Are We There Yet?

I think we all can relate to experiencing a bit of the "Winter Blues" during these cold Minnesota winter months. For someone like me, who really loves warm & hot weather, winter months can feel unbearable. It's pretty much the equivalent of "are we there yet?" on a long road trip. Once the holidays and December have passed...I just want to get there. To warm & hot weather that is.

Our residents go through these same feelings as well. Activity participation always drops in the winter months and feelings of boredom, loneliness and a loss of interest seem to spread to every wing. As much as we try to encourage our residents to participate in programs, sometimes they just don't want to. It seems that even bingo, happy hour & entertainment have smaller attendance levels.

So knowing that these months seem to trigger these feelings in our residents, we try very hard to help alleviate their winter blues. I always plan more events & parties during the winter for our residents so they have more things to look forward to. Participation and attendance always pick back up to normal after the gloomy winter days have passed.

We will have a Family Night on January 24th @ 7:00 with Todd Anderson's Neil Diamond Tribute Show. For those of you who haven't seen Todd perform before, he is known as Todd "Elvis" Anderson and puts on a really energetic & fun show. Everyone really enjoyed him last year, so we are very excited to have him come back!

This Family Night is being sponsored by the family of a former resident, Val Lee. Val was with us at Park River for almost 4 years and passed away last April. One of her favorite singers was Neil Diamond. Val's family has generously paid for this Family Night so all our residents, family members & staff can enjoy a fun evening together. What a wonderful way to remember Val! Thank you to Val's family...you have all been a blessing to us in so many ways :-)

Our Coronation for the King & Queen of Hearts will be on Friday, February 8th @ 2:30. Staff, family members & residents are able to vote for one male & one female resident to reign as royalty for the year. Last year, Dewey C. was voted as King and our Queen was Ginger R. Our runners up were Ken P. and Florence M. Ballots will be located at the front desk from February 1st - February 7th!

For our married couples in LTC, we will be having our Sweetheart Dinner on Valentine's Day at noon. We will serve a romantic meal of grilled steak, twice baked potatoes, honey & brown sugar glazed carrots and a white chocolate & raspberry layered cake for dessert. We will also have champagne and live music with Lynn Brownell. All residents will have this meal for Valentine's Day, but our couples will eat in the Chapel.

We will have more fun events & parties in the next few months that I hope you all can come to! In the meantime, we will keep looking forward to Spring! ;-)