Green Acres Manor News - January 2007

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

We had such a wonderful and full month of December with our residents. There were so many activities that I don’t know if I can fit them all in to one newsletter!

We will start with a surprise visit from Santa Claus himself on Saturday, Dec 9th. Thank you to the Kenwood Fire Department for bringing Santa to us. He spread his Yule time joy and posed for pictures with every willing and able person in the house. We were then able to take seven residents out for a nice day of shopping and lunch on Dec 13th. It was great for them to get out of the house and enjoy the ‘best part of the season’ according to Monica! Thank you to Megan Hassler and Linda Geistlinger for helping and going with us.

We had organized the twelve days of Christmas activities with Debbie at the helm. This was so much fun to get every one involved in some way. The residents loved being able to write out Christmas cards to send to loved ones. They saw some great classic Christmas movies. They helped decorate our Christmas tree, make cookies and other treats, play games, worked on puzzles, and built a ginger bread house. The best part of all was on Christmas morning. We had invited families to come and share the morning with us, helping to open gifts for our residents. So many people came, which made it such a wonderful experience, not only for the residents but for us as well. It was a real family style Christmas. People were opening presents faster than we could take pictures. Thank you to all that came, and thank you to all who gave gifts both for the residents and for the staff. We are all very appreciative of your kindness and generosity. It was truly a Christmas to remember.

And to help remember this Christmas…we took so many pictures that we couldn’t really get the right sample into this news letter…so I conned Monica into making CD’s with all the pictures we took of the Christmas season. If anyone would like one, please let me know and we will make one available for you at Green Acres Manor.

As I said in the last news letter, the Norovirus is running rampant in the North Bay. There have been many news articles in the Press Democrat about different facilities having outbreaks as well as stories on TV. I want to reiterate, that we really appreciate visitors using the anti-bacterial hand rinse at the sign in table, and not visiting at all if they are sick. We have been very fortunate to this point and want to continue our measures to keep everyone healthy and well. Thank you for you support with this.

Believe it or not we also celebrated three birthdays in December. Charlie turned 84, Jack turned 87, and Donald turned 82. It’s funny that all of our male residents had their birthdays in the same month.

Lastly, we have purchased a nice brand new coat and umbrella rack for all visitors to use which will be right inside the front door…enjoy! I was also able to redecorate one more bedroom during this past month. Betty loves her décor. Only a couple of bedrooms left!

I hope everyone has a prosperous, healthy, and enjoyable new year in 2007.