Andrew and Patti's Blog

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-04T08:28:00.003-04:00

Sorry it's been so long since the last time Andrew or I posted. Neither of us seem to be very good at keeping this thing up to date.

Some exciting news...
Andrew and I are in the process of purchasing a home. So far things have gone pretty well. We had the first part of the home inspection last week and the septic system inspected and cleaned yesterday. If all goes well we are hoping to close by the end of this month.

As far as the job search goes...
I am still looking and applying. I have a couple of leads but nothing solid yet. Keep praying that I find the job that is right for me.

Other than that, there's not too much going on. I started summer school this past week, working one-on-one with one of the little boys I worked with this past school year. It doesn't look like we're going to get a chance to get up to Old Orchard Beach this summer, but we will be down in New Jersey for Star Lake in mid-August.

Patti : )

Festival of Thanksgiving

2007-10-28T08:42:00.000-04:00

It’s that time of year again…

I don't know if any of you are interested, but The Manchester Citadel Band and Songsters will be presenting their annual Festival of Thanksgiving on Saturday, November 17th at 7:00pm.

The concert will be held at The Salvation Army located at 661 Main Street in Manchester, CT.

Tickets are $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for students and seniors. Children 12 and under are free.

If you are interested in attending, you can purchase tickets through me or at the door.

Our special guest this year is vocal soloist Raymond Livingston. For those of you who don't know him, he is a Salvationist who lives and works down in the Greater New York Area. He has a beautiful voice and an amazing witness.

I hope you can join us. It should be a great concert.

Please feel free to pass along this information to anyone you know who might be interested.

Patti :)

Weekend with Katie

2007-10-07T19:59:00.000-04:00

It was really nice to have Andrew's sister Katie up for the weekend. Saturday morning we headed over to the other side of the state to visit my Grandmother and the Warren Fall Festival. Warren is small town located in Litchfield County, up in the northwest corner of Connecticut. Every year on Columbus Day weekend the Volunteer Fire Department hosts the Warren Fall Festival. For any of you who have never experienced a small town fair or festival, it's something you really should do. Just ask Katie...she saw her very first Lumberjack Competition and Tractor Pull this weekend!

After the Fall Festival we took Katie over to West Cornwall to see the covered bridge. The West Cornwall Covered Bridge was built in 1841 and stretches over the Housatonic River. It's absolutely beautiful in the fall, with all of the hills around it and the trees beginning to change. While we were there, we decided to check out this cute little cafe across the road called the Wandering Moose Cafe. If you're ever in West Cornwall, check it out. Thay have excellent milk shakes!
If you'd like to see more pictures from this weekend, stop by our Flickr site. The link is posted on the right hand side of the page.

New Address

2007-09-05T08:59:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to let everyone know that our new address is:

30 Nutmeg Lane
Apt. 308
East Hartford, CT 06118

Italy - Part I

2007-06-13T22:06:00.000-04:00

We left for Italy the beginning of May. It’s now mid-June and I’m finally getting around to writing about it. That sounds about right.

In Italy, the beginning of May means that the trees have already been in full bloom for a few weeks and the pollen is extremely high. When we landed, Mike and Katie picked us up from the airport and we headed to post to get temporary ID’s. As we were leaving the airport, we could see fluffed balls of pollen that looked like snow flakes swarming all around us and sticking to the high grass. After stopping by post, we went back to Mike and Katie’s apartment to drop off our things and then headed out to the see the town of Vicenza. It was here that we were first introduced to gelato. The best way to describe it is, the perfect middle of the road somewhere in between Italian ice and ice cream. I know we have it here, but it doesn’t compare to the real thing. Anyway, Vicenza is not a tourist town but it does have historical attributes and it was nice to get out and walk around after being on the plane. We saw the main sights and stopped by their city park to walk around a bit, but the plane ride had worn us out. We tried to stay up as late as we normally would to help ward off the jet lag and it seemed to have worked.

Our second day Mike had to be on post in the morning, so we slept in and when he came home we headed to the train station and made our way to Venice. When you arrive in Venice by train, the station opens out onto the Grand Canal and the first impression you see looks like a post card. All the buildings come right to the waters edge with small posts to tie their boats to and you see the water taxis and gondolas rowing by. We started to make our way to St. Mark’s square and Mike decided to take us “the back way”. Since Venice is a city built with the water ways in mind, the streets seem to have taken a back seat. We wound our way through, what we would consider alley ways that, at points were only wide enough for one person to walk through at a time. As we made our way through this seeming maze there were jewelry shops, food markets, wine shops and other various tiny shops to purchase daily needs. I don’t think I would be able to find any one of those shops again, even if I had GPS and a Sherpa. When we emerged from this labyrinth, we stepped out into St. Marks square just to the right of the church looking into the square. As we made our way to the center to take pictures, we noticed a man covered in pigeons. We were then told that we good purchase a bag of bird seed and the pigeons would land on you and you could feed them. For some strange, twisted reason this struck Katie as a good idea and then somehow she convinced Patti to go along with it. As soon as they purchased their bags the birds flocked to them like a Hitchcock movie. Patti put some seeds into her hand, stretched out her arm, and like a biblical plague she is nearly attacked. Upon seeing this, the convincer chickens out and hands her bag of seed to Patti who once again is absorbed in a cloud of squawks and feathers. At least the pictures came out funny.

After that, we walked around to the shops in the square and made our way back to the canal to take a water taxi back to the train station. It was interesting to see the sights from the perspective of the water way. Anything that we would have a vehicle for, they would have a boat for. We saw someone moving into one of the apartments along the canal and they had a small boat filled with their belongings – suitcases, a dresser, even a mattress.

On the way home we stopped at a small restaurant just outside of Vicenza where they didn’t speak any English. I’m glad we were able to spend the first week with Mike because we never would have been able to experience half of what we did without him and it was just more fun. We defiantly wouldn’t have been able to eat at this restaurant. The food was delicious. It was light, but still filling and full of flavor. The menu was all in Italian. I wasn’t brave enough to try something that we (and by we …I mean Mike) didn’t know what it was. We did so much walking and I was so hungry that my stomach would never have forgiven me. I had linguini with ham and a light cream sauce which was quite good, to say the least.

I’ll write about the rest of our trip soon.

Keeping Busy

2007-04-25T09:23:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry. I know it’s been a while since the last time I posted. I wish I had a good excuse as to why it’s taken me so long, but I don’t.

Wasn't it nice to see Andrew post though? And to think, he said he'd never do it.

As usual, we've been keeping pretty busy.

The Thursday after Easter, Andrew and I headed down to New Jersey to visit his parents while Katie and Michael were still home. Minus the massive amounts of rain we drove home in on Sunday, we had a really great weekend. Andrew's grandparents came down from Canada, we went to picture people to have a family picture taken, and surprised Andrew's mom with a birthday party on Saturday to celebrate her sixtieth. Then, on Sunday morning, we headed up to Montclair for church (sorry to those of you we missed... we didn't realize it was Youth Councils weekend).

I had school vacation this past week. Rather than relaxing and taking it easy, I did some babysitting and went up to Boston for a couple of days to visit my sister and help her chaperon a trip to the Museum of Science.

Now, after having had a somewhat relaxing weekend this past weekend (enjoying the warm weather and watching the Red Sox sweep the Yankees), I am getting ready to head out to Chicago to visit my brother. He graduates in a few weeks and is putting on his final performance at Roosevelt University. Believe it or not, this will be the first show I have been able to see him in since he's been at school in Chicago. With the exception of The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree this January, but that was in New York City - so it doesn't really count!

I get back home on Saturday and then Andrew and I only have one more week until we leave for Italy! Speaking of Italy... we probably won't get a chance to post again until we get back. So check back at the end of May to hear about our trip and check out some of our photos.

Patti :)

Three months later...

2007-03-24T16:37:00.000-04:00

As you can see by the immense amount of writing we’ve done, we don’t really broadcast our personal lives. However, we are both hoping that last week’s snow is winter’s last stammering step over the finish line. I do enjoy the occasional snow but it’s hard to get excited about winter when January’s average temperature feels like the emergence of spring and you’re standing at a kettle sweating. So here’s to looking forward; forward toward jogging through the park, mountain biking around the reservoir and our trip to Italy. I’ll explain.

We had started to look into purchasing a home but found that it would be more of an investment than we could handle. We like the idea of being in the more rural areas of Connecticut, but there is not much selection for the type of house we are looking for. So we changed our search area and looked in more community oriented towns and found a greater selection with a more reasonable price. So after speaking with a mortgage company, we realized that we would not have enough to cover all the pre-move in expenses. It was a bit of a let down to have saved and sacrificed, so we have decided to take a portion of our savings and go visit my sister in Italy. We’re planning on an early May trip for about two weeks to go visit as many things as we can. It won’t be as frantic as our England trip was, but there’s a great deal we want to see.

We stopped by the library today and picked up some books about the sights and the language. If you happen to stop by there’s a good chance you’ll see sticky notes around labeling things in Italian.

That about sums it up, for now. Check in again in another three months and we may have something new. Maybe.

Our Christmas

2006-12-30T14:29:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know we did.

Friday evening my parents, brother and his fiancé came over to our apartment for dinner. It’s not very often that we get to see Matt, so it was nice to spend a little time with him and Melissa while he was home on break.

Sunday afternoon we headed down to New Jersey where we would be spending Christmas with Andrew’s family.

As is tradition in the Maxwell family, we spent Christmas Eve at Andrew’s Anut Judee’s house on Staten Island. Every year his cousin Timmy gets dressed up like Santa Clause, we have dinner and exchange gifts.

We spent Christmas Day at Andrew’s parents’ house down in Jamesburg. After a nice relaxing morning, we helped Andrew’s parents get ready for Christmas dinner with the Spences (an older couple from their corps). After dinner I had the opportunity to meet Andrew’s friend Garrett and his wife Amanda.

We headed back home on Tuesday, stopping by Caryn’s apartment on our way. As always, it was nice to see her and spend a little time catching up on things.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year. One that's full of many new and wonderful blessings.

Patti :)

We may just be crazy...

2006-12-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

My friend April and I decided to kick off the holiday season this year doing something we've never done before. We decided to run in the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day. Sounds good... However, we didn't make this decision until the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Leaving us very little time to train or prepare in any way. But that's okay. We were just going to have fun and do the best we could.

Our goal was to finish the 4.748 mile race in an hour (that's approximately 12 minute miles for those of you who don't like to do math). Although very cold and wet, we finished the race in 53.03 minutes. Not bad.

Who knows, we may even run it again next year and see what we can do with a little training and preparation.

Patti :)

Festival of Thanksgiving

2006-11-07T22:49:00.000-05:00

I don't know if any of you are interested, but The
Manchester Citadel Band and Songsters will be
presenting their annual Festival of Thanksgiving on
Saturday, November 18th at 6:30pm.

The concert will be held at The Salvation Army located
at 661 Main Street in Manchester, CT.

Tickets are $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for students
and seniors.

If you are interested in attending, you can purchase
tickets through me or at the door.

Our special guest this year is Adam Crowe, the
Principal Tubist for the US Coast Guard Band.

I hope you can join us. It should be a great concert.

Please feel free to pass along this information to
anyone you know who might be interested.

Patti :)

My very first blog ever!

2006-11-01T22:06:00.000-05:00

I know. It’s sad, but it’s true. This is my very first blog ever!

Caryn, I want you to take pride in this moment. I never would have set this up on my own.

I know it’s been a while since Andrew or I have seen most of you. So I’ll try to do my best to fill you in on what’s been happening here the last couple of months.

Andrew and I have been doing well. We’re settled into our new apartment and it’s finally beginning to feel like home.

Andrew had been working as an account temp for the Tyco Corporation in North Eastern Connecticut. Yesterday was his last day though. He just accepted a full time position with Salvation Army as a regional accountant in the finance department at DHQ. He starts there on Monday.

I’ve been doing some substitute teaching here and there. I recently accepted a long term substitute teaching position. I’ll be teaching elementary school Physical Education for a teacher going out on maternity leave in late December. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about that.

We’ve tried to get involved in some of the programs at the corps. We’re both playing in the band and singing in the songsters. Andrew’s playing Euphonium, if you can believe that one! He’s also been helping my Dad with the Jr. Band while I’ve been helping with the Sunbeams.

We miss the corps and the fellowship we had down in Montclair, but we know God has a plan and a place for us up here as well.

We’ll be down in Montclair for the annual Brass Band Day on Saturday. We’re looking forward to seeing most of you then.

Patti :)

Look what Caryn made me do...

2006-10-28T16:43:00.000-04:00

I set up this blog for Patti and Andrew. I made them do it. Come back to see Patti's insights.

-Caryn