My Brother Turned 18!!!

There is just over 2 and a half years between my younger brother and I. When I turned 18, my mum threw a big party at the house and invited all the friends and the family she could possibly think of, decorated the house from top to bottom and ordered a huge Costco cake. When my brother turned 18 on the 25th of January, she did exactly the same but had to scale it back slightly - if she didn't tone it down, I reckon my brother would've killed her.

Stuart's birthday fell on a Monday this year so we had the party on the Sunday and spent his actual birthday celebrating just him, my mum and dad, me and his girlfriend. My mum's side of the family have a reputation when it comes to family gatherings. Well, to be more specific, it's my uncle, cousins and myself that have the reputation. Everybody usually gathers in the living room to eat and chat away at family events, not us, we gather either in the kitchen or the conservatory and we really get the party going. This year my uncle brought speakers, disco lights, spinning light bulbs, everything you can think of; including alcohol. The conservatory was where the party was at that night.

The night was a great success, we all danced, drank (reasonably), sang awfully and took an abundance of photo's. Even my mum jumped in a few of the pictures! Stuart had a really good night and he entered his 18th birthday having drinks and a good laugh with people he cares about the most.

On his actual birthday, I was supposed to be going back to university... like that was going to happen, Stuart had presents to open, we had a meal to go to and a movie to see. I was only missing introductory lectures anyways. I decided to get Stuart a personalised hip flask as his 'memorable' gift and then his favourite Def Leppard album on Vinyl because I knew my parents had bought him a Vinyl player, he was over the moon that I'd managed to track one down in such good condition. The facial expression that appeared when he opened the gifts made all the effort and money worth it. He now has a very decent and ever growing Vinyl collection, ranging from ACDC to Justin Bieber. 

Of course I couldn't go through the day without posting a whole bunch of my favourite photo's of Stuart and I on his Facebook for all his friends and the family to see. It was difficult but I eventually managed to pick after a few hours of searching through boxes and boxes of photographs.

In the evening, we had originally planned to have a meal at TGI Fridays and go to the cinema to see Ride Along 2 but when does anything ever go right to plan? We didn't have a meal at TGI Fridays, instead we ended up at a Carvery for Stuart to have his favourite dinner; sirloin steak. We also did'nt go and see Ride Along 2, that was replaced by the film Dirty Grandpa starring Robert DeNiro and Zac Efron. I'll be honest, I did not have high expectations for this film in the slightest because the trailers I'd seen were awful, however, it was actually really good and really funny. I would definitely recommend this film to anybody, especially those who find shows like Celebrity Juice funny. Plus Stuart has promised to take me to see Ride Along 2 very soon since I really wanted to see it!

Overall, I thought the birthday celebrations we had for my brother turned out great and thankfully so did he despite how fussy and particular he can be. I still cannot believe that he is 18 years old and can legally go out to clubs and buy alcohol now; both of which he has already done. My family have A LOT of big birthday's and celebrations coming up this year, this was just the first of the many to come. 2016 is definitely going to hurt everyone's bank balance!

xxx