St. Luke Living Center correspondent
Last week’s news
It was a little alarming Friday morning when our bakers began making Triple Threat Chocolate Cookies, a recipe from Edna Anderson of Newton. But it seems they were fairly harmless. The three chocolates in these crispy cookies were cocoa, cocoa crispy rice cereal, and chocolate chips. The only threat was to the waistline.
In the afternoon, Lois Winter and Bill Schimpf guided our bingo players through the usual series of games.
Our accordionist, Gene Vinduska, has ventured into the world of strings. This Saturday morning was his living center debut on the guitar, but he hasn’t put his heavy instrument into mothballs.
Kolache-making went on in the afternoon and evening with May and Florence. They learned the “art” from Amelia, who has made a few dozen in her 102 years and “had more fun than a barrel of monkeys.”
Rev. Jeremiah Lange of Marion Presbyterian Church was our guest minister at an earlier time Sunday evening. Norma Riggs provided a musical “Call to Worship.”
After church, we enjoyed popcorn, coffee, pitch games, and more freshly-baked kolaches.
We listened as Judy Priest and Shirley Bowers gifted us Monday afternoon with a lovely program of music. Their songs were so beautiful. We pleaded for a return visit in December to share Christmas melodies with us.
Resident council met Tuesday morning and discussed the approaching Thanksgiving holiday meals, chose the afternoon of Dec. 24 for our Christmas party, and asked for movie suggestions to be shown on our Saturday classic movie matinees.
We asked Karen Druse, housekeeping department supervisor, to visit with us for a few minutes. She advised residents their room floors will have a makeover after Christmas, making them appear shiny and new. We also discussed the importance of promptly putting names on any new items of clothing received at Christmas for laundry purposes.
By 12:40 p.m., we had finished lunch and were ready to receive Mrs. Hancock and the Marion Elementary School kindergarten class who sang some cute songs including “The Turkey Boogie-Woogie,” with actions, of course.
Later that afternoon, the book club read of Marley’s screen career, brief as it was, as the “big, dumb, loopy dog” in the movie, “The Last Home Run.”
During prayer group with Dick Pracht Wednesday morning, hymns of praise could be heard outside the chapel with Dick’s mellow voice leading the way.
The afternoon was spent happily in the midst of Rainbow Riders who had come with their sponsors to make individual, ribbon Christmas wreaths with us. We had prepared plates of after-school snacks for the children who then chose partners and went to work. Before leaving, the youngsters sang some Christmas songs. We all sang “Happy Birthday” to 7-year-old Kennedy Fahey. Thank you, Mary Jeffrey, Donna Hajek, and the rest of the Riders.
The cold and windy weather begat a change of plans Thursday afternoon. We stayed home from a planned outing and made birthday cakes and Mrs. Fields’ Famous Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies. Not a bad trade!