thinks it would fit!

This was out first real meal in Ambridge.

Lemon dill salmon and salad...yum!

FYI, our camping chairs are still in the front and seem to have become permanent lawn fixtures.

Our quaint little porch and awning area.  To the left you can see St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox church.

They're our landlords and currently, our pirohy dealers of choice. 

Lesson #1 in Ambridge:  Fridays are Pirohy Fridays at the churches...pretty much ALL the churches.  That means on Friday, you can go over to the basement at St. Vlad's and find several folks ready to serve you hot, cold or frozen potato or sauerkraut pirohies with or without butter and onions.  Fr. Michael says that people don't understand the concept of tithing and they expect a little extra, so they do the pirohies :) 

If you come visit, you're sure to find us with some of these on hand or we'll take you over to St. Vlad's for some pirohy goodness.

Woo hoo!  One of the first things we noticed in Ambridge is how much they like to party...not in the classical sense but rather churches like to hold festivals and our first week in town, Good Samaritan Parish, one of five churches on our street, was having their annual festival.  As you can see below, it was an event sponsored by Miller Lite...okay, we're not actually sure that's true but it was really funny that they had a beer tent with different cover bands and lots of two-steppin'.  

Our particular vice took the form of BINGO!!!!

  We figured the house always wins but in this case, we didn't feel too bad givin' to the house :)

And then....Noel won!  We had played a couple of different nights, it was 7 cards for $1.00 so we really only spent about 5 bucks, but check out this card...single winner, baby!  14 bucks in our pocket, awesome.

Here's the tell all sign...it was great.  The priests of Good Samaritan live down the street from us and they're really really kind.  Maybe cuz of the Miller Lite? ;)  We tried our first pierogies here...yum-my!

Another Pittsburgh favorite that we experienced: 8 dollar tickets for an enjoyable night at the ball game ain't too shabby.  Ah, it's nice to be in a town where the team sucks and the price reflects it.

It was a really fun outing with a bunch of Trinity peeps.

So, for Pirates games, they literally shut down the bridge to cars and people just walk on by...can you imagine the rioting if they tried to close down a bridge in Chi-town?

So, you can't play ball?  Well, kill 'em with aesthetics!

PNC has an AWESOME view of the city and the river which runs right by it.

Look! Isengard!

Same ol' us

This is Gabe, he likes to make funny faces and yelling for the Pirates,

he's our friend Geoff's kid (and Erin's too...gotta give credit where credit is due)

I love this photo, I caught every person off guard, awesome.

All these people are Trinity folks...Geoff is on the far left with the orthodox priest beard, Chimela is from Africa and he's sitting below him, Karen (and her husband, John, who wore matching Canada sweatshirts to the game) and Meg are down in the seats by Greg and they're awesome, Trevor's the Yankees fan from South Carolina, Paul was clearly caught in the flash light...he's from San Diego so he pretty much looks awesome no matter what.  Brian is over there in the Cubs outfit, but get this, he's also from San Diego.  Weird, eh?  Mike, Scott and Bartholomew are in the back row and they all rock.  The first two are our neighbors and we like to hang out with them.  Bartholomew's from Tanzania and has two sets of twins!  The Africans enjoyed the game though I think it was mostly because they got kettlecorn. :)

*****************

 There's a better shot of our friend, Brian...the security guard stopped him, looking quite concerned and partly perturbed, to inform him that the Cubs were not in fact playing in PNC that night.  Brian was like, "oh yeah, I know, I just wear this to all baseball games."  Hilarious.  Pittsburghians definitely take their sports waaaaay too seriously...especially the ones that really suck. 

And here's the real reason that everyone goes to Pirate games: Pierogy races!

Oh yes, you read that correctly...those are pierogies on the field.

In case you're wondering, the purple one named "Oliver" won

Pierogy butts!

 And then, the Pirates actually won...astounding us all!!!  Obviously, Geoff and Ben were just a little excited.  They probably won because Mike was in the back praying that it wouldn't go into extra innings...I said, AMEN and AMEN!

So, as you can see, God's put us in another great city with more great people...and thankfully, a waaay shorter commute to get to urbania.

907

“This far” is our adventure into Seminary that we each have been on for quite some time with the Lord, but in His mercy and grace has recently started to take shape. Noel and Greg are both going to Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA starting in the pfall. Ambridge not being one of the major metropolitan areas in the United States may not be a familiar location to all so think of Pittsburgh (2 Super Bowls in the past 4 years, current resting place of Lord Stanley's cup---for now that is; I think they have a baseball team too) Industrial city by the river, a kind of Chicago Jr.* Now travel into the boonies over the hills to the west about 20 miles where all the steel refineries have closed down*... you've made it to Ambridge!! Seriously, we're very excited. The Chapel is nestled between the local Hair Salon on one side and Barber shop on the other. The main Campus offices are slightly overshadowed by the Sunoco and just past a short bar crawl you'll find the 8-lane bowling alley... simply fantastic! If Barney Fife grew a lumberjack beard and could down a Rook's Fish Sandwich, he would fit in well in Ambridge.

So, as you can see, we're excited about the community. Classes start on 9/07 and both Noel and Greg will begin their 3-year studies towards Master of Divinity degrees and eventual ordination into the Anglican church (whatever she looks like 3 years from now).

We have recently found a home in Ambridge, on 907 Melrose Ave. It's a property owned by St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Church (winner of the coolest Saint name award*) and is a Triplex (think duplex with an extra plex shoved in the middle). We'll be on one of the end units with 2 bedrooms- we'll need to put up our guests! An unprecedented 2 bathrooms, and a basement with washer AND dryer! Once again we're very excited.



For those who know us uncannily well (or have a thing for numbers), we feel as though God has given us a coincidental sign of His affirmation by way of the 907 connection, which just so happens to be our wedding anniversary.



*needs additional citation for verification