Boy oh boy has it been a long week!
Starting with the journey from Manchester to Birmingham, leaving myself less than 24 hours to get ready for Essex, this has been one hectic week.
Max drove us down to Essex on Monday as it was his granddad’s funeral on the Tuesday morning. The funeral was sad, as you’d imagine, but it was also so beautifully done with a lovely group of important people to the family in attendance, a bugler performing The Last Post and a fitting tribute from Max’s dad.
The wake was incredible, Max had dug out some old slide film and standard 8 films full of beautiful family memories from when his father was a child, so we all sat around and watched the home movies, and looking through the slide films, whilst people ate, drank and shared happy memories of Max’s granddad.
So the week started off emotionally draining that’s for sure, with a jam packed 3 days in Essex sorting bits and bobs out at the bungalow.
We arrived back in Birmingham on Wednesday evening faced with the task of what to wear to my sister’s graduation. Whatever I put on that I liked my mom said “not quite right” or “no definitely not that one”, so we settled for a dress that she loved and I had lukewarm feelings towards – but never mind!
Bright and early on Thursday morning Max and I got up and started to get ready, having to eat our lunch at 10:30am as that was the last opportunity we’d have to eat before 6:30pm (something that wouldn’t phase me but I was worried how Max was going to go 8 hours without eating anything)! We got into our “smarts” and got on the train with my nan from Tamworth to Derby, where the ceremony would be taking place.
Max and I got our tickets very last minute so had received balcony tickets, but when we arrived they said for us to try and find spare seats in the main hall, because we were the only two sat up there!! The staff were so accommodating and they kept laughing and joking saying they’d been waiting for us and that we would get the best personal treatment with them as it was only us hahaha. But thankfully we found some seats in the main hall so that we could actually see my sister graduate!
The ceremony wasn’t as long as I thought it would be, however my hands got tired very fast after clapping for a few hundred graduates. When it was finally my sister’s turn, the tension was building, she was worried she was going to trip and fall etc., but no, she handled it incredibly well, a flawless walk across the stage, but the guy announcing the names pronounced her name wrong!! How?! I could maybe see getting confused with the first name “Lydia”, but “Parsons”?!?! Really?! How do you mispronounce Parsons??
Regardless of the name blunder, we had a fantastic day, took lots of photos (many of which will feature in my July photo series I’m sure) and had an amazing meal at Fat Cat, well worth waiting 8 hours for, and one too many cocktails (but they were just so good!!) with the family, and the families of Lydia’s two best friends from uni!
We went home and crashed out haha! We were absolutely ruined, so so tired, but allowed ourselves a little lie in on Friday morning, surfacing and going into town to grab some food and drink for the weekend.
I had not seen my two closest school friends for about 4 or 5 months, which is really rubbish and we find it so hard to catch up often with me being in Manchester, G being in Birmingham working hard for her families company, and Erin being a total rockstar at the moment absolutely smashing festival season! So we all managed to free an evening for a long awaited catch up!
Max and I hosted the evening and had the girls around and made food and brought lots of wine (which mainly got drunk by me and Erin haha). It was so nice just to sit and talk for hours, eating good food and drinking cheap wine, with some amazing company!
Last night again we totally crashed out, exhausted after the long day we’d had.
Waking up this morning, I have another list as long as my arm to complete:
- Clean up from last nights festivities
- Walk Lady (my dog)
- Start packing to go to Bournemouth!!
- Wake Max up (it’s alright for some, I’ve been up since 6am!)
- Plan things we want to do when we get to Bournemouth
- Fake tan (not essential, but kinda essential)
- Plan and schedule blogs for the next week or so as I will be without internet
- Meet up with more people before Monday
- Find my camera charger (oops)
I hope you have had a lovely week, and I hope even more that it wasn’t as hectic as mine!
M x
boats
sunrise ft. Max
journalingmaddie.wordpress.com 