This is our Mom (Carol and my) at 104 years old!
Believe it or not she lives in her own house alone (the Lord is with her) so she has kept her independence. She pays her own bills, cooks, does her own laundry (and sometimes mine), keeps house (she has a cleaning lady come once every 3 weeks or so) and generally attends to her own affairs. She is very political and watches the news all day.
She doesn’t like old pictures and doesn’t like to talk about old times.
She has a Kindle and likes to read novels on it.

She knows the weather, too.
She has a prayer box. She takes prayer requests and anything she puts in her prayer box gets answered pretty quickly. She says it is not magic. She says the Lord knows when I put somebody’s name in the prayer box that He is to take care of that person.



Mom loves each member of her family and keeps in touch with everyone. She is always happy to greet you when you go to visit. She keeps herself always looking pretty.

Her house is stylish, too. She doesn’t like the old things. She likes new things.

She has 13 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren, and 7 great great-grandchildren. She has all their pictures on the refrigerator. :)

She loves to cook and her specialties are Grape-nut pudding, Toll House Cookies (she learned from the woman who originated the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie in the 1920’s). She loves to learn new recipes, too, especially sweets.

She had a hip replacement was she was 101 – the doctor said he would take a chance with her because she was in such good shape. We (Carol, me, my brother) were worried but she flew through that operation like it was nothing. She did lose the use of one eye, though she stopped sewing for a year and then decided she might as well sew and then made some gorgeous pillows. She doesn’t like to be bored and she gets bored easily. Is that funny or what? She likes to keep moving (maybe that’s where I get it from).

This is Mom’s kitchen.



And part of her living room.



Mom’s bedroom:



She’s always been a decorator.

Now for the party. We hired a condo recreation hall by the sea and it came with a pool. The kids had so much fun swimming. God was with us because it didn’t rain! Whew. It was a rather small place, after all. We kinda sweated that out all week.

Here is Sheila (far left), Carol, me, and Mom. There was a beautiful solarium also with round glass tables. Gorgeous place, it was.



Here was the theme: I made jam – blueberry (did a post on that), strawberry rhubarb, and blueberry cinnamon (wow. what flavor). I might do a blog post on that one, too.
And we had the jam with corn muffins, croissants, and crackers.



My daughter, Laura, made these little tissue paper flowers from colored tissue paper. She put 6 layers together, cut a circle, and then put a paper fastener in the center. She scrunched up the circles to look like a flower and glued them onto the card that said, “Tea and Jam with Gram”. She’s so clever -  and crafty, too. :)



We – uh, Carol – made cinnamon butter and it was lusciously wonderful.



Recipe for cinnamon butter:

Blend together:
1 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
It’s yummy, people. Yummy. Reminds me of the Texas Roadhouse cinnamon butter.
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Here are the tables all decorated.



The center decorations are little glass votive pots filled with little verbena plants and sweet alyssum flowers. Everyone got to take one home.






My niece, Judi, who is a fantastic cook, made little tiny quiches... bacon, broccoli, and asparagus .. 3 different kinds!!! 



We had stuffed shells, hamburgers and hot dogs, the regular types of salads, cake and chocolate covered strawberries. (oh, by the way, strawberries are ripe here in Connecticut).
These look terrible but they tasted good.  Ha! That’s what counts.



Here are some of the grandkids we could round up.



See the nice big 104? Incredible.

She’s an incredible woman and we are so blessed to have her.

God bless, everyone!