Alpha and Omega. Yin and Yang. Oreos and Milk.

Some things were just meant to be together...

Hello! Welcome to our own little private corner of cyberspace. So who are we and why the heck do we have a website??? We're Josh and Kirsten Shields, and why not?

How about a little about ourselves? Okay, we were married in May of 2004, at a little church in Northern Virginia where we both grew up. We recently relocated from the Washington DC area to our new residence in Roanoke, Virginia, located in the Southwest corner of the state, in the midst of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Of all of the friends that we've known through the years, we can each say that we've been friends the longest. The two of us met way back in grade school! It was the summer before Kirsten's second grade year and Josh's third grade year, when both of us spent a week at Camp Glenkirk, a local Presbyterian summer camp.

Well, everybody knows how camp goes- you promise to write, and then you never do. Of course the same happened to the two of us. Yet 3 years later, our paths crossed again at the same camp. This time around we spent two weeks together- most of it in a canoe, headed down the Shenandoah River. (We learned very quickly that Kirsten can't steer to save her life).

Yet it wasn't even the shared experience that made us friends... it was a friendly rivalry over a deck of cards! You see, we each had a deck of USAir (airline) cards with us- except they each had different designs on them... Mine had the newer paint scheme and logos, while hers had the older one. It was the rivalry over "who had the better deck of cards" that made us friends.

Over the years we kept in touch, sending various letters and packages back and forth between each other, each time trying to out do the other person. I distinctly recall mailing a foam frisbee and several packages of ketchup to Kirsten.

When we went to college, the popularity and ease of email made it much easier to keep in touch. Our friendship grew and before we knew it, graduation had come. Josh had a job back in Virginia working for the airlines, but when he moved back, he quickly found that there was no place for him to live. Kirsten came to the rescue and offered a room at her parents house. We quickly started dating and the rest is history...

Josh is a professional pilot. From 2000 to 2005, he was working as a pilot for Independence Air (formerly known as Atlantic Coast Airlines), a low-cost airline based in Washington, DC.Unfortunately the airline world took a bit of a turn for the worse, and in May of 2005, he was furloughed (laid off). 

After a few months of slacking off... er, job searching, he was hired in August, as a corporate pilot for the Carter Machinery Company in Roanoke. He now spends his time flying the corporate jet (a Cessna Citation Encore), and slacking off (aka getting into trouble) at home when he's not flying.

As a result of the move Kirsten resigned from her position as a Team Leader/Department Manager for the Target Corporation. She formerly managed for the Starbucks that is located inside the store, and spent most of her days whipping up iced cappuccinos and vanilla lattes. She has also taken a short hiatus from working towards her masters degree in Integrated Marketing at Emerson College in Boston.

We're slowly getting through the recent move (still buried in moving boxes) and exploring what living in rural Virginia is like. Feel free to drop in sometime! Visitors are always welcome... if you behave yourself we might even feed you. : )

If you want to learn more about our storybook friendship and romance, take a look around. We invite you to make yourself at home and check out our photo albums. After all we designed this site with our friends and family in mind. So kick back, help yourself to what ever you would like, and enjoy the site!

~Josh and Kirsten

September 2005