Grandparents' 80th

To celebrate my Gran and Granpa's joint 80th, we got the whole family together to stay in this lovely manor house hotel in the New Forest. We all met up at a pub by the river called The Master Builder's which is on the site where Nelson built all his ships. We had a lovely lunch there, where I had enormous food envy because I ordered a rubbish sandwich and everyone else had ordered lts of far yummier looking things...! After that we headed to the Beaulieu National Motor Museum, which sounds like it would have been horrifically dull - but I discovered my inner car obsessive! It was amazing to see all the old cars so beautifully looked after. I was a big fan of all the old mini's and this incredible supercharged white car which looks like it's come straight out of the Great Gatsby. They also had an exhibition on with all the old 007 Bond cars! Quite a fun afternoon surprisingly!

We all the drove to the hotel, which was amazing! It's called The Pig and it's basically just a bit old renovated manor house with rooms upstairs and rooms also out in converted stables in a sort of courtyard. The gardens are gorgeous and roll out in all directions from the house. They grow all their own vegetables and even have their own pigs and piglets! It's really stunning, I'd recommend it to anyone. This is a picture of my mum pretending it's her own home... bless...

We all chilled by the fire in the drawing room they have downstairs and then went to our rooms to get ready. I was sharing with my sisters and it was mayhem trying to get three girls ready when there was only one shower...! We then met for champagne back in the drawing room and after a toast to my Grandparents, we moved into the Green Room, which is a gorgeous room set off slightly from the restaurant. My dad and uncles got very excited because they learnt that the table was actually a billiards table which you could flip upside down to turn into a dining table. Quite cool I suppose!?
The food was delicious, I ordered a butternut squash and goats cheese salad for a starter, and then the sea bass for my main. After the main course, all the men rotated two places anticlockwise to mix the conversation up a bit, so I was then sat next to my Grandpa and cousin, Ed. Ella and I managed to convince Ed into sharing the three different puddings between the three of us, though it meant that we ended up with a weird combination of cheese, lemon meringue sorbet and then rhubarb jelly... not the best decision after all...!
After pudding my Grandpa gave a very interesting (if a little long...!) speech about his career and family life, and it was really nice to hear how much he seems to have enjoyed what he's done in his 80 years. We brought out a victoria sponge cake I had made and some little prezzies for them, and then moved on back into the drawing room with some more wine to set the world to rights for a good hour or so.
It was so good to properly have the time to catch up with everyone and find out how uni/jobs/exams are going for all my cousins. I'm so lucky to be genuinely close with all 6 of them! I have 13 cousins in total from boths sides of the family and we all get on pretty well. I always think it's strange when people hardly know their cousins, but maybe it's just us that are lucky.
A lovely, happy, merry family evening together. Happy 80th Birthday G&G!!