A Season of Thankfulness
By Lisa Bloomquist, Activity Director
As deer season opened on Saturday, November 4th we joined in and took aim at targets with our Nerf guns. Bullets were flying everywhere except hitting the targets unless you count bouncing off cups of coffee that is. It came down to a shootout between Yvonne Smith and Pastor Enno Limvere with Yvonne Smith being the sharp shooter taking home the trophy.
Joyce Hagen and another resident celebrated their birthdays with wonderful music by Tom Novotny. White cake with lemon at Joyce’s request was made by Diane Nowers. Sharon Brenner and Ken Netland have been keeping residents busy with games and exercises. Ken also leads Bible study every Wednesday morning. Linda Harsdorf has been busy prettying up ladies nails, bringing us cookies, watering our houseplants and making lovely door decorations.
The Honker vs the Dicey Ladies
We played a new game this month using excessively large foam rubber boingy dice. You would think it would be easy to play this game. We had two teams and the goal was to get the excessively large mind of their own dice in the middle of our rectanglish square. Well the dice bounced this way and bounced that way and almost every which way but into the center of our rectanglish square.
It was the Honkers consisting of Tom Hedstrom, Yvonne Smith and we even let our awesome volunteer Sharon Brenner take a break and be on the Honkers team. The Dicey Ladies consisted of Linda Johnson, 102 year old Irene Peterson and yours truly. The Dicey Ladies rolled out front early in the game with Linda Johnson rolling boxcars. The last round we were neck and neck with the Honkers winning the game by two whole bouncy points.
Shiver Me Timbers
We had a week of pirate themed activities including pirate hats we made by recycling newspapers. Do you remember making pirate hats back in the day? You can Youtube how to make them if you would like to have a fun themed party pirate party. Do you know why some pirates wear a black patch over one eye? We learned some pirate terms, had rum and coke, our hangman game of the month was “things found on a pirate ship” and we ate pirate’s booty popcorn.
Thankfulness
We would like to thank Bethlehem Lutheran, First Congregational, and Zoar Lutheran churches for coming and sharing God’s love with us. Thank you to Penny Ortman, Diane Nowers and Linda Harsdorf for reading to us. Thank you to Meghan Halloran for driving three hours one way to help us feel pretty by dolling up resident’s hair.
We watched the Macy’s day parade on Thanksgiving, had Scandinavian sushi (ham roll ups) on National Pickle Day and were busy making crafts for our annual craft/bake sale. Kay Sivets was our Thanksgiving Bingo coverall winner taking home Tom the turkey for a week. Thank you to Chet Lindskog for faithfully calling Bingo and to Dick Bockovich for helping out as well.
Thank you to Lavona Czaplicki and Marsha Hansen for leading us in our monthly sing-a-long, Doug Sanders for your ballads and the Portage Band for your wonderful music every month. Thank you to Barb Wright for your delicious cookies, the Honor Guard for stopping by for a visit and thank you to all those who send us cards and to our almost daily dog visits from Miss Molly.
I am always amazed and completely blessed by the kindness, thoughtful giving and quality we have in our community. I don’t think you can find better volunteers anywhere on earth.
As always we are thankful for you. Remember we like coffee, we always have room for more volunteers and old age ain’t for sissies.
Happy Holidays from residents and staff alike.