(26/07/06)
Juliana and Alice never do parties by half, so for Juliana's birthday party we all went off to the countryside to have a very English weekend at a country retreat!
BBQ's were the staple diet, with scones and whipped cream for dessert, of course (honestly, I was expecting a dog called Timmy and lashings of ginger beer to be flowing too!):
Here's Ben, serving the food French style for some reason:
The weekend consisted of lounging about in the sun:
or shade:
Drinking pitcher after pitcher of Pimms and lemonade (the lovely Kate here):
Rousing games of Croquet (Alice taking a cracking shot):
Here's a Croquet-ball-cam view of Kate taking her shot:
Juliana giving an action-woman display of the correct route around the croquet course:
Pétanque (I'm here with Ben, yes that's a very stylish top hat on my head):
And swing-ball, which also doubled up as a game of take-each-others-head-off:
The house was surrounded by a moat, having it's very own boathouse:
The canoes proved very useful in fishing out any tennis or croquet balls that went in the drink:
Or for just chilling out, having a nice paddle (or seeing just how fast you could go and ramming the banks):
To top it all off, there was an indoor swimming pool with water-slide!
God help you if you forgot your swimming costume, there where spares:
Here's a video of our Swimming pool antics, what, you think we wouldn't be responsible with a water-slide and swing to use?!
Low-res (download)
Medium-res (via Google, recommended)
And of course the evening was spend around the fire, drinking and singing the night away:
The English Countryside, not just for cows.