100 Years on the Yellow Brick Road

 

 Something cool happened last week- my great grandma turned 100 years old! (Did I ever tell you I'm going to live to be 102?) We are pretty proud of her around here. In addition to raising my grandma and 5 other children, who were likely just as much of a handful growing up as they are now, she has worked hard and led an interesting life. "Old Grandma" didn't get to finish school the first time around. She had to drop out to help her family. I know she wishes she could have finished because she once told me her dream job would be a high school English teacher. When she was in her 80's, I think, she earned her GED! Old Grandma is a crossword puzzle whiz. She always used to have one on the table when we would go visit. In the last couple of years, her eyesight has started to go which makes crossword puzzles understandably difficult, but she is still so sharp!

Another accomplishment is that she has been married to her younger man, Old Grandpa, for almost 75 years! They will celebrate their anniversary in May. Old Grandma was probably almost considered an "old maid" being unmarried at 25 years old in 1938. She met Old Grandpa and the rest is history. :)

Of course we had to throw a huge party. We had a reception for the community then family stayed after for a nice soup dinner. When you're a Dorothy from Kansas, it's easy to come up with a party theme. One of my cousins came up with "Dorothy's Rainbow Journey: 100 Years on the Yellow Brick Road". We had touches of the Wizard of Oz everywhere. a yellow brick carpet led guests into the room, paper yellow brick roads served as table runners, we had cupcakes for every color of the rainbow, and our family tree was of the grouchy, apple-throwing variety. Another cool feature was a decade table. We had signs for each decade along with props from or representing the era.

It was hard to come up with props for the 2010's, but we did have a really cool congratulatory letter from the first family!

Here's my husband and my little guy, who was enjoying a very blue cupcake. My cupcake contribution was lemon with lemon cream cheese frosting. Annnnd, now I'm hungry.

 We took tons of family pictures. I think there were 90+ family members in attendance. Above is the picture of my generation, the great grandkids. This picture cracks me up, especially the front row. Check out the little boy 3rd from the left. You can tell he's tired of pictures! And right next to him is another cousin turned around waving. Can you find me? Shouldn't be hard with the giant yellow arrow pointing at my head.

This was such a fun day! And yes, I know how very lucky I am to have the family I do. I still have all my grandparents and three great-grandparents. In addition, I've known 2 more great-grandparents in my lifetime. I'm so glad to know my great-grandparents and I hope that I'll be able to be as good an example as they have been.