A Pietari Welcome

Some background: Stacy and Kyle Pietari are the fun, fab couple that we met up with in Nepal. As you may recall from this post, Kyle had a number of close brushes with death on our Kaligandaki Rafting Trip - namely, a close brush with a poisonous snake whilst trying to have a little private time in a rice paddy and a similarily terrifying underwater experience beneath the most dangerous rapid we crossed in three days.

If it's not crazy and wonderful enough that our travels coincided in Nepal, just wait; Stacy and I have had a number of stupendously serendipitous events. As freshmen, we were roommates. Stacy transfered after her first year at UPS, but during our senior year, she noticed my avid recruitment for a certain teaching organization on facebook and wrote to tell me that she had joined said organization and would be teaching Middle School Science in New Orleans.

As you may recall from the beginning of my blog, Joshua and I just so happened to have the exact same placement. While we were not the most social of butterflies in good ole Orleans, we did have an adventurous escapade in the wilds of Mississippi where the eating of squirrels, consumption of fire water, and near arrest of a belligerent fellow teacher all did happen. The trip, a rare and surreal foray during the school year, has become something of a legend.

After we got back from our long trip, Joshua and I took a weekend to go and visit Stacy and Kyle in Duluth, where Stacy grew up. We ran a snow shoe race (that's right; you think walking in snowshoes is hard? Try running for 5 miles.), enjoyed good food, and caught up on our respective job searches.

At some point, Stacy and Kyle came to visit us on the farm. I was already working, but we made lots of food and I gave an impromptu cross country ski lesson to all involved.

About a month after Joshua and I moved down to Denver, I was talking to Stacy over gchat, and she told me that they were widening their search for jobs. I suggested Denver and immediately put her in touch with a couple of the people I had been speaking with, and within a couple of weeks, we were picking Stacy up from the airport. After a couple of interviews, we spent a great, rainy weekend playing speed scrabble and making headbands. On the Monday, Stacy heard back from one of the principals, and she was offered the position. I'm sure that Stacy was the most excited out of everyone, but Kyle, Joshua, and I all gave her a good run for her money. We were all absolutely thrilled that they would be moving down.

ANYWAY. I began this post with an image of a cross-stitch, and I've yet to explain myself. Joshua and I decided that we wanted to make the Pietaris a welcome gift, and so, at Michael's, we looked around for some inspiration. Joshua suggested cross-stitch, and I told him I've never done such a thing in my life. So we bought it.

After probably a dozen movies, I produced a suitably sassy cross-stitch. Stacy and Kyle met when they joined a semester internship with Green Peace in Washington D.C. Since then, they've been vegans and vegetarians, but their culinary green-ness never ceases to amaze and fascinate me. Kyle sprouts, makes Kombucha and Kimchi. Stacy makes the most fabulous baked goods in the world, and some of them don't even have sugar, dairy, or wheat in them. (How the HELL does someone pull that off?) Anyway, if you can't see, these are the words and quotes I stitched around their last name (a hybrid of their pre-marriage last names: Saari and Peters):

"...without the carob powder it would be completely unpalatable..." (Kyle, in reference to his daily morning shakes that usually involve both fruits and vegetables of wide-ranging tastes)

SPROUT (in reference to Kyle's intense rinse-and-grow live food)

egg-substitute

KOMBUCHA

dehydrator (these two have MASTERED the art of dehydration)

Veggie Burger Cook Off (I can't remember who won, but they had one)

AGAVE = TEQUILA = SWEETENER (Kyle is a tee-totaler, but Stacy loves the Tequila ;))

HAPPY HEALTHY WHOLE

Breakfast Shakes

RAW

"...and sometimes it even tastes good..." (Stacy, in reference to Kyle's cooking.)

Since Stacy and Kyle moved (5 blocks away from us!) we've been hanging around, painting, building furniture, and planting an epic garden. The other night, Stacy and I spent the evening sewing. Both Joshua and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends here in Denver with us.