Our solstice baby, Miss Astrid Elodie has turned 14 🙂 She is very much a teenager now. She doesn’t want to get up before midday. Her room resembles a rubbish tip. We are fairly sure there is something living in there (other than her)! She walks around wearing headphones, ignoring us and face buried in a phone. She also definitely thinks she knows everything and her younger siblings are very annoying (as are her parents).

Luckily we’ve survived another year of parenthood and we are all hoping the moody-teen phase will end soon, and come with a desire to communicate in a form that doesn’t involve WhatsApp, grunts and door-slamming! Aside from the all the teenage angst, she is growing into a fine young lady.

We still get compliments on how confident, independent and polite she is. At every parent teacher interview we hear ‘oh Astrid, beautiful Astrid’ from every teacher. Followed by them telling us they want a class of kids like her.

She keeps us on her toes with her strong-will and desire to be right about everything. Even in the face of all evidence to the contrary! The world would definitely be a more boring place with her, although we’d possibly do less arguing.

In true teenage style, Astrid’s request for birthday activities involved a sleep-in followed by presents and a breakfast of glazed cinnamon scrolls with bacon.

Her main present from us was a new bike as her ladies small was way too small with a seat extender post in, as she is now so tall! ….. but much to her annoyance not yet taller than her parents 😉

I was instructed to make a cake that involved multiple layers of brownies, stuffed with choc-chip cookie dough and finished off with dark chocolate ganache and condensed milk buttercream.

We managed to offload some of the excessive amounts of butter and sugar to a few friends and family. All of whom would have gone much faster at training if we had fed them this cake prior to a squad session 🙂

The new bike is a hit but Astrid also scored a very much desired White Fox hoodie, crocs and plenty of lollies and giant cups. She is in teenager heaven!

We went out for dinner as it was nice to have an actual birthday on a weekend when we didn’t have a million other things to do! Plenty of food was consumed and another birthday was done and dusted.

We keep getting reminded it’s only a few years until she can drive, vote and drink. Where does the time go? The last 12 month have certainly flown by. There is never a quiet moment in this house with all the swimming, dancing, piano, flute, band, bike riding and thousands of other activities. I’m sure she’ll be all grown up before we know it.

Here are just a few photos from Astrid’s 14th year – plenty of travel and adventure. Oh what a year she’s had!

Happy 14th birthday Astrid. I am sure the next year will bring us more adventures together……