Growing up on a farm, my siblings and I spent a lot of time outside. In fact, we were EXPECTED to be outside, ALL summer. We got to come in for dinner (what we called noon meal), 30 minutes for lunch (a snack), and supper (obviously our evening meal!). 🙂 If we weren’t helping mom or dad on the farm or in the garden, we had all the space a child could ask for, to play and let our imaginations run wild.
I am the second oldest. I have an older sister, another sister who is 11 months younger than me, and my brother is 11 months younger than her. So yes! My brother and I are 22 months apart and there is a sister between us!
When I was younger, I could be a girlie-girl, or a tomboy. My brother, Andrew, and I were very close. We were always each others playmates, especially outside. We played baseball, basketball, built forts, had bike races, played on our swing sets, played in the sandbox, and my favorite, play farm with his toys in the dirt under our deck. It was the most fun for hours and hours. We planted all types of crops while we pretended we were seeding, going to town for anhydrous, and of course, combining.  We’d even have fights about our farming or which of us got what tractor, and one of us would wind up quitting! It was never long before the quitter came crawling back, because it was so much fun. Plus, if you stayed away too long, you could be replaced. Our sister between us, Micky, liked playing with us too and if she wasn’t already with us, she was often somewhere nearby and you would be replaced by her. When I was the quitter, I would always slowly make my way back over towards the deck and inch my way closer to the toys and eventually start playing again. God forbid I ever apologized! I am pretty sure that never happened! That is a hard thing for me to say because I thought I was always right! (Still do sometimes!)
In our teens, my brother and I had the best talks while we ate our bedtime snack. We were roommates for a time in college and we both have teaching degrees in elementary education.
Even though we are adults now, he will always be my little brother. We had to pick a special person to write about for one of our senior papers in high school. I chose him.
He is the most creative person I know. He also does special things that make you smile. When we were roommates, I woke up on my birthday to find a little care bear and homemade birthday card. On another birthday, he went and got from my parents’ house a big poster I had saved that my first grade teacher had made me. The poster said, ‘Happy 7th Birthday Brenda!’ He cut out a ‘2’ and put it in front of the ‘7’ on my ’27th’ birthday. He also gave me the best hug and squeezed me super tight before I moved to the Twin Cities to meet up with Lawyerboy.
He still does those things for his fiance Tiffany and her three kids. He has a way of makeing them feel special. Tiffany loves chocolate. Andrew would call our mom for her cake recipes so he could maker her a birthday cake or some of his other favorites, like our Mom’s Brownies. If he couldn’t get a hold of mom, he’d call me. Last Christmas, I made a cookbook with his favorite recipes. He seemed impressed and appreciative. I got a text from Tiffany a couple of days after Christmas that said, “Just wanted you to know that your brother is still talking about his cookbook and how good of an idea it was!” That is just one reason why I love my brother.
Mom’s Hershey Brownies:
Preheat Oven to 350 degrees – Prep Time: 20 minutes – Bake Time: 30 minutes – Makes 20 to 25
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 can (16 oz.) Hershey’s chocolate syrup
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cream the margarine and sugar together. Add eggs, two at a time, beating well each time. Add the vanilla and Hershey’s syrup and beat until you have a nice chocolate blend. Add the dry ingredients and mix together. Grease a 9×13 jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
*Begin making frosting as soon as the brownies come out of the oven.
Chocolate Sugar Frosting:
6 tablespoons margarine
6 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Put margarine, milk and sugar in a saucepan. (Get the 1/2 cup of chocolate chips ready.) Place the saucepan over medium heat. Using a wooden spoon, stir continuously. When the mixture begins to boil, boil it for exactly 30 seconds. Remove from heat and add the chocolate chips. Continue beating the mixture until you get a spreading consistency. This takes around 2 minutes. (You can tell if it is too runny and needs more beating. It will set almost as soon you pour them on the brownies.) Frost as soon as you have the right consistency and while the brownies are still warm. They are sugary and yummy!
Lawyerboysbakergirl 
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