This post was originally written November 26, 2006. Emma, who is 14 now, was only 6 years old. I love looking back and remembering the things they said and did. I’m so glad I wrote so much down!

Tonight we were watching The Wizard of Oz. We haven’t watched it in a long time because we only have it on VHS and our VHS player was broken. We’ve only been watching DVDs for the past 9 months or so. But we got a new player so the kids watched some movies today that they haven’t watched in a long time. It made them feel like they had gotten a whole new set of movies!

Anyhow, as we were watching the show Garrett asked what year it was made in. I told him that it was released in 1939. We talked about how long ago that really was and how most of the people who starred in the movie were now dead. We were talking about how if they weren’t dead that they were grandparents and great grandparents now, and really old.

Upon hearing this Emma asked, “Who’s dead?”

I replied, “Well, pretty much all the people in this show.”

Gasping in horror, eyes opened as wide as they could be, Emma said, “DOROTHY’S DEAD???!!!”

Realizing what I had just done to her I lied to her and said, “No, not Dorothy, but many of the others. Dorothy is probably a great grandma by now!”

Sighing with relief and smiling from ear to ear Emma replied, “Oh, good, I don’t want Dorothy to be dead.”

Bless her heart, if she only knew that Dorothy died in 1969 at the tender age of 47 she would be devastated. Thankfully she won’t know. I’ll be keeping that information to myself for a long time. I want her to feel like Dorothy can live forever. Perhaps that’s a childlike dream to have, but afterall, there’s no place like home to be a child with dreams of something great waiting for you over the rainbow.