We hope you all are having as much fun this holiday season as we are having. It’s such an awesome time of the year. A time to reflect on the past year with family and friends and look forward to the future year with hope and anticipation.
I love to cook a turkey and make the house as festive as possible. Ronn enjoys playing the guitar and singing with the band and friends visiting. This year we are thrilled to just stay home and enjoy the simple pleasures like trimming the tree with the kids and a few friends. We are also excited about our appearance in the Hollywood Christmas Parade that will air on December 10th. PLAYER did an awesome performance in it and Ronn, Creason, Calee and I get to ride on a float. There are numerous Christmas parties we are attending and I will throw my annual girls, “Potluck Christmas” with all my gorgeous girlfriends. Hope you are enjoying the Happy Christmas video and will spread it around. I did the fancy camera work and it was the song the band originally wanted to sing in the Hollywood Christmas Parade. PLAYER \”Happy Christmas\”
Happy Holidays!
Miss Italia
It was a last minute request from Milly Carlucci 
that invited Ronn, Katherine Kelly Lang and me to Salsomaggiore, Italy for the 70th annual Miss Italia Pageant. This year Milly Carlucci hosted the three day live televised event. 
Ronn and Katherine were judging the “Miss Cinema” portion of the event. This four hour live broadcast showcased some of Italy’s most beautiful women and this year was looking for beauty and talent, as the top 9 girls auditioned for a part in an Italian movie as “Miss Cinema” 
The stage was set to display some of the most gorgeous women we had ever seen. I thought the show was great and that Milly Carlucci did a fabulous job. It certainly wasn’t an easy task for Ronn and Katherine! All of our clothing was provided by our dear friend designer, Laura Biagiotti. 
Ronn and Katherine did a little dance, when a surprise guest entered the stage, very pregnant! Sara DiViara looked so beautiful and elegant 
when she made her surprise appearance during Ronn and Katherine’s dance. It felt like “Ballando con let stelle” revisited because of the many cast and crew that were there with Milly working on “Miss Italia” 
The weekend was short and sweet for us. Great Italian food, wine and friends! Apparently, Sofia Loren was the first to win this title and is helping the judges crown the winner on Monday night!
Ronn & Devin & Miss Italia in a tree… k..i..ss..i..oh never mind
In the airport waiting to fly like a bird to Italy. For some reason, they asked me to judge the Miss Italia pageant. Tough job. But I’ll endure. For me, it’s a chance to watch a bunch of movies and suck down a couple glasses of vino. Well, …. ok, maybe more than a couple. Hey, I’ve got to rehearse for when I arrive in Italy! Isn’t that all they drink there? Actually, I get to see my wonderful friend, Milly Carlucci, who is hosting this show, and pretty much every other show in Italy as well. She is an absolute sweetheart and I love her dearly. Will take some pix and vid and put it up asap. Love you all. —-R
Bolgheri, Italy
This is from our recent trip to the cutest little town called Bulgheri in Tuscany, Italy. We stayed in Bulgheri after I finished Ballando con le Stelle (Dancing with the Stars) and went to spend some time visiting my Italian dance partner, Sara Di Vaira, and her wonderful family. Sara grew up in this special scenic town. In this clip, we’re meeting Illia. She’s 92 years young. She’s the oldest person in Bulgheri and, as you can see, probably the most spry as well.
Arrivederci Italia!
It has been a most relaxing enjoyable vacation for all of us and a very memorable one for us as a family. We have been made to feel at home with the Biagiotti and the Di Vaira families and it was a very emotional goodbye to all for now. The girls have experienced Italy in a very unique way, both the traditional Roman way and the traditional Tuscan way of life. We want to thank everyone who help us feel so at home in both Bolgheri and Roma.
The beautiful dinners, private tours and loving hospitality will endure in our memory for a lifetime.
We have made so many wonderful friends along the way, learned so much about wine, food and art and taken away gorgeous memories of the countryside and their culture. So we say arrivederci for now, but we know we will be back to our second home very soon. I will continue to study Italian so that I am speaking more fluently next time. Ronn is loved more than ever in Italy and loves Italy more than ever, so this love affair will continue I’m sure for years to come. It will feel good now to be back home with the animals and our friends who we have missed so much from all our traveling during the past few months.
Food, Wine and Friends
Since Easter, we have had the most amazing food and wine ever in Italy. We have visited a couple of the premier vineyards, including Sara Di Vaira’s vineyard. Here is Ronn in a photo with Sara’s father. We picked our own vegetables to cook and experienced the Tuscan way of life. The girls have loved it so much that we have opted to stay and extra day and not go to Venice. We will go back in a couple of days by train to spend our last day in the beautiful castle of Laura Biagiotti before returning home. The Tuscan part of our vacation has felt very homey. I cooked fresh picked artichokes the other day and the girls found the biggest head of cabbage we have ever seen!
Last night we had a beautiful seafood dinner on the beach. Ronn has enjoyed tasting the wines and it seems that there are a lot of tourist visiting right now for the food and wine obviously, we can understand why. Today, I will go to a spa and relax with a massage and soak in the hot springs. The weather is amazing today, so the girls are excited to pick more vegetables, including wild asparagus and will make homemade pizza. Looking forward to good weather for our last days here in Italy. 
Love DevRonn
Easter in Tuscany
We left Roma for the quiet of the countryside a couple of days ago and went to spend some time in the ancient 1000 year old castle of designer Laura Biagiotti. It sits on 444 acres that includes it’s own amazing golf course. After having lunch with Lavinia Biaigotti, we play a game of 9 holes on the green. Lavinia got a hole in one on the first hole and thus a competition started with Ronn to see who would win. Lavinia got a hole in one on the 9th hole and thus won! I’ll post some funny video of it later. The girls got a private golf lesson and drove the golf carts around, while I went back to the castle to study some more Italian.
Then we were introduced to the Italian Easter tradition of breaking giant chocolate eggs for a surprise inside. Unlike easter baskets filled with jelly beans and colored eggs, everyone gives their friends and family a giant chocolate egg with just about anything you can imagine inside. We had fun with this process and the girls got little necklaces. Ronn got a little box that he put some beautiful gold earrings in, a gift from Laura. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone at the castle and journey on by train to Florence.
Ronn wanted to introduce Michelangelo’s “David” to the girls. Even though I had seen it before, the 17 foot tall statue never ceases to impress. I think Ronn looks alot like the David now that he’s in such great shape from dancing. We then met Sara Di Vaira and her husband who took us to a little town called,” Buti” near Pisa. We had the most amazing Tuscan dinner on Good Friday. Fresh mussels, clams and squid, pasta ravioli with truffle sauce, spaghetti with rabbit and penne pasta. Then Ronn and I had a bottle of champagne waiting for us in our hotel room, so we had to celebrate going to see the leaning tower of Pisa today. 
We will continue on through the beautiful Tuscan countryside and visit some vineyards, including the Di Vaira winery and spend Easter with Sara’s family. Hope you all are having a wonderful Easter weekend. Will post more pics and video later.
Love Dev
Roman Holiday
Our vacation so far has been very relaxing and the weather has been fabulous! Just what the doctor ordered for Ronn, weather that is in primavera and not too hot or cold. A trip to the
Spanish Steps, The 
Pantheon and the
Trevi Fountain was the start of our first day. Walking around Rome was grand and it was funny for the girls to see how many teenagers wanted photos and autographs with their daddy. . Our dear friends Laura and Lavinia Biagiotti hosted us in their apartment near the spanish steps, which was in the center of everything. Our wonderful guide Isabella toured us around the city as we walked all day long. We had the most fabulous homemade pasta, steamed artichokes and of course vino rosso. Our second day has been another private tour of
the Vatican and Sistine Chapel
, compliments of our friend Loreto. Our neighbors Steve and Sue and their kids were in Rome for a short while during a cruise and joined us on the tour and then we had a fabulous lunch. The girls then opted to walk around some more with Ronn, while I came back to blog and rest up for dinner. We decided to take the girls today to the 
Villa Borghese and had a private tour of 
Caravaggio’s amazing work and the President’s Palace
before having dinner with Actress Nancy Brilli and her husband Roy. Plans changed and we decided to rest in the castle of Laura Biagiotti tomorrow before heading by train to Florence to see the “David.” There are so many people that we have decided to go to Venice after Easter. We will complete our Roman Holiday with one last day in Roma before heading home next week.
Happy Birthday to my Wonderful husband!
So far it’s been a fun week for us. We had a blast at the Laura Biagiotti fashion show and Ronn presented Laura with flowers at the end of the show.
We stayed at the beautiful and prestigious Principe Di Savoia hotel and had a romantic dinner cooked at our table. Dan McVicar joined us at the fashion show and for lunch at Bice with Lavinia and some of her friends.
We then headed back by train and stopped in Florence where Sara DiViara picked us up to drive us to her hometown, Bulgheri. This cutest little town I’ve ever seen and we were greeted by the entire community upon arrival. Then we had the most delicious tuscan food and stay in a sweet little hotel,
woke up to a beautiful breakfast overlooking the scenic view of the town and Ronn signed autographs and took pictures with just about everyone.
A Ballando crew was on hand to capture the moments as Sara gave us a tour of the vineyard and we stopped at her home to have lunch, compliments of her mother’s cooking. Their wine DiVaira is one of the best Italian wines we have had and the meal was complete with homemade lasagna and home grown vegetables that were so tasty and fresh. We continued walking through the town greeting everyone. I felt like I was campaigning for Ronn to run for Italy’s next president, as I took pictures with people, was kissed by a lot of grandmothers and held a lot of babies along the way. I got a lot of compliments on what I said to the jury in Italian last week on the show and the whole town had flyers and banners up that said, “Vote for Ronn and Sara.
” We went around to several houses when “Beautiful” was on air and surprised a few people when they saw Ronn and Sara the their door. The day ended at the beach with a beautiful sunset and Ronn and I got a wonderful invitation to vacation at the prestigious Tombolo resort, which has the most amazing spa and view of the sea. We headed back to Rome and Ronn has been focused on dance lessons the rest of this week. He didn’t want the cast and crew from Ballando to do anything special for his birthday and it’s a usual work day of rehearsals for him. We will go out to dinner later to celebrate with a DiVaira bottle of wine, a present from Sara’s family. I will return home on Sunday after show number 8 and Ronn will stay until next Sunday so that he can get some more dance lessons in before the finals. I think it’s so cute how much he wants to win this competition now, considering I had to kick his butt to get him to do the show to begin with! Personally,
I think they have an excellent chance of winning and predict that they will take home that huge trophy!
Love Dev
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