My dear sweet Aunt Todd

My 94 year old Aunt Todd passed away since we have been in Manila on July 12.  This picture was taken on Tuesday, June 28th when we saw her on our last time in Atlanta.  She lived with my grandmother (Dad's mom) right next door to us from the time I was four years old-she was like another grandmother to me.  The kids and I went to visit her on Tuesday before we flew to Manila on Friday.  We had a sweet visit and I am even more grateful now that we were able to see her before we left.  I am also thankful to know that I will see her again one day in Heaven and that she is there now happy with other loved ones who went before her. 

She worked in the lunchroom at Summerour Middle School and loved all the kids there as if they were her own.  She was recognized not too many years ago for 50 years of service with bed babies in the Norcross First Baptist Church nursery.  She loved to crochet-my children all have their "Aunt Todd blankets" that she made especially for them, as do untold numbers of other family babies and Norcross babies.  She loved my boys and Ashley just as though they were her own grandchildren and wrote to them faithfully even when that became a hard thing for her to do with her failing eyesight.  She loved to walk and rake leaves and be outside.  She would rake leaves for hours, letting me and her granddaughter Rachel jump in the over and over and over and over.  She was a wonderful cook-making my daddy's favorite ambrosia and one of her specialties "fried apple pies" that were better than the Varsity's.  Every year when all her brothers and sisters would get together for the Thanksgiving reunion she made tons of fried pies (people would even sneak them off the dessert table before we started eating lunch) and she would make sausage biscuits for us to snack on before the real lunch was ready.  She would do anything in this world she could to help anyone.

She never came out of her room in the morning before having her time with God and I always knew-no matter what stage of my life-that Aunt Todd was praying for me.  What a treasure you are, Aunt Todd and you will be missed by so many!

This is Aunt Todd's daughter Becki with my kids just before we left.