It’s one other milestone birthday for you, my beautiful woman – whereas final yr marked a complete decade of you being in my life, this yr spells the top of your time at major college and the subsequent steps in the direction of changing into a teen and an grownup your self.
Not that you just’re fairly prepared for that – waving farewell to your acquainted college this yr, plus the combination of nerves and pleasure concerning the new college, you’ve had a number of sympathy with Peter Pan not too long ago and his want to not develop up.
However whereas he may need wished for everlasting childhood, time in the actual world ticks ever on (even when we’d each prefer to gradual it down typically) – though as I look again on the previous 12 months, for my customary birthday put up, we’ve made the many of the days and weeks.
Re-reading final yr’s birthday put up, I’d already seen flashes of the teenager I believed you may develop into – these are undoubtedly getting increasingly more frequent!
At instances, you’re nonetheless very a lot a toddler – having deliberate a brief go to to the brand new Gruffalo Clubhouse in Blackpool to evaluate it, we spent far longer than deliberate as you embraced the prospect to play.
At different factors, I really feel I’m quick forwarding to your fifteenth birthday. In some methods, that’s incredible – you’re growing your personal pursuits increasingly more, that are influencing our travels and days out (and extra enjoyable for me than comfortable play!)
A go to to the Hallyu exhibition on the V&A to feed your rising obsession with Okay Pop, a visit to Kensington Palace collectively for the combination of celeb and trend on the Crown to Couture exhibition, plus a donut tour of London and bubblewraps in Chinatown.
After your 12 months 6 manufacturing of Alice in Wonderland, we’ve additionally received an escape room themed round Lewis Carroll’s basic novel lined up, as we head off for a mini metropolis break in Oxford in autumn too. After a busy yr making ready for 11+ entrance exams for secondary college and SATs, I can’t assist marvel in case your path may in the future lead right here?
Given your spectacular outcomes, I’m sure you’ll be able to obtain something you wish to. I’m so, so happy with you.
There are particular moments of stripling angle too, and firmer opinions on what you’d love to do whereas we journey (fortunately you’re not but bored by all the things I counsel although)
For now I can – often! – drag you away from any screens to discover with me, even in the event you insisted on a while chilling out whereas we have been in Cut up at Easter, quite than packing each second full. Even when I flatly refused to allow you to watch Recreation of Thrones, irrespective of how usually you requested whereas we have been there…
This yr has seen one of the memorable journeys we’ve ever achieved collectively too – and that’s up in opposition to some stiff competitors. Again in 2020, I’d been taking a look at arranging a safari in Africa, earlier than the pandemic scuppered all our plans.
When the chance got here up once more final yr, the largest battle was not telling you instantly. Your face while you opened the mini suitcase and scratchcard I’d purchased and revealed we have been off to Kenya was an image.
After all, that was solely the beginning: seeing Africa’s unimaginable animals within the wild within the Masai Mara’s Naboisho Conservancy was unforgettable, your impatience at hanging round ready for a leopard vanishing when he lastly appeared to climb again up the tree to devour his kill.
Your slight nervousness about whether or not the lions usually ate guests turning to please as we watched lion cubs enjoying like overgrown kittens.
And your realisation that whereas hippos look cute, if dozens of them lurk collectively in a small stretch of river with comparatively low water, they don’t scent anyplace close to as cute! Only a few highlights to remove.
Regardless of a busy yr together with your more and more full diary, we’ve had escapes nearer to residence as properly – glamping in Kent, the place your pleasure on the scorching tub was matched by your pleasure of getting a USB plug by your double mattress on its excessive raised platform.
There was a ship journey to Brownsea island to attempt to discover purple squirrels – with out success, however I did get to fulfil the promise I’d made to you earlier than Covid, when our deliberate time out on a earlier journey to Dorset had been rained off.
We did discover llamas in Surrey at The Merry Harriers in Hambledon, heading out on a stroll within the Surrey Hills with our new furry pal Mungo, who immediately gained us throughout.
You fell in love with Venice virtually as shortly as with Mungo, hopping on the vaporetti to get round, snapping dozens of your personal pictures of Burano, attempting to find lions and settling all the way down to make your personal carnival masks at our Venetian Masks Workshop – all these hours of drawing and colouring coming into their very own.
We retraced our pre-pandemic steps to Bruges and Ghent, the place copious waffles and scorching chocolate helped to take the sting off the freezing temperatures of our midwinter escape.
And added one other Greek island to our checklist too, spending two weeks exploring Crete – seeing the house of the minotaur at Knossos fed your love of Greek myths, you endured the mountain roads with me to discover a pink sand seashore and braved the terrapins to swim in Lake Kournas.
Though the much less mentioned concerning the colony of ants which had made its residence within the kitchen of our second villa, the higher…
Hopefully our subsequent island, Rhodes, will embrace fewer bugs! Someplace I final visited once I was about your age, it’s humorous that wanting again at myself then, I appear so younger, whilst you all of a sudden appear so grown up.
Though with extra strikes on the horizon, 1000’s of cancelled flights and who is aware of what different journey disruption forward, getting away continues to be not clean crusing. Let’s hope that by subsequent yr I can cease writing that sentence!
I’m decided to take pleasure in this summer time collectively although, that no man’s land between major and secondary college. I ponder if issues will change as a lot as I believe over the subsequent 12 months, once I come to learn this put up again in a yr?
For now, we even have the sunshine of the Algarve and a few days out in London to take pleasure in as properly. I do know that, proper now, you’re undecided you wish to develop up too quick.
My beautiful woman, that’s completely high quality with me.
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