We’re just home from a lovely Sunday visit to Matt’s family out in Berkshire and it reminded me that I haven’t yet shared the wonderful photographs from our last trip earlier in the Summer.

Back in June, we headed along the M4 to celebrate Matt’s step-mum Michele’s 70th birthday.  She marked the special occasion with a huge bbq which brought together families and neighbours over a relaxed summer afternoon.  With her son Richard and son-in-law Adrian in charge of the grills, and the rest of us providing the food, we were treated to a veritable banquet.  Here I am looking rather challenged about what to choose from the heavily loaded tables (this massive amount of food didn’t include any of the meat!).

We wiled away hours catching up with each other in Dick and Michele’s lovely garden.  I love this shot of me chatting to Matt and my brother-in-law – it really demonstrates quite how tall the Agar brothers are when compared to me!

The real highlight was watching the many cousins get along so well with each other – although among the youngest, Sophie and Alex were in their element with their older cousins Jessica and Honor.  Sophie adored her “big girl friends” and has asked about them regularly since the party!

She looks so proud of herself on the swing with them!

The garden swing featured heavily in the childrens’ play all afternoon.  Here’s Alex hanging out with his cousins Max and Edward (and an iPad of course!)

Things soon got more boisterous as the afternoon progressed with the boys giving up the iPad for some more physical play!

Michele’s gorgeous dogs, Koko and Mokka, took all the craziness in their stride and were so well behaved all afternoon.  Every time I see them I feel more and more tempted to get a dog!

Just when we didn’t think we could eat any more, Michele’s daughter Nikki brought out an enormous cake!

And all the children were delighted to help her blow out all the candles!

It was such a special afternoon – and to mark the occasion, Michele’s neighbour agreed to take some more formal photographs of all the guests for a photobook!  So we set up a little studio in their house and got to work!  The children bundled in in various groupings while she set up the camera – no-one was camera shy!

So here are some of the cousins all looking very pleased to be there!

Alex and Oscar enjoyed posing together:

And then Alex and Sophie were joined by Arthur and the littlest cousin, William:

Here’s the formal portrait of the four of us 🙂

And to close, she even managed to get a picture of everyone.  I adore how Alex is holding his sister’s hand!