My 40ish Birthday

 While we celebrated my 40ish birthday last week, along with plenty of laughter, in reality, this is 41 for me and I'm pretty happy about that. I still love my laugh lines and I'm claiming every single laughter filled year because I’ve earned them.

And really, the alternative to growing older wouldn’t be a lot of fun, right?

In case you missed the backstory, you can read about it and go ahead and laugh at the fact that I missed my 40th birthday.

However, my sweet friends decided I still needed a 40th birthday celebration and they pulled it off beautifully (on my 41st birthday) to surprise me on our last day at sea.

I owe a huge thank you to Princess Cruises for helping make all of this happen and I am so grateful to have partnered with them to share this dream vacation with you!

We sailed around the British Isles, visiting ten cities in four countries over the course of two weeks.

Cruising gives you the best of both worlds. You have the convenience of staying in the same place (not changing hotels or figuring out transportation to and fro) while you also have the fun of exploring so many new places.

To start my birthday in style, we enjoyed the most amazing breakfast in our stateroom. Two waiters came to our room, set up a table with linens, and then served a truly amazing meal.

Smoked salmon, quiche, fresh fruit, and a selection of freshly made pastries were all served in style along with champagne, juices, coffee, and hot tea. I’ve never had a better birthday breakfast.

After that, I headed for the spa on the ship for the ultimate massage, seaweed wrap, and a float bed (a.k.a. fancy-as-can-be) combination. I basically had a “pinch me, am I dreaming?” kind of morning.

As if that wasn’t special enough, when I returned to our room, I discovered that Sean had conspired with my friends to decorate our stateroom in full on birthday style.

They hung enormous birthday balloons, banners, and more all around the room. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard.

As it turned out, my birthday evening was also the balloon drop night on The Royal Princess. So after an amazing dinner, complete with a pretty spectacular birthday cake, we headed to the atrium for the drop. There’s nothing better than the balloon drop for a level of people watching that is sure to make you grin.