St. Luke Living Center
By SUE GUTSCH
St. Luke Living Center correspondent
Dec. 27-Jan. 2
In our opinion, Christmas doesn't "end" on Dec. 26. Shirley Bowers must share this thought and played Christmas songs and carols Thursday morning during hymn sing.
Thursday afternoon was spent with "A Cup of Christmas Tea," by Tom Hegg, a reading must at least annually. Every resident was asked to bring a gift or something special with them to share its meaning or story with us. We reminisced and talked of New Year's resolutions, ones we make and why we don't. Khrista served hot spiced tea, appropriately, and homemade cookies.
The living center bakers were back in the kitchen Friday noon and made chewy cranberry-oatmeal cookies, a new recipe for us. We sampled the dried cranberries before we began and were surprised at their sweetness. Our cookies tended to be more crunchy than chewy, but the cranberries, brown sugar, honey, and walnuts added to usual ingredients made for a very tasty cookie.
Pat Smith was here Saturday morning to bring sacraments and pray the rosary with our Catholic residents in the chapel.
We were pleased to have Bethann Black of the Florence-Aulne United Methodist churches as our guest minister Sunday afternoon. The Rev. Black not only brought in the message, but also brought a pianist and soloist who blessed us with their talents.
We didn't do entirely new things to begin the new year, but we did offer new nail color at pretty-up Monday morning. Ellen Darrow came in the afternoon to play piano selections and she certainly isn't new! She's given of her time and special talent for a wonderfully long time. And then the eggnog we enjoyed with snacks was new — no old "nog" for us.
Since we hadn't played alphabet bingo for awhile, we chose the letters XMNS (an A doesn't work on bingo cards) Tuesday and struggled to forget the real ways to bingo.
The ever-popular book club met Tuesday afternoon and this day's chapters brought back warm memories when Ma Ingalls received a shiny black cook stove, PAT 1770.
We've made good use of our new large van. It was on the road making three trips in one day this week. Some residents who hadn't had the opportunity to go sightseeing in quite awhile especially enjoyed the outings.
