Granny's 70th...

Grannys 70th

The reason that Nathan & I originally decided to come to England this time of year was because of my Granny’s 70th birthday this weekend. Our holiday quickly exploded into a 3 month holiday to 5 different countries & a marriage in France. No biggie...

We stayed at Rich & Rach’s last night & woke up fairly late. Both Nath & I were straight on the Wii playing Mario with Tess. Tess was being incredibly cheeky by throwing us off the edges & killing us. She spent most of the game in her ‘bubble’ so she didn’t die! Which I’ll admit was hilarious, but we had no progress in the game, which Nathan got a bit touchy about. (Boys & their toys)

We head off to Marwood hill gardens, where my Granddad apparently loved to visit every time he went to Devon. Nathan got to try Pate on toast for the first time, it was the first time I’d had it in many years & it was amazing. I tried this sweet pickle jam thingy, not to keen but I gave it a go.
Walking around the gardens we saw loads of ducks, which I got many photos of, I don’t know why because they’re only ducks & we get them in Australia. They were pretty cute though, sticking their butts in the air & kicking their feet about. Upside down Tess thought they looked like dolphins, I reckon they looked almost Kookaburra-like.
We found a patch of air that smelt like candy floss, but couldn’t sniff out the source, it was a beautiful & peaceful place. So nice to get out & explore a bit.

We came home & I had a quick pre dinner nap, slept past my alarm & woke up with 25 minutes to get ready & make Granny a card. I tried to make one the night before but it looked rubbish, so I found an old painting I'd done on the flight over, cut it out, glued it to a piece of paper & got all the grandchildren to sign it.

We got to Broomhill around 7ish which is a lovely sculpture garden with a guest house. The rooms were amazing, two single beds pushed together with a super comfy mattress cover gave us almost to much room! An absolutely stunning view of the garden & some funky art work hung on all walls.
We were welcomed with champagne & beer. It was nice having almost all of mums side of the family all together, except my mum, dad & sister who couldn’t make it over from Oz. :(
We all sat at a large table separate from the rest of the restaurant seating area, which was good because Tess & Eve were running around, under & almost through the table chasing each other. Eve kept taking ice from the wine coolers & saying she was an icey penguin
.
Granny was given her presents whilst everyone was still sober. She got a CD player which her best friend called a ‘Ghetto blaster’, an iPad mini with all the extras & a framed photo of self portraits drawn by all her grandkids which had been planned 6 months in advanced but drawn & photoshopped together on the day. Granny & her friend were asking about our tattoo’s, we explained that my cousin Gemma had done a few for us whilst were over here. They asked Gemma if she was a tattooist, but pronounced it as a Tootoo-ist, I was also asked if they were permanent, bar having laser treatment they are pretty well superglued on to your skin.

Sophie called Mum in Oz using Skype so she could see Granny, however we didn’t calculate the time difference before calling, they’re 9 hours ahead so it was 5am in Oz. Whoops. She ended up calling back later whilst walking the dogs on the beach. Which Nathan & I got really excited about seeing our beautiful Golden Retriever Scarlet.

Starters came out which was a small omelet, potato, cheese, delicious, weird, notsurewhatitwas, circle thing. Everyone was slowly eating it trying to figure out what it was, whilst Nathan picked up his fork stabbed the food & shoved it in his mouth not caring. He also inhaled Eve’s as she didn’t like it.
Next came entrees, I ordered some ham dish. I’m not quite sure what was on my plate but it was an experience for the taste buds.
All the food came out on these chalk slates which looked pretty fancy, the food was in small portions & very nicely presented.
The main course was a Mediterranean buffet, which was absolutely incredible. There were plenty of meat dishes all of which seemed to just melt in your mouth.
We had two deserts, first was a chocolate log with cream and raspberries, second was a cake Rich & Rach had picked up - a giant vanilla sponge, cream filled, raspberry topped, delicious looking tower of yum! Once again, Nathan inhaled several pieces.

Sophie had a speech prepared for Granny, which was brilliantly hilarious. Gutted that I didn’t think to film it until half way through.

The night ended with many empty wine bottles on the table, I mostly stuck to coke, which may have had a bit of vodka in it. Wine is definitely not my cup of tea. At one point Nathan had half a beer, half of my champagne, a glass of red & a glass of white in front of him!
Gemma, her partner Tom, Nathan & I ended up sneaking off & sitting outside talking until about 12.30am. The boys were being boys & talking about disgusting stuff whilst Gemma & I laughed at them, cringing. Tom made friends with one of the statues in the garden, a giant great dane looking dog he named Scooby, which apparently is a very expensive statue. (That Eve was also slapping earlier on in the night - haha)

We head up to bed & Nathan thought it was a great idea to try fall asleep whilst watching Saw IV. A gory & jumpy movie. Not cool! I hate scary/gory movies, let alone watching them whilst trying to sleep. Safe to say I was wide awake when it ended & Nathan was out cold snoring. I had to sit up watching a few comedy shows before accepting that nothing was going to come out of our dark creepy looking bathroom or break into our window & kidnap us.
All in all, was a great day & night.