Welcome to the CF family!!!

Brian and I feel incredibly lucky to have amazing family and friends in our lives. Being home from Spain for the last couple days has reinforced the deep feelings of being very blessed in our lives! One of the things that really drew us home from Spain was how much we missed our wonderful friendships from here... And we want to give a specific shout out to friends who are expanding their own family today and making choices that have a resounding international impact for the lives of three gorgeous children, Joel, Stella, and Olivia!
Jay and Kelsey, we cannot wait to see
you two and your three new babes!!! We are sending lots of love and blessings today as you get to pick up your three little ones and begin a life as a new family. Congratulations on your Family Day!!!!
(please enjoy and laugh at our ridiculous photos with a little babushka pin I found at my favorite store in Madrid!!!)

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And the award goes to...

... Kate!  This Friday, she won an incredible award - Employee of the Year 2011 in John Deere's Product Testing Division!

You may be thinking.... "Kate doesn't work for John Deere.  Brian does.  That's Brian's department in John Deere.  What the heck?"

Well, some of you may have heard that I love to bake.  I love to bake so much, and I like to eat it too.  But if I ate all the food I baked, I'd probably be twice my size, which would be bad.  So, I make all these delicious treats and I send them with Brian to his work for his coworkers to enjoy.

In Spain no one (okay, maybe 1% of the population) makes things like cookies or cakes at home.  They simply don't bake much.  Many apartments don't even have ovens!  So when I would send in something as easy as Tollhouse recipe chocolate chip cookies, the guys were blown away, asking Brian how in the world I could have made them!  It did wonders for this girl's self esteem.

I've been able to get adventuresome with them.  Here are a few of the things I've sent in: Chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter chip/chocolate chip cookies, chocolate walnut baileys biscotti, almond blood orange biscotti, cinnamon rolls, Deb Riek's pumpkin bars, ginger bread cookies, sugar cookies, almond bark dipped pretzels, raspberry scones...

One month, they made me the employee of the month.  I was so honored!

Well, this past Friday, Brian invited me to his office for the first time.  He toured me around the factory, and I got to finally meet most of his coworkers!  They are great guys.  I brought some cinnamon rolls & biscotti, and looked forward to talking to them during the normal 10am coffee break.  When I went to the break room, they were the ones who surprised me!  They had brought in a bunch of food to have a little party for my visit!  A couple of empanadas, spanish tortillas, cured meats and cheeses, bread, and sodas to have a little fiesta :)  

But before we started eating, they said "Wait, wait, we have a gift for you!"  I was handed a small gift wrapped box, and when I opened it, I found this incredibly amazing engraved silver plaque, stating that I had been selected as the Employee of the Year 2011!!!!  I was STUNNED.  

El Equipo PV&V de John Deere Iberica

 otorga el tìtulo de 

EMPLEADA DEL AÑO 2011 

a Kate Thuesen 

por endulzar la vida 

de manera altruista.  

Getafe, abril de 2012

The PV&V team of John Deere Iberica

awards the title of

EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR 2011

to Kate Thuesen

For sweetening life selflessly.

Getafe (factory location), April 2012

 I felt like such a star :)  Pretty much the rest of the day, I couldn't wipe the grin off my face.  Honestly, this award was so unexpected, and that a bunch of guys working in a factory put this together for me with only a day's notice absolutely blew me away. 

Honestly, the thing I have to say makes me even more grateful is to know that Brian has gotten to work with such a group of men for the last 2 years.  They are high-caliber, intelligent, hard working, and a fun loving group.  They've embraced him as one of their own, patiently working with him while he learned spanish in his every day work, hanging out with us on the weekends, giving us recommendations for travel/restaurants/bars to visit... without these group of men, we would not have had as successful experience in Spain.

Thats enough to make a girl feel like she (and her man) are on top of the world.

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Favorite Memory from Sicily

Hello there friendly blog readers!  Sorry I've been so absent.... but I've been unmotivated to write when the weather has been turning and getting gorgeous for spring, and we've been on the road, traveling!

In the last 5 weeks, we've traveled to the Northeastern most point of Spain (in Galicia) on a 4 day road trip, had 2 visitors from Nebraska stay with us in Madrid, Brian traveled to 3 states and 4 cities in the US in 9 days, I went to France and learned how to surf with wonderful old friends, and we flew to Sicily for a week during the Easter holidays.

Whew!  Time to take a breath...

I'm going to ease back into the blog, and remember our favorite thing from the week in Sicily.  Generally, we had great weather for the week we were there, but there was one day that things weren't looking so great, so we rented a car and decided to drive to Mount Etna.  Ideally, it wouldn't have been raining and foggy, so we could go see the top of the volcano as well, but lady luck decided to still surprise us another way.

As we plowed through a mountain road in the midst of these clouds, we saw a tiny sign, hidden in the fog, for a winery... and we pulled off, expecting it to be closed on a Tuesday afternoon.  But maybe you can guess where this is going...

We walked in to learn they had a full tasting menu with tastings of 2 of their white and 2 of their red wines.  We could help ourselves to as much of the wine as we wanted... and the food just kept coming.

It all started out quite properly...

The whites were paired with sun dried tomatoes, sun dried cherry tomatoes, olives & mushrooms, and homemade almond bread.  The reds came out accompanied by mild cheese, sicilian sausage, smoked ricatta, peppered parmesan, and sheep cheese with pistachios.

As the food kept coming, and the wine flowing, I really started to enjoy myself.  Brian mostly just laughed at me and rolled his eyes.  I didn't care.

Some steamed mushrooms and homemade pork sausages with ground pistachios, orange & balsamic showed up at some point too...

With our table full, we find ourselves giddy with joy over what we'd stumbled upon, the deliciousness of the food, and the can-i-just-have-a-little-more? amazingness of the wine.

Brian even starts to get a little goofy too... Look at that grin :)

After a lot of savoring and sighs of contentment, we finally sent away the last scraps of food.  To finish the meal, we devoured their homemade fluffy, nutty, rich pastry and a little shot of expresso.  I even asked for a second dessert, but I know that doesn't surprise any of you.

 It was perfection!

We walked out of there with a huge wooden box of wine - one of each of the four we tried during the tasting.  We didn't really have any trouble finishing those during the rest of the time we were in Sicily... though I would have loved to have brought some home with us.

I think we're still amazed that we stumbled upon such an incredible place... if you're ever near the slopes of Mount Etna on Sicily, I would recommend doing whatever you could to go visit Agricola Gambino!

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do you need to smile today?

I didn't *need* to, because we have amazing friends visiting who give me lots of reasons to smile, but, after stumbling across these and giggling to myself, I thought they were worth sharing...

Improv Everywhere awkwardly and awesomely takes over a TED Talk


Darth Vader playing the bagpipes and riding a unicycle


Advertising air conditioners by threatening us with dads in their underwear

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A {super awesome} visit outside and around Lisbon

On our second day in Lisbon, we wanted to head out of town to see some of the cool sights in nearby cities.  We found this great group, We Hate Tourism Tours (check out the link, you'll get a feel for how awesome these people are), and contacted them to take us around!  The van in the picture below was our limousine for the day :)

We started off in Sintra, about 30 minutes north of Lisbon - there are a bunch of castles and a tiny, pretty shopping street, but we didn't spend much time at either of those... because we were headed off the beaten track.

 We ended up going to this crazy house in Sintra - The Quinta da Regaleira - full of hidden pasages and caves, built by a man who wanted to express his, um, *ahem* unique beliefs in alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians through the architecture and landscape.  Crazy, but very cool.

(btw, he did the following photo on purpose.  remember how much Brian loves taking photos?)

After our tour through crazyville (sorry I don't have more photos... it's tough to photograph yourself getting lost in a dark underground cave, but you can picture it), we drove out to a roadside market to explore and eat lunch.

 I bought some of this jam - homemade and delicious.

But the highlight of this market stop was lunch.  Fresh bread, baked with chorizo inside, then once baked, you cut it open and put in goat/cow/sheep cheese and devour.  How to describe how amazing this was?  So amazing that I've been recreating it at home with a box of Bisquik mix someone gave me, stuffed the dough with meat and cheese and gobbling it up as fast as I can.

We would definitely call ourselves foodies, but we're cheap foodies.  I think Brian and I would choose a tasty roadside truck every time over a nice sit down dinner.

After stuffing our faces, and enjoying boxed wine on the side of the road, we headed to the eastern most point of Europe.  Below is the view... to America.

It would be a loooooong swim....

Looking south along the coast.

  Our van also provided lots of entertainment before we got back on the road...

 We then headed to Cascais, a beach town, walked along the coast, and got some handmade ice cream.

With our sugar high buoying us along, we headed to our last destination... the city of Belem.  It's more or less a suburb of Lisbon, and has lots of huge touristic sights - below is the monument to the discovery.    Portugal used to have a huge empire and control over the "new world" and made many important discoveries.

 After touring the monument and a very quick visit to the nearby monastery, we wrapped up our trip with Belem Pastries...

...and the bottle of wine we picked up at the roadside market.  We could not have asked for a better day of exploring Portugal with Marta & Miguel!  8 hours of delight, slightly crazy driving, full bellies, a more full knowledge and appreciation of Portugal, new friends and great stories to tell... that's a real travel success!

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Lisbon Postscript

Our first night in town, I located a very very typical portuguese restaurant in my tour book, and we checked it out.  I grabbed a video while we were eating of this rowdy table of old men...

Unfortunately, by the time I started recording, they were wrapping up their singing - though they had spent the previous 20 minutes all randomly breaking out into song, trying to convince one another that they were singing their song correctly and all the other men had to sing with them... imagine, 5 Richie T's and 5 Kenny T's sitting around with their buddies, making a scene, but no one around caring a single iota... that was our evening's entertainment.  I winked at the really emphatic guy you can see the best at one point, and the look of confusion he gave me was priceless!

Singing old men in Lisboa from kate on Vimeo.

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Last weekend in Lisbon

And by last weekend... I mean 2 weekends ago.  I meant to be more on top of this!

We have this list of places we want to make sure to travel to before we head back to the states... and we're slowly working our way through it.  I think this is the 4th iteration of this list, as we seem to be really good at crossing travel destinations off our lists!

We didn't have plans for that weekend, so on Tuesday night we started looking at flights for the following Saturday... we were thinking Switzerland or Italy for skiing, or Galicia for eating, or Portugal, either the southern coast or Lisbon.  Lisbon won out in the end!

Saturday morning, bright and early, we headed to the airport to catch our 1 hour flight to the capitol of Portugal.  We touched down and were at our B&B by 10 in the morning, and though we couldn't check in yet, they were gracious and let us have breakfast!  Crepes, french toast, fresh fruit and homemade preserves, and italian expresso.  I was in heaven.  I was SO in heaven that I ate so much I was sick for the rest of the day.... fail, Kate.

Lisbon is known as the City of Seven Hills, and thankfully, there are these funiculars & trolleys located all around town to save your legs from hiking up and down the uneven cobblestone!

 And, they give you access to these gorgeous views!  Lisbon is a poor, but beautiful city, trying to hold onto it's glory from the past when it was discovering the new world.

 See the bridge in the background?  It has a very famous cousin in San Francisco... built by the same company!  And to the left of the bridge, can you make out what it is?  It's a copy of Rio's Christo statue, overlooking the harbor.  Lisbon's officials visited Rio & thought the statue was so cool that they wanted to have their own...

 Old mixed with new.

This is the main plaza in town - Rossio.  I loved that with all the hills, you could really see the whole city from birds eye views.

Does it get better than this?  Enjoying a cool beverage while watching the sun set, on a terrace with 100 friends and your one and only very best friend, overlooking the water?

 Our B&B was one highlight of the whole trip - the staff were so classy and helpful, the room comfortable, the food amazing, and our views.... spectacular.  This is from our living room terrace.

The big long building in front of our door was the city market... I loved perusing the food stands run by grandmas and seeing what they had brought to sell.

 We spent 2 nights, 3 days in Lisbon, and loved it.  A beautiful, laid back city, with people that were so kind and easy going - we're so glad we visited!  My next post will be on the crazy day we spent with the folks from We Hate Tourism Tours exploring the towns outside Lisbon...

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