The cruise countdown

Jackson is turning *gasp* 40 this May! WHAT?! It seems like just yesterday that I made us get married in the Fall instead of the summer because I didn't want to walk down the aisle to a 30-year-old OLD MAN! (That is a true story. Oh, to be so young again.) Anyway, to celebrate this milestone birthday he got to pick anywhere in the world to go on a family vacation sponsored by the generous Ms. Susan Petefish. He spent a lot of time thinking about where to take 4 women from ages 17-72 and finally settled on a Mediterranean cruise. We'll all be in Barcelona, Spain exploring for 1.5 days before boarding the Royal Princess ship and heading for Cartagena, Spain; Gibraltar; Marseille, France; Genoa, Italy; Florence/Pisa, Italy, and finally Rome. We'll all be in Rome until Tuesday when the girls head home and we go North to explore some more of Italy. We'll be flying home on Sunday June 11th from Milan. Needless to say we're dieting to prepare for this big adventure! :) We're also trying a little something new and reading a guidebook before hitting a location. I got the Rick Steves Italy, 2017 book from Amazon and I've been devouring all of this tips for a great Italian trip. I've spent so much time reading that we now talk about Rick like he's an old friend. "Rick says to go get coffee and use the restroom there instead of paying to use the public restrooms in Venice." HA! :) 

Luckily, my brother got me the Whole 30 cookbook for Christmas like I asked him to! We spent Sunday making the first recipe from there for a Sweet Potato and Beef Chili (similar to this one) in the new enameled cast iron casserole dish I got from Mom and Guy for Christmas. Yes, it was February 19th and I was just getting to use Christmas gifts! That has to be a new record for me! (I love getting presents and using them immediately! It is a running joke in our family, actually.)

I'm beyond pleased to report that with some chopping help from Jackson, this recipe was a complete success and is delicious!

Whole30 cookbooking

MacKenzie convinced us to go for ice cream

We even returned to our favorite cycle class this weekend (my knee did OK- hooray!) so we were totally killing the whole exercise and diet thing until "MacKenzie" suggested we walk down to Handel's to get ice cream to celebrate what a gorgeous weekend of weather we'd had. She is a sucker for their free pup-cones. HA! :) Oh well, we'll keep at it and hopefully these cruise photos will show off all of our hard work!