Today, is my brothers 24th birthday! Wow how the time flies! I can’t believe how old he is now! (I can hardly believe how old ‘I’ am half the time!) I’ve had 21 years with my brother at my side, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
From playing house together when we were little (I was always the mom with tons of kids -baby dolls- and he was always my cat), to now going to college together and being really good friends, I’m thankful for a brother like him. (I mean, there was a time in between all of that where we hardly liked each other, but doesn’t every sibling go through that..?!)
He is my sanity while I live with my grandparents for the next year or two, he is my ride to college, he is my secret keeper, he is my go-to for knowledge on all college events, and he is my brother and my friend. (Boy do I sound cheesy right now!)
Last night when my brother went to sleep, I got to work on a family tradition that is a must have for birthdays in our family:
I don’t quite remember how long ago it was, but many many years ago, my mother started a tradition on us kids’ birthdays where she would tape streamers across our doors and we would have to break through them. Now, my brother and I being raised to be creative, we didn’t really follow the ‘status-quo’.. So when we would wake up on our birthdays to find our doors covered in streamers, we would slip out without breaking any of the streamers because the door was too pretty to break! (Or at least that was my excuse for not breaking them.)
The next year, my mother tried to make it harder.. Instead of just straight streamers across the door, she made them diagonal, vertical, and some taped to the floor! But of course, my brother and I pretended that we were spy’s getting through lazarbeams, and we got through it those years as well.
Year after year, my mother has done her best to tape up our doors with so many streamers that she thought we couldn’t possibly get through, and each year, we have found a way to pass through the streamers without breaking any. It’s become a competition of sorts, and a family tradition to play this ‘game’ the second we wake up in the morning. Personally, I think that it’s more fun when there are less steamers and more ways to try to get in and out of the room. However, the object of the game has become for the streamer person to stop the birthday girl/boy from getting out of their rooms, and for the birthday boy/girl to get out without breaking the tape or streamers across their doors.
That brings us to today.. My brother wakes up super ridiculously early! And my goal was to try to listen for when he would wake up and his door would open. I sadly didn’t catch how he got out, but when I woke up to find him already up and out of his room, I told him that he needed to get back into his room without breaking the streamers on his door so that I could get a picture for my blog. And GUYS! THIS is how he got in and out of his room this morning!!!
My 24 year old brother got down on his belly, and crawled under his door this morning! He crawled as slow as a snail, and I’m honestly surprised that he didn’t break the streamers across the bottom of the door! I put some streamers at the very bottom of his door just so that he couldn’t crawl under! (You can’t quite see in the picture, but he’s grinning from ear to ear because he won the game.)
Although he eventually did break through his door (because he was tired of crawling in and out of his room), he did win the game this year.. I’ll have to try harder next year. 😉
Towards lunch time, I had the task of making my brothers birthday cake. I wanted to be creative this year and make a cake that he would actually like, instead of just a boring square cake in a pan.. When I asked my brother to pick one of his many ‘toys’ in his room and let me borrow it, he picked out one of the ‘Ice King’ on the Adventure Time show. So off to the kitchen I went, to decide on what I was going to do with the cake..
I happen to find some odd shaped pie pans and decided that they looked like the kings crown. Two hours, and a lot of frosting later, and he had a cake! (I thought about putting snowflake sprinkles on top, but my brother doesn’t like sprinkles, so it was just the crown.)
Look how cute the cake looks!!!
SO, here is my brothers crown shaped lemon cake, with lemon frosting, served with vanilla ice cream! (It was actually really good! And I’m not big on lemon cake!)
With any luck, he had a great day today. ❤ And I know that this next year, will be a great year, as long as my brother is by my side. Here is to you bro! *Raises glass* Another year older, another year wiser(?), and may there be many more years to come!
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