Birthday BBQ's and Bakes

A few weekends back we headed to Shropshire for my mom's birthday.  This was the view that greeted us from our bedroom window! Of course it helped that we had amazing sunny weather all weekend too.  Yes, England in the sunshine is pretty spectacular - it's a pity that sunshine is as infrequent as it is! 

I told my dad the massive purple flowers in the front garden were amazing, he said what purple flowers.  What flowers? They are all over our garden!! Apparently once I referred to them as Rhododendrons he realised what I was on about.  

I stumbled upon these enormous Tulips! have you ever seen such big Tulips? I hadn't, so I just had to snap a picture of them looking all lovely basking in the sunlight! 

When the birthday girl got home from work it was time for the present opening to begin.  Flower arranging books a la Paula Pryke, sticks of Droewors (a South African meat) and Root Beer Floats made my mom a very happy birthday girl indeed! 

As did this rustic jug that she got from my dad, and if you'd known the presents he's got her in the past you would be as surprised as we were that he actually did pretty well this year! She promptly went downstairs and arranged one of the bouquets of flowers she had received at work along with some greenery from the garden and came up with this lovely arrangement - yeah she's a bit of a pro! 

and we ended the night by all indulging in a piece of my mom's favourite dessert - Key Lime Pie! 

On Saturday, we headed over to Weston Park.  I have no idea why the grand house was flying the American flag, but it certainly made me happy to see it! 

Here is a pic of my mom just before she made her amazing discovery of some 'ancient' coins! Yes, she found a pile of coins on the ground and was sure they were going to make her a small fortune.  Upon closer inspection By realised they were 2p's and one of them even had the date of 1992 on it...ancient indeed! We laughed about that for a while and teased her for the rest of the day but she put them in her bag and is convinced that they are going to be of worth to someone...some day! 

For the tree lover in our family, that's Byron, he was loving all these huge unusual trees that surrounded us.  

Dad was less enthused, haha.  No, he's just been in the wars recently and so all the walking around was taking it's toll on him.  We left him resting under this tree for a while and picked him up later! 

You can't really see but in the shadows underneath that tree were loads of deer just chilling out, I think they were shading themselves from the hot sun! 

The happy couple...soaking up the sun...

and By was loving it too - we haven't had many shorts and t-shirt kind of days recently so when they come around you just have to make the most of them! 

Of course if you're South African that means having a braaivleis so that's exactly what we did! 

Boerewors and all...because nothing says braaivleis more than Boerie rolls! 

My new flowery headband, courtesy of By.

I whipped up a pineapple and carrot salad, to complete our S.A theme! and my mom whipped up a mango and avocado salad.

We brought a little taste of America to our evening with Root Beer Floats because no Jones family fun is complete without them! 

Here are the South Africans, enjoying the fruits of their labours...

and just to finish off our weekend of tasty bakes, my mom made a traditional South African Granadilla Fridge Tart.  Her mom used to make it for her growing up, and I don't know why she's waited so long to make it for us because it was amazing! I can see it making plenty of appearances in the future!