Surprise leaving party

Well, this is the first entry from our round the world tour and this one comes from sunny England (Harefield)

Unbeknown to Dianna and I a surprise party had VERY sneakily been arranged for the Saturday night (6 June) by Dianna's sister Claire and others and everyone involved did a spot on job of keeping it quiet as we did not have a clue about it until we got there.

There was SO many times that people could have let the cat out of the bag but not one person let on and it was definitely a massive surprise! I can honestly say that I (Matt) have never been speechless before until we walked through the door and saw the room full of people we know and love - all there just for us. It was brilliant to see all of our family and friends again (some of whom had made a long journey to be there) as we didn't expect to get to see everyone again before we left so it was a VERY VERY VERY nice surprise.

As the night wound on (and i started getting over my initial shock) everyone started getting drunk and merry. At 9.30pm the band 'Sticky Jack' kicked in who were brilliant (if anyone wants their details for bookings let us know), everyone got up and started dancing (or trying to dance in my case) and having a great time. The drinks were flowing and there was a ton of food. Everyone seemed to have a really good time (well done again to the organizers for their hard work). Some of us didn't end up leaving till 01:30ish, by which time I'd had way too much to drink but had had a wicked evening.

Needless to say I got horribly drunk as usual and woke up the next day with a terrible hangover which wasn't helpful as Dianna and I had a christening to go to (apologies to Luisa and Dean and especially Isabel for the state I was in - falling asleep in the church, etc).

All in all it was a fantastic evening and an incredible surprise - so well done to all for keeping it so quiet!

Thank you to everyone who came - it really was lovely to see everyone and meant so much to look around the room and see everyone we know and love and also thank you everyone for signing our leaving book and for your VERY kind donations towards our travel fund which will be put to good use around the world. So many good memories already and we haven't even left the country yet :-)

Well this is the first of many blogs, I (Matt) do not claim to be a good writer so I apologise for any spelling or grammar mistakes that may occur over the year but you will just have to put up with them!!!!

Please please please do keep in touch, send mails and add messages to blogs etc, if we don't get back to you straight away don't take offense, as we may be slow but we will get back to you in the end, we will be checking in on Facebook as well from time to time so if you don't get mail back shout us on there.

Look forward to seeing you all again in a year, missing everyone already

Regards

Matt and Dianna
xx

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