Tough life of a teenager

Oh how confusing the life of a teenager can be at times.
You want to drink, but you do not want the hangover the day after. Man, those are some serious decisions to be made. You may decide not to drink at all and still have a nice evening, but certainly it would be more spectacular, embarrassing, shocking and hilarious when you got drunk. The day after however will also be shocking, it will be shocking how horrible you look and how horrible you feel...
Another dilemma is that you want to eat the entire chocolate bar, bowl of M&M's, and jar of Ben & Jerry's, but you absolutely do not want to be a chubby kid. Because everybody knows: chubby kids are well... chubby. And that is not a positive thing. Of course there are boys that dig them lovehandles and stuff, but generally speaking you better be average sized to get yourself a decent boyfriend! Also, you want to watch the latest episode of Gossip Girl, but you do not want to have to wait a whole more week for the next one. This really is a painful dilemma. The best thing about waiting is that you can spend one entire Sunday afternoon a month watching episodes of your favorite series, preferably accompanied by a chocholate bar and a bowl of M&M's but yeah, we have addressed that issue before...
People always talk about the children in Africa being so poor and having such a tough time. But honestly, they do not even have decisions to make, so doesn't that make us, Western teenagers much more miserable? The African kids should feel sorry for us Oh the tough life of us teenagers... (and no, I am not being serious, it is called sarcasm! I can proudly say I speak sarcasm fluently)

A girl can dream, right?

Someday I will have a kitchen like this. Someday when me and my husband have moved to the British countryside with our three adorable children, that is. In the weekends we will have both our families over for luxury dinners and lazy brunches. All the cousins will play together in our backyard, playing hide and seek; chasing one another through our orchard while secretly eating all the berries and apples, because that is what kids do. There will be pillow fights and running around the house, up and down the stairs. The adults will be angry, telling the children to stop acting so foolish and just calm down and go to bed, but in our hearts we admire them for their energy and hearing their loud laughs makes us proud.

In the winter we will spend long cozy evenings not in front of the telly, but in front of the fireplace while looking at each other over our steaming cups of tea. I probably spent all of the afternoon in the kitchen with my children, baking a delicious pie for us to enjoy after our supper. And then when all is said and done, the sun has set and the children are off to bed, my husband and I will silently sit next to each other, his arms wrapped around me, counting ourselves lucky to have such a blessed life. We will realise that it could have been different, it could have been so different. My husband and I will make breakfast for our precious little children before taking them to school and go our separate ways to work. The daily rituals are always the same, but never will they be a bore. It will be our days, our lives, our little universe.

When spring finally comes after a long, cold winter, we will redecorate our house to let the fresh air in. Our children will stand against the wall and carefully measure how much they have grown over the winter and draw a new line above the old one. They will be disappointed because they want to be bigger, they want to be stronger and they want to be older. All I want is for them is to stop growing, to stay this way for just another couple of years so that I can enjoy it for just a little longer. My husband will tell me how gorgeous I look when I am sitting on a little bench in the garden, reading a book that I have read so many times already. He will kiss me on my forehead and go for a long walk with our children. When they come back we will all sit around the big and robust wooden table that my husband built with his friends. The children will raise their voices because they have so many adventures to share with me. How the youngest one tried to climb a tree and how the two siblings helped him getting out again when he had climbed too high and got scared. How their dad just stood there watching them because they had convinced them they were strong enough to solve the problem by themselves, and they were right. They had grown up.