A Different Type of Milestone

I often praise my kids and record milestones with them, however, this post is about the other end of the scale.

Yesterday we had a big family meal as a surprise for my nan as she celebrated her 80th birthday.

She does well really, she's doing good with mobility, she's had alot of illness and recovery in her life and she is on a number of pills for life but the main thing is she is here.

She survived breast cancer about 25 years ago. She then developed ovarian cancer 10 years later. She's had her gall bladder removed. She has chronic IBS but she gets on with life as best as she can.

The last two years have been much harder on her since we lost my grandad but she is a fighter who just refuses to give up.

I have always been close to my nan and over the years many things have changed but that hasn't. I do admit and I am ashamed to admit it that sometimes though, the woman drives me mad. I guess that's love for ya. As she is getting older she does find things harder but refuses to listen to anyone else. Or if she does, she gets the opinions of 6 people and finds it ever more confusing when people have different ideas. She doesn't seem to listen much either.

I guess the same could be said of all elderly people to an extent but we are all so proud of her and how she is getting on by herself.

Yesterdays meal out was not a complete surprise, she knew she was going out for dinner with my mum, dad and brother. We took her a present and card round yesterday afternoon but made the excuse we had to leave as we were seeing friends later that night. I bought her a metal jug filled with fake lilacs. She has a big lilac bush in her garden that I have always loved since I was a child so it seemed fitting for a big birthday. My Uncle, Aunt and two cousins also came. One bought his girlfriend so when she arrived at the pub with my mum, dad and brother she was surprised to find a table with the rest of us there. There were 14 of us in total and we had a lovely evening.

I even made the birthday cake.

I actually wish I had taken photo's of the cake at home as this doesn't do it justice at all. It came out amazingly well. Inside is a Victoria Sponge with a strawberry jam filling. To make it a little more special I added a tin of strawberries to the jam. That added a little more "wetness" to keep the cake moist and alot more flavour and texture to the filling. The topping is a basic buttercream with a little strawberry syrup from the tin and coated with freeze dried strawberry pieces.

It tasted perfect. My nan loves her strawberries and her cakes so I think I got it right on this occasion.

The meal was lovely and the kids enjoyed themselves. Matthew went back to my nans for a sleepover and we got the little fellas back shortly after 10pm. They fell asleep in the car on the way back as they were so tired but they did great staying up and eating so late.

We've had a great start to the holidays with days out to local places and even a trip to the seaside so far but we're now waiting for the weather to pick up again before we do anything too exciting.

Today we are having our bedroom wall insulated so maybe by the weekend we will have a nice newly decorated bedroom. It was nice before but I want a complete change so we may go from this:

To probably something much more relaxing and serene like a duck egg blue but I feel there is enough blue in the house. I want something relaxing and not too boring.