Geddes Family Move

This year has been a busy year for me as I have been working on quite a few projects at work. As the new Health Care Reform bill passed through the House and Senate and was finally signed by President Obama, I thought it would be exciting to work on some new projects involving United States Benefits.

However, an opportunity of a lifetime presented itself and the interview process went quite quickly. This position came down to two current Stanford employees after several rounds of interviews and I had to sweat it out a few days to find out the good news.

On June 1st our family will be putting a lot of our stuff in storage and going overseas so I can take the Director of Benefits position for Stanford University's Bing Overseas Study Program. It is a 12 month fixed term position based in Madrid, Spain in which I will get a crash course in International Benefits working with employees across the world in Japan, China, Italy, Germany and a few other countries.

I won't have to learn a new language since I speak Spanish and all of the employees speak English as well. I will however, have a steep learning curve when it comes to national health plans around the world. The good thing is the population is very small (under 100 employees) compared to our 13,000+ employees and 3,000+ retirees in the US. I will get a 2 week training from the current Director and then off I go. The position is on a rotational basis to give as many people an opportunity to work in international benefits. So I plan to be back in the US in June 2011 and back to work implementing some of the many changes from the 2,400 page Health Care bill. Whoopee!

I am totally psyched to get to be in Spain during the World Cup. I also plan on catching a few Real Madrid soccer games, which means I can see soccer legends like Xabi Alonso, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ruud van Nistelrooy play up close and personal. Well, maybe not so close. Their stadium is HUGE:











And our budding soccer player, Bennett, will surely pick up some good skills from the locals.

This is where another local soccer team plays--hope to see it:

















For those of you who are geographically challenged this is where we will be in Spain:


















And for my wife and other "cultured" folks, I am sure we will be taking plenty of photos of places like this as tourists:


















For those who want to know more about the Overseas Study Program you can check out this link:

http://bosp.stanford.edu/

I am not quite sure where we will be staying yet, but our mailing address as of June 1st will be:


Stanford Program in Madrid
Instituto Internacional
Miguel Angel, 8
28010 Madrid, Spain


We will be sad to be away from our family and friends, but the time will actually go by quite quickly.






















In fact...It will go by so quickly you may just get another April Fool's blog entry from me next year.

APRIL FOOLS--After all it is April 1st in Spain right now :).

Gotcha!

Stephen

Missing callings

At church today, someone mentioned going to the General Young Women Meeting last night, and I immediately felt bad for having missed it. This is the first year in over five that I have NOT gone to one of those spring broadcasts. Then I remembered that I'm not in Young Women anymore (haven't been for almost a year), which of course means I don't need to go to those meetings. You'd think that would have been a relief: "Phew! No more having to sacrifice a Saturday evening to go sit in the stake center with a bunch of teenage girls." Truthfully, however, my reaction was the opposite. I felt a bit wistful and sad.

I miss those girls. I miss the women I worked with in that calling. I miss saying the theme every Sunday during opening exercises. I miss teaching lessons. I miss listening to advisers teach lessons. I miss the girls' genuine questions about the gospel and life. Yes, I even sorta miss their texting during class. It's funny how the things that drove me crazy while I held the calling are now somewhat endearing.

Then we're driving home from church, talking about Stephen's new calling, and he tells me he feels like he did toward the end of his mission. He was in an area that he absolutely loved, training a new missionary, and thinking he would finish his last 3 months there when he was transferred to a more difficult area with a companion he previously had and was given the responsibility to help him finish his mission on a strong note. He knew he was in that last area for a reason, but that didn't stop him from missing what he'd just left. Stephen misses the young men's calling he was released from a few weeks ago. He loved working with the priests and was just starting to feel like he was really getting to know them. Alas, he's needed elsewhere. That seems to be the way callings go: the second you really love yours, it's time to move on to a different one where you can be challenged in a new way.

Sprung Spring

How do I know I'm ready for the next season?

1. The mere jingle of the ice cream truck coming down our cul-de-sac makes even me giddy, and before you know it I'm buying Teenage Turtle popsicles for my kids (well, minus Millie, who looks more than a little jealous...) for no other reason than it's a nice day.

Your guess is as good as mine as to why Eli is wearing mittens in 70 degree weather

2. I almost started skipping, no joke, on the walk to pick up Benito from school today. Sunshine, blue skies, mid-sixties, no jacket, no socks. Don't those things make you want to skip on a Monday afternoon?

3. I find any excuse possible to hang out in the backyard. Some of today's excuses included folding laundry, pushing the baby in the swing, getting out the bubble machine for Eli, reading a book, upping my vitamin D (or is it K? I never can remember), sweeping some bark, pulling a few weeds, giving the kids snacks, putting away strollers, organizing storage, etc.

4. Last-minute dinner decision to grill some pork chops outdoors rather than make minestrone indoors.

5. Half the windows in the house are open.

6. Popcorn trees are popping, and making the air smell divine, everywhere I turn.

7. Everyone's in a good mood. At the same time!

8. I come home to find my husband gardening at 9:45 at night.

Welcome, welcome, vernal equinox!

Small SAHM Victory

Some days I feel like a prisoner to my baby's naps. We completely overdid it this past weekend, so la nena has really needed some quality sleep this week. Rather than dwell on the fact that I could be out running errands or doing something fun with others, per my usual m.o., I actually stopped to smell the Stay At Home Mom flowers today. I PLAYED WITH MY KID! And liked it. Shock of shocks. I should clarify: I played with my three year old. Playing with the baby is pretty easy and natural. Playing with my older kids? A little harder to want to do these days. Once #1 and #2 started playing together a couple years ago, I kinda got used to getting things done and seemed to lose/forget the art of playing with my own children. Don't get me wrong, if my kids are in the backyard and want to play basketball or soccer or something, I'm all over it. If they come up and want to play a board game or read a book, I'm usually up for it. If they come in my bed to snuggle or hug or wrestle, sure. But get down on the floor and play with cars or trains or superheroes? I don't do that one much anymore. And they don't really ask me to do it, either. I guess they're as used to doing it with each other as I'm used to not doing it with them.

So the rare moments when I set my own, ever-growing agenda aside and actually play with independent Eli, who didn't ask me to but deep down probably needs me to, really IS a small victory for a gal like me.

Eli, the train conductor

"All aboard!"

Then there's this little one

Caught in a world of boy toys

Hermana Jory

It's been exactly fifteen years since I entered the MTC, donned a little black tag and received a new identity as a Spanish-speaking missionary. Serving in Guatemala Quetzaltenango (yeah, try and pronounce that on your mission call letter) was a singular experience.

My mission definitely had its physically and spiritually-grueling moments. I still remember the bathroom cockroaches, the suffocating humidity of the coastal towns, the warm "agua" (soda in a small sandwich bag with a straw in it) that never quenched my thirst, the bacterial infection that kept me sick for months, the frustration at not being able to express the testimony I had burning inside me those first few months in the field, the utter loneliness of spending your entire day with a difficult companion, and of course the heartache of investigators whose addictions, relationships or pride prevent them from accepting the gospel.

As persistent as the challenges were, they certainly couldn't eclipse the good. I felt the truest kind of peace and happiness I had known in my twenty-one years of life while serving in Guatemala. Studying the scriptures with more purpose than I ever had, testifying of the Savior, learning how to feel and respond to the Spirit, meeting new people every day, pushing myself to learn a new language, coming to love and care for investigators like they were my own family, laughing with companions and spending eighteen months focused more on others than myself made feeling that peace and happiness a whole lot easier. Was I a perfect missionary? Not even close. I screwed up just as much as I succeeded. It wasn't all that different from life now: when I do what I know will bring me closer to the Lord, I am a better, happier person. My mission served as the first laboratory where I experimented with that principle over and over again.

Anyway, here's a glimpse into my jumper-clad mission past.

Unplanned sabbatical

Sorry I fell off the face of the blogosphere for awhile there. I hadn't planned to disappear, promise. I wish I had some really fun, exciting excuses to blame my radio silence on, but I don't. Just life. And I suppose the lives of others. Actually a lot more has happened in other people's lives than our own, but we have been affected, and in some instances changed, by those happenings.

It's strange how you can go months untouched by tragedy, and then all of a sudden you can't escape it. That's how the past month has been: a LOT of life compressed into a few short weeks. Deaths, births, divorce, illness, accidents. The veil has felt thinner than usual as we've listened to our children pray for the toddler and baby that were taken "back to heaven" or for their parents who "are real, real sad right now." The power of prayer has felt more tangible as I've watched these families be buoyed up by the Spirit and others' love for them as they show such remarkable strength, peace and understanding about the plan of salvation and their little ones' place in it.

Guardian angels have felt closer as Bennett and Eli have walked away from a car crash unscathed, a crash that totaled the car, bashed in the very door where B was sitting and shattered window glass all over him. The priority of a happy marriage has felt paramount as a beloved family has started down the long road of divorce, a road I painfully remember and wish I could take away from their children.

Anyway, I'm back from a brief and reflective hiatus, back to do just about the only kind of family history I know how to do, that of documenting the goings-on of our little family of five. I'll be back-posting for a little while, so don't be fooled if you don't see anything after today. Just scroll down.

Ratatouille for the rugrats

There aren't a lot of my kids' movies that I enjoy watching myself. "Ratatouille" is one of the few exceptions.



We recently bought this one, so it's been floating around the house the way all new movies seem to do. The boys want to hold it and look at it until we actually take off the sleeve and the plastic wrapping, maybe hoping the characters will materialize if they just palm it long enough. Even Amelia has taken to sucking on the sleeve or cover of these new DVD's, so this movie has been working its way from the living room to the kitchen to the family room to our bedroom and back again.

The other day I was scrambling for dinner ideas and decided to take a gander at what's lurking in the crisper of my fridge. Oh yeah . . . there's half an eggplant that I can't even remember what I used the first half for, and there's that one zucchini still hanging out from a pasta dish I made last week. What on earth am I going to do with half an eggplant and one zucchini? I guess I could make another pasta dish, but we just had some . . . there's gotta be something else I can do with this.



Ready to give up and toss out perfectly good, albeit a week old, produce that yet again I've either forgotten about or stumped myself with in terms of recipes, I noticed the movie sleeve under Millie's highchair. Now, my kids are NOT big fans of eggplant and zucchini, so I knew that real ratatouille wouldn't be an option. I've always wanted to make it, but it's something that only Stephen and I would probably appreciate. Then I thought of a recipe I copied from a cookbook a month or two back: Cornmeal-crusted Roasted Ratatouille Tart from Ellie Krieger's book The Food You Crave.



Very thin slices of the not-so-beloved vegetables atop a cornmeal crust, smothered with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Now that they could do. The recipe looked pretty time-consuming, and it did take a little longer than an average dinner, but it definitely wasn't as hard as I'd thought it would be. Thin slices of the veggies roast in the oven and then get layered with the cheese on top of the super-simple tart. Then bake it and eat it. I think even Remy, the high brow foodie rat he is, would approve.