You read the title right, I'm now 25! Wednesday was the big day and I was very spoilt indeed with celebrations even into the weekend.
Firstly though, I wanted to apologise for not blogging in a while. It's been a busy week and thought I would wait until all the celebrations were over before I came to tell you all the goss.
I turned 25 on Wednesday and with it being a week day, I'd planned to do all my celebrations at the weekend as everyone else was working and week days are notoriously awkward times to really do very much celebrating.
However...
You may remember May last year, I wrote you all a story about a car, a cake and a big surprise, telling you all how I went to Matthew's after work to surprise him with cake and presents on his birthday. Well, on Wednesday afternoon, the gesture was well and truly repayed.
To start the day, mum woke me up with some lovely flowers at my bedside. With it being 6:30 in the morning, I did my usual morning grunt before remembering what the day was and thanking mum for the flowers.
I went into work early so I could leave work early then have the evening to myself. I even took my colleagues a home made cake. My team had very thoughtfully written me a card and put confetti on my desk which I thought was very sweet of them considering they'd only known me for a few months. As hoped, my cake went down well with some even suggesting I take up baking as an evening job and bring in cake everyday! I'm just glad it tasted ok and didn't give anyone belly ache!
At 4 I made my way home. I'd even bagsied a spot at the car park outside the office so I didn't have to walk as far. I know, small luxuries, but a luxury nonetheless. I drove home with The Greatest Showman soundtrack on full blast and ready for an evening of relaxation and leftover cake. On a side note, I'm probably the only person left on the planet who has not seen The Greatest Showman film but loves the soundtrack.
As I pulled into my usual parking space at home, I noticed something in my peripheral. A copper coloured bonnet. "Could it be?" I said to myself as I waited for the next song to end. I then saw in my rear view mirror that mum was outside. The mystery deepened. As I switched the car off and gathered by bags, my suspicions where confirmed. Matthew had come to visit me for my birthday! I wondered whether he would after he'd earlier asked me when I would finish work that day, plus he'd not given me a birthday card the weekend before to open on Wednesday, but I didn't want to get my hopes up too high and get disappointed.
Matthew met me at my car with some lovely sunflowers and as we walked nearer to my house, it became clear that both Matthew and mum were in on the same plan. And with a POP noise, the next surprise was revealed. The front door was decorated with balloons and banners! One balloon had just popped and flew across the garden, but ignoring that minor incident, I was very surprised. There I was thinking I was going to spend the evening in a relatively low key way, but what did materilise was so much better.
It was soon time to open presents and cards. I got the ultimate joke present from Matthew- a bottle of VIPoo! We're both bad for our uhhh, little packages, and I had given Matthew a bottle of his own for his birthday last year. Now we both had our own bottles so there's no excuse for those smelly bathrooms! I also got a couple of nice shirts from mum and £10 from my auntie. After the grand present and card opening ceremony, it was time to get some food. I fancied many things, but as I was aware I wanted everyone to eat at one place and one time, I chose KFC. Boy, was that a bad choice.
As you may have heard, KFC have had some distribution troubles as of late and it's only recently that the chicken chain reported normal service had resumed. Well, it seems Aylesbury had slipped through the net in this case as the one we went to had just about the bare essentials. They had no sauces, no napkins, no lemon wipes, no sides and no bottles of soft drink. So it was extra portions of chips for us to fill in the baked bean void. The family feast ended up being a bit feeble. However, we made the most of it and I still appreciated the 11 herbs and spices the restaurant did have. However, on reflection I would have perhaps gone elsewhere for my birthday dinner.
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| My huuuuuge birthday cake |
The pudding however was much better. The cake Matthew had got me blew my pitiful Victoria sponge out of the water. He got me a Costco carrot cake. A huge 16 slicer decorated on the top with carrots made from icing. It was soon time to blow out my "52" birthday candles (and my wish is secret, thank you!) and get stuck in! The taste was really good- something we were all pleasantly surprised about from a cake that came from Costco. The size of the slices as well was something that really shocked us. When they said it served 16 people, they weren't kidding! It could've even fed more with the huge slices. Overall the only complaint from us was that there was too much icing and that the icing was a bit too sweet.
As the cake made it's way down to VIPoo territory, I was on the phone answering my fan mail in the form of family phone calls. While I am appreciative of all the messages I receive on my birthday, there's only so many ways I can say thanks without sounding superficial.
After a few hours, it was time to head off to bed. I had a good day filled with surprises and cake which for me, is all I needed. If you're reading this mum and Matthew, thank you very much for surprising me, it was very much appreciated.
As I mentioned earlier, Wednesday wasn't the end of the celebrations. On Saturday me, mum, Matthew and Jade went out for a meal and some ice-cream. It was lovely to see Jade again since her latest house move, and of course it was great to see Matthew again after his surprise visit on Wednesday. I'm not one for massive over the top parties. I prefer spending quality time with people and having a good chinwag.
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| At my surprise 60th birthday party.... |
The venue I chose was Temple Street Wine Bar in Aylesbury as the food has always been good in there and it's not just a run of the mill gastro-pub. It has some atmosphere. The day I chose was also when a surprise birthday party was going ahead later that evening. The manager had told me about this before so I knew we had to be out in time for that. What I didn't know was the details of this surprise party until we all got there.
It was as we walked in that the surprise birthday party really surprised us! The party was a surprise 60th, but that wasn't the thing that stood out for us. The party was for a lady named....Julie! We all had a chuckle at the coincidence and even posed for a picture next to the mystery Julie's balloons! Mum wanted me and Jade to pose with some of the party props but even we drew the line there- it wasn't really appropriate to be helping ourselves to this Julie's surprise party paraphernalia. Having said that, the cupcakes looked very tempting.
As expected, the meal was lovely and it was great to have everyone together. We then went to go and get ice-cream, leaving the bar to Julie's surprise party celebrations (and no, we didn't take anything!) Jade had to leave early as the snow was really falling at this point and she wanted to make sure she got home before all the over-cautious measures started to come into force.
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| Our after dinner treat |
Our ice-cream treat was at The Works and I had my usual- the Millionaire shortbread sundae. Millionaire shortbread pieces, millionaire shortbread flavoured ice-cream, chocolate ice-cream, chocolate pieces, and whipped cream made this treat very decadent indeed.
After our sugar fix, we all rolled back to the car and home again being careful not to slip on the snow and ice.
Overall, I really enjoyed this week and while I'm this end of 20, I don't mind aging either! Next up on the birthday front is Matthew. What to do for his birthday....hmmmm.......
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