When we fully committed to this clean eating journey, we knew there would be times when our other passions would take us outside of the food parameters we strive to maintain. We have a large family and we love to celebrate. Birthdays, new babies, weddings - we are planning some sort of celebration every month.

We also love to travel. Sometimes, we travel together (think 15 people singing “Red, Red Wine” in a van in Playa Del Carmen). Sometimes we travel separately. Either way, when we come back together around the table there are wonderful stories to share.

Recently, we made a trip to Italy. This was the first time for Troy and I to travel to this lovely country and we lived fully every minute. We enjoyed every glass of wine, every bite of pasta and every crumb of croissant. And yes, we indulged in gelato on a daily basis. When you delve into the Whole30 lifestyle you will hear about food freedom. We strive to have a healthy relationship with food and that not only means that we are not governed by our sugar dragon on a daily basis, it means that we are able to make food choices outside of the norm when it is worth it. The balance is found in learning to hear a healthy voice inside your head where these decisions are made (more about that on another day). Let’s just say in Italy we savored every bite of the experience.

One of the things we really wanted to do prior to our trip was speak the language, if only in a minimal way. We used a couple of things to accomplish that. We were given Travel Flips - fun flashcards that are very portable. We kept them out for the months before the trip making them readily available for quizzing. They had all the essential phrases and were easy to use. They are available in Spanish, German, Italian and French. You can find them here. If you are more of an app learner, we also used two different apps in preparing for our trip; Duolingo and Babbel. Both were great and Duolingo is free and available in 29 languages. That is a lot of travel! We found that most people in stores and restaurants know quite a bit of English, however speaking some of the language made the trip a little more magical. And if you don’t know bits of the language, you may get the wifi password when you asked for the wine list. True story.

I think it is also worth mentioning that we traveled with Collette. That is, parts of our trip were a guided tour. We are sharing our life here so let me just be real. I’m on social media like the rest of you. I see the people traveling the world with just their backpack and energy bars... Smiling... Sleeping under the stars in Paris... And I’m a romantic. I want to be like them. Adventurous. Daring. Youthful and brave. If that describes you, you can skip the rest of this section as I may disappoint. However, if you are more like Troy and I, read on. Traveling takes time and planning. You are navigating another language, strange streets, a different way of driving, areas you are unfamiliar with and, well friends, we are busy. The things we love and the things we must do take time - lots of it. So the idea of planning 7 days in another country was not fully appealing to us. We wanted to get an email that said here are your flights, “Be there”. Another email that said a cute adventurous twenty something will meet you at the airport, “Look for him. He will drive you to your gorgeous Italian Villa. Relax”. And that is what happened. If I’m perfectly honest, there were parts of traveling this way that I did not enjoy but the parts I did far outweighed those I didn’t. We experienced Italy through the eyes of tour guides who were imbued with the rich history of this beautiful country and they shared with a passion that was unparalleled. Those tours took about 2 hours of most of our days. The rest of the each day, we were on our own. We walked the streets of Florence, wandered through the shops of Siena and Lucca, took silly expected pictures “holding up” the leaning tower of Pisa, traveled the rail system that connected us to each of the 5 fishing villages of Cinque Terre and drank rich, dark coffee under a drizzling sky in Portofino. The history lessons learned long ago in books and classrooms came to life in a way I could have only imagined. We came away with a richer and deeper understanding of things that were of deep importance to us. We walked through the majestic churches in awe of their beauty and yet broken hearted by their stories. The Reformation took on a fuller deeper meaning. Traveling Italy is, in many ways, a chance to travel back in time. It was magical.

The language of food and family is universal. We experienced this in Italy and it was lovely. We are home now, sometimes longing for those peaceful walks on cobbled streets where the wine flows freely but mostly happy to be back with the people we love; the place God has placed us today for this amazing journey called life.

~ Tami