I had really good intentions of posting a “Friday Favorite” every Friday, but that isn’t going to happen, so instead I will just post one when I have a really good favorite to tell you about.

Sunday we made a little road trip after church to Cassville, MO to celebrate the oldest person in my family. She is my Great-Aunt on my dad’s side and she turned 95 on Saturday! This lady is one of my favorite relatives (shh don’t tell my non-favorites), she has kind of always been like a 3rd grandma to me. She never got married, so she didn’t have children or grandchildren and I have always been happy to fill that role.

You know how certain holidays always bring particular memories to mind? When I think of Thanksgiving I think of my great-aunt, for the first 17 or so years of my life every Thanksgiving was spent at her house. She loved having everyone over for the holiday. Her house had a large upstairs room which was a dream come true to a kid like myself, who’s house did not have an upstairs. When my cousins, my brother, and I would play up there it would be transformed into a club house, castle, train station or whatever else we could come up with. When I was about 9 or so I figured out a little secret, if I would spend the night before Thanksgiving day a smidge of spoiling might take place. Now don’t get me wrong it wasn’t anything over the top, my hometown had 365 people in it, so when I stayed with her “in town” (a town of then about 4,500) which is where I live now we would live it up! A typical evening might consist of going to Wal-Mart for a new Barbie (yes, 9-year-olds used to actually play with Barbies), we might go to McDonalds for a cheeseburger and maybe an ice cream cone, then for the grand finale we would go home and I could watch CABLE TELEVISION! Y’all it was a big deal, she even had the Nickelodeon channel. We would always stay up late, but she would always be up early the next morning. These little sleep overs will always be precious memories to me.

For a few years our McDonald’s had a breakfast buffet, so any time I would spend the night we would go there for breakfast. I remember so clearly one morning she told me to hurry and get dressed because if we don’t get there early all the “old people” will eat everything. This was so funny to because I was pretty young and she was 65 when I was born so to me at that time she fell in the “old people” category.

She is definitely a prime example of that saying, you’re only as old as you feel, she has always been active and always up for going somewhere when she was younger. She only stopped driving about 6 or so years ago. She is the next to oldest of 5 siblings and I have seen photos of her lunging my grandpa, her brother, around as a toddler and he weighed almost as mush as she did. All of her life has been devoted to caring for others. There is a family who employed her around 1957 to be their nanny, one of their children needed special care and she took care of him until his passing around 2000, during her time of caring for him so took care off and on of many others in his family both young and old.

Here are a few shots from Sunday, she is always so happy to see Olivia, when anyone would walk into the party she would say “did you see that baby?”.