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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