Family Gathering
We’ve just got back from a weekend away in Gloucestershire. We drove down in the pouring rain on Friday evening to my parents house, had dinner there and chilled for the evening.
Saturday was a cool grey day, so I went for a run whilst Anna and Morgan lazed around for a bit, then we all headed off to the local school fayre that my sister had been helping to organise. The weather wasn’t great but it gave us something to do for a while, although as per usual we spent more money than we should have there!
The main event of the weekend was a family gathering of the ‘Hardings’ side of the family – My Mums side which includes a whole load of people that I don’t know that well. On saturday night the ‘older’ contingent went off for a posh dinner at Tortworth Hotel whilst some of the the younger contingent (which for some reason included me) stayed at Trudi’s house for Pizza and beers! Come to think of it, maybe the criteria for who did what was ‘maturity’ rather than actual age. Everyone had fun and it was good to see some cousins that I hadn’t seen for years.
Sunday dawned sunny and very hot which was perfect weather for the planned BBQ, although to be honest it was actually a little too hot. We spent the morning frantically setting up gazebos, hanging out bunting, setting up bouncy castles and preparing salad, rolls, and other food. We had everything ready just in time for people to start arriving.
Anna didn’t really know any of the people who were there and although I’ve heard of most of them and have met a few of them now and then, I only really know my Mum’s brother and sister and their immediate family. I didn’t have much chance to chat to people either as I was helping out with things, keeping an eye on Morgan and generally being my usual slightly anti-social self. We’re not used to dealing with too many people!
We did get to chat to a few people though, Morgan seemed to get on well with the other children. Uncle Paul seemed impressed with our weblog book – we took it to show him as he wants to convert his journals into a book, our adventures into beekeeping seemed to interest people as well and we enjoyed ourselves. It looked as though everyone else did too. I was tasked with taking some photos too, only to discover that one of the guests, Dianna, is a professional photographer – Thankfully I didn’t make any glaring errors with where to position people etc and between us and our sons (who took some photos of all the adults for us) we got some good photos.
It wasn’t long before everyone had eaten too much, suffered too long under the sun and were heading home – We had a long, hot, sticky drive back to Wales to look forward to so headed off fairly early.
I just hope my Dad doesn’t decide to do the same as we may need to rent out a few extra fields to fit them all in!
Family Gathering
