60th Wedding Anniversary Party

Happy 60th Wedding Anniversary to my Grandma and Grandpa!

We had a lovely afternoon celebrating with them at a local hotel.

We started with drinks (Pimms with lemonade for me) and chatting in the lounge...

and looking through their original wedding album from 60 years ago...

It was interesting to see the photos from back then, although I was struck by how few photos they had in their wedding album - probably only about 6 or 7!

After a while we all moved to the dining room for lunch. Our table (minus Liam who was the unofficial photographer for the day)...

For my starter I chose "A duet of honeydew and cantaloupe melon with seasonal fruits, passion fruit coulis and fresh mint"...

This was really good - the melon especially was really ripe and flavourful. I ended up having 1.5 portions as Izzy couldn't finish hers - there were only 2 children at the lunch so they were just given adult portions...a bit too much food for Iz!

There wasn't any choice for my main course, but the "vegetarian option" turned out to be vegetable lasagne which was quite nice...

I always find that restaurant lasagnes have too much cheese, but this did have a good selection of vegetables underneath.

The choice for dessert was syrup sponge, fruit salad or cheese board. I wouldn't normally go for fruit salad but I felt too full for either of the other options, and it came with a brandy basket and clotted cream so wasn't too "healthy" anyway!

It was only as I was eating this that I realised I'd had melon for 2 out of my 3 courses, but this was really tasty as well so all is good! :-)

A few other photos from the "lunch" part of the afternoon. I think this is the only photo that was taken of Liam all day, at least it's a nice one :-)

And this was one of Liam's drinks. He'd ordered a JD & coke and when it first arrived I thought they'd just given him a shot of JD, but no - the coke is in the little jug, how weird?! After this one they just brought his drinks ready mixed though!

After lunch we went back into the lounge for coffees, speeches and cake cutting...

I had a piece of the cake but to be honest it wasn't that great - they'd had issues with the person who was making it so I don't think it ended up being made until a week ago. The cake was very dry and crumbly which was a shame.

The icing and marzipan were nice though!

And finally, the obligatory group photo to end...

You probably recognise most of the people. The man next to me is my Dad's brother and his son is on the other side next to Sarah. The lady in the colourful cardigan is my Grandpa's sister. She's going to be 100 in April!! She still seems so young though - she gets the train down here (from about 3 hours away I think?) in summer by herself and she is still really active. Such a positive attitude too.

It was a really nice day. There were quite a few people who I didn't know and didn't talk to all that much - distant relatives that I've never met before - but there were also lots who I vaguely knew so it was nice to catch up. Izzy had a great time too as there was a 6 year-old boy there. They were a bit shy with each other at first but after lunch they had fun playing together on Liam's iPhone and then playing hide & seek...Izzy got hyper towards the end but luckily that coincided with it being time to leave to pick up Toby anyway!

Congratulations again Granny & Grandpa, and Happy Birthday to Grandpa too. His birthday got a bit overshadowed with all the anniversary celebrations, but we did all sing Happy Birthday too him after lunch!