Star of the Week: Rosie!
Hello Gold Star Squad, and welcome to Gold Star Friday! It's time to announce our Star of the Week!
Future Stars of the Week will be chosen from reader nominations! But since we are at the beginning of this project, I will be the one nominating our Friday Star of the Week until the time when nominations from readers start to roll in.
Please send me your nominations, and please see the end of this post for more details on how to do that! All recipients of the Star of the Week award who live in the US can choose to receive a free gift from my Gold Star Award Winner collection** on Zazzle!
Since yesterday was Thanksgiving, a holiday which is centered around family, I thought that today would be an appropriate time to honor someone in my own family. I am thrilled to present this week's Star of the Week award to my Aunt Rosie!
I come from a pretty large family on my mom's side – my mom was one of eight children! Despite the size of our extended family, my siblings and I always had a particularly close relationship with our Aunt Rosie, even though we didn't get to see her all that often.
Growing up in Pennsylvania, most of my family members lived within 30 minutes of our house, and many were even closer than that. But not Aunt Rosie! She ended up being the only one of the eight siblings to move out of state – all the way to the faraway land of Maryland!!! (gasp!)
Aunt Rosie would travel back to PA to visit fairly often, probably about every two months or so. Any time that she did come home was a special time for my siblings and me because Aunt Rosie would almost always take us out on some kind of adventure.
We might go miniature golfing and get ice cream afterwards. Or we would go shopping for clothes. Many times we went to McDonald's, which was one of my favorite things to do. I loved getting hot fudge sundaes! We didn't normally get to do things like this, so these outings were a really big deal to us.
I especially loved my Aunt Rosie as a child because she is my godmother. But she was really a fairy godmother to my brother, sister, and me. The times that we spent with her were magical!
Aunt Rosie also loved (and still loves!) to play games, so that was another favorite activity of ours whenever she came back to PA to visit. My parents didn't play games with us much, so it was a special treat for us kids to not have to just play amongst ourselves for once! We played a lot of Cootie, Yahtzee, and Uno back in the day.
One of our favorites as we got older was a game called Electronic Detective. I didn't know anyone else who had it, but it was a ton of fun (it had cool sound effects and everything!), and we were lucky that Aunt Rosie had bought this game just for us.
Aunt Rosie eventually retired from her job in Maryland and moved back to PA. However, I left PA right after college, so our regular visits became a thing of the past.
But I am still SO grateful to my aunt! My mother is no longer with us, and Aunt Rosie has essentially stepped in as a surrogate grandmother to my sister's two daughters. Aunt Rosie never had children, but you wouldn't ever know it from the way she has pitched in to help raise my nieces. She tutors my older niece in various subjects practically every day and has often taken care of the girls after school. I feel that I can speak for my sister when I say that we owe Aunt Rosie a debt of gratitude.
I do get to see Aunt Rosie whenever I go back to PA to visit my sister and her family, and I always enjoy getting to spend some quality time with her. We are still known to play a game every once in a while!
It's hard to convey how much love I have for my aunt – she has had such a huge, positive impact on my life! I am thrilled to honor my Aunt Rosie as our Star of the Week!
And, as always, it's time for a few pictures! Here is one of my favorites of me and Aunt Rosie from my college graduation many moons ago:
And a couple with my sister and nieces from more recent years:
Please join me in congratulating my Aunt Rosie as our Star of the Week!
Would you like to nominate yourself or someone you care about to be our next Star of the Week? To read the rules about the nomination process and get more information about the free gift that U.S. winners will receive, please click here. Then submit the Nomination Form!
**If you click through any of the links on this page and make a purchase from Zazzle, I will receive two separate commissions: one for being the designer of the product and another for referring the sale to Zazzle.