A Fun Filled Foodie Weekend for Mara's Bday!

When the Jones family get together you can guarantee there is always going to be lots of food involved, it's just how we roll! Mara's pre-birthday celebration was no different! Her actual birthday is this weekend but since she's getting off to Copenhagen (lucky her!) we celebrated last weekend in Shropshire instead.

We headed to Shropshire for the day because Mara had picked Tropeiro as her restaurant of choice for her birthday meal - we went a few years back for By's birthday and loved it then! and have been wanting to go back ever since! because what's not to love about an endless supply of delicious meat! 

It was green cards all round so that when the meat man came round he knew to pile it on our plate - por favor! 

Ella really got the hang of things and was joining in the scoffing! 

The resident veggie holding up her 'no thanks' red card and sticking with a plate of salads instead!

Ella was like 'all that meat for me?!'

She got stuck in with her tongs!

After a spot of shopping we headed to the Ice Cream Farm, another family fave! because despite a never ending feast of meat…there's always room for dessert! 

Ella rode a cow before we headed in - check her sticking up hair in the back! it just didn't want to go down that day! too cute! 

and she continued her tractor tour of Shropshire/Cheshire! I think this is her 7th one!

Swinging fun with Auntie Mara and Granny! but be prepared if you do it with her once she'll want it again and again! 

Checking out the chickens!

and finally settling on some tasty flavours inside!

Ella was perfectly situated between Daddy and Auntie Mara so she would point to Auntie Mara and get a little spoonful of her ice cream and then point to Daddy and get a big lick of his cone, and then repeat, repeat, repeat! After a while she decided she preferred Auntie Mara's flavour and just pestered her continually with 'more, more, more' she is quite the little ice cream fiend these days!

Once back at home, Mom crafted this bunting and we got all her presents ready...

By improvised without a blindfold and used his jumper to guide her up the stairs so she didn't know what was coming! 

and then I produced the cake I'd 'secretly' been making in the kitchen - nothing is ever too secret in our open plan house though! and we sung happy birthday and laughed as she attempted to blow out the candle - there was no blowing out that beast though! 

Smiles all round…but really we were desperately waiting for a piece of the cake! 

a banana special (Mara's a big banana fan) with chocolate cream cheese frosting and flakes and mini gummy bananas plus banana chocolate bark on top! because you can't have a birthday without an over the top cake - it's a must!

It was the best kind of weekend!

An egg-citing Easter weekend!

So lots has been happening! My blog has to be renamed...any ideas? Chilling in Milton Keynes just doesn't appeal! Yes the job search was proving fruitless in Shropshire, we headed down to visit By's family for the weekend in Milton Keynes and By found a job within one day and I found one two days later!! so we have relocated and will be staying here now until we head off to Bangor.  It's a shame we couldn't find anything in Shropshire, as we were quite enjoying the country life but you have to go where the work is!

After a week in Milton Keynes we headed back to Shropshire for a whole action packed Easter weekend with all my family.  The weather was amazing and I actually managed to break out the shorts to show off my tanned legs for once! 

By and Arne were in charge of BBQing us a Good Friday Feast which we were able to enjoy outside:

and after lunch we decided to make the most of the sunshine and harking back to our younger days we created a slip and slide and had hours of fun being as crazy as we could!  

Looking wet but happy!

...and after we worked up an appetite we gobbled down 1000 calories in my Easter Dessert Bar:

On Saturday we headed to Chester to the Crocky Trail, an outdoor adventure trail full of rope swings, mazes, slides and all kinds of challenging obstacles!

Here's Mara and Mel sliding around...

and us with a giant Iron Man! The boys were pretty happy that they finally had a weekend that didn't revolve around shopping...being surrounded by a family of girls can be hard on them sometimes! but we made sure this weekend was all outdoor fun! 

Mara won the challenge for staying upright the longest in the hamster wheel!

and she also won in our log wrestle, unfortunately as I fell to the ground I managed to take her down with me! The boys are looking on and loving it in this pic!!

and of course no trip back from Chester is complete without stopping of at The Ice Cream Farm.  They have over 30 amazingly yummy flavours...here's just a few:

It's always impossible to choose but I went with the White Choc, Raspberry & Oreo - it was delish!

Arne was less than impressed with his vanilla bean after requesting 'clothed cream' but someone mis understood his order, it must be that Irish accent of his! but he was still all smiles for this pic! 

After a lovely Easter service at church on Sunday we came home to a lovely Lamb roast, and Mom took a picture with her girls (or the ones that like to be photographed at least).

Then we heard the exciting news that the Easter Bunny had been! Yes we are 24, 28, 29 and 32 and we still have Easter Egg hunts in the garden...don't judge! We love it! and Easter certainly wouldn't be the same without them! 

It also has to be said that the Easter Bunny certainly hides them in trickier places year after year...this year I was having no luck at all until the last few minutes of the search when I finally found one! I was probably finding it so hard because Byron was finding all of them one after another...he is an egg hunting machine! 

Here's a few snaps of how it went down! Mel was her usual competitive self, taking out anyone who stood in her way of some chocolate! Luckily there weren't too many casualties and Arne didn't even have to be subjected to having an egg cracked on his head this year! 

After we'd all eaten far too much, we decided we'd walk it off by a hike up the hill to find a disused mine we'd discovered on a previous afternoon 'stroll'.  

This was inside the mine..

and this was a spot of tree climbing, check out the view!

Not to be outdone, daredevil Mara preceded to climb a tree twice as high as mine!

Luckily my dad brought along his rope in his 72 hour kit (incase we got stuck down the mine!) so we were able to do some rock climbing too!

 

It really was a lovely view from the top! 

and we had to snap this Converse shot for future scrap fodder.

The Bluebells were out in full swing on our walk back down the hill...

and my dad led the way...hat and backpack and all! 

On Monday we had some 'pre-birthday' celebrations for Byron.  As you may well know Byron is a meat loving South African so really there was only one option in my mind as to where we should take him, we headed back to Chester to track down Tropeiro - a Brazilian Steakhouse...but first a spot of pedal boating on the river to work up our appetite for what was to come:

I think has got to be one of the first bank holiday's in history where we have had sunshine and blue skies the whole weekend...amazing!

Here is our very own little Gaucho, a.k.a the meat man! who brought us 7 rounds of meat feast! 

Byron was absolutely loving it, in fact we all were...here Mom is toasting the meat! and if you're not a meat lover the banana fritters are worth the trip alone!

Here I am with the birthday boy...25 years old, getting old...

but never too old for ice cream, we had another pit stop and chocolate waffle cones were the order of the day!

He opened a few South African treats on the day...

and we celebrated with a Smarties and Kit Kat cake I made...By's fave choccies! 

which brings us around to the present!

Last night I headed off to Nando's to meet up with Jay-dee, or so I thought! and then these 3 little faces popped out hiding in the booth!

It was a lovely and unexpected surprise and so nice to not only be enjoying delish delish Nando's, after so long without it, but also with great friends!

It was great catching up and they even spoilt me with a balloon and giant cupcake - they know me so well!