Ari & Anna

HOW WE MET ::
When Anna moved back to the US from Cyprus, we were both teaching at an international school in New Mexico. Ari ran the wilderness program, and we went on a camping trip together to scout a new area. Our friend Luis predicted we'd fall in love...and he was right!

We got married a year later, up in the ponderosa pine forest behind the school.

Now, we still love to go camping together, and we teach at a school in Washington state.

MORE ABOUT US ::
We both love the outdoors: hiking, camping, mountain biking…we especially love cross-country skiing, getting out to play in the snow and sunshine…and we love to go backpacking and camping. Both of us have worked as outdoor educators on long backpacking trips, and we can’t wait to take our child hiking and teach them some of the same skills: how to read a map and navigate in the woods, how to put up a bear hang, how to cook cinnamon buns on a campstove.

Ari is also trained as an EMT, and we have female friends who are firefighters, justice activists, ER nurses, and mountaineers, and we will raise our child to respect strong women, or to be a strong and independent woman.

We also love to travel internationally—some of our favorites places to travel have been Greece, Egypt, Thailand, India, Argentina, and Mexico. Anna lived in Cyprus for seven years as a teacher, and Ari spent several years living in China, Central America, and south Asia during college. Anna is bilingual in Russian and English, and Ari also speaks some Spanish and Chinese. We would love to introduce our child to the wonders of travel.

Because of that, we also have a pretty diverse community of friends, including close friends from South Africa, the UK, Belarus, Brazil, Jamaica, China, and elsewhere, and we’re excited to raise our child amidst a diverse, multi-lingual and multi-cultural community.

We own a house in the Colorado mountains, which we gutted and renovated ourselves—Ari worked as a carpenter in her 20s, and Anna is good at improvising and problem-solving, so together we’re a good team! We can’t wait to teach our child some of those skills too, and take them to see the wildflowers in the mountains. As teachers, we have summers off to travel as a family and go on lots of fun adventures.

When we’re not adventuring away from home, we have a waffle-breakfast tradition on Saturdays, and like to do lots of art projects and visit friends and family.

FAMILY ::
Ari’s brother lives nearby, and has two little girls, ages 3 and 5, who are eagerly awaiting a cousin to play with…and her parents, who also live nearby, are over the moon at the thought of more grandkids, and can’t wait to spend time with our child. Her mom was a kindergarten teacher, and loves to read and do art projects with young children. Her dad was a doctor, and is always “on call” for answering medical questions when they arise.

Ari also has a lot of cousins (like 10 of them), who almost all have kids, and we get together whenever we can for a big, chaotic, hilarious family reunion where everyone laughs a lot and there’s tons of food.

Anna’s mom lives on the coast of France, and when we go to visit her, we spend lots of time at the beach! We don’t see her as often, because it’s a long trip, but she and Anna talk every week and text on WhatsApp.