National Nursing Home week celebrated

The month of May was full of many fun and entertaining activities and events for all of us here at Parkview Home, Wayland, to participate in! I?ll mention just a few of the things that we?ve been up to lately.

We celebrated National Nursing Home Week during the month. The theme this year was ?Bring on the Fiesta!?

We had one or more activities within the Mexican theme each day of the week. Each day we had a dress-up day in one or more of the colors of the Mexican flag. We had various Mexican decorations up throughout the facility, including Mexican blankets, piñatas, sombreros, maracas, pictures, pottery, hand-painted chair, and more.

National Nursing Home Week began on Mother?s Day. All of our female residents were presented beautiful silk corsages that morning. Pastor Dave Forrester of Trenton Missionary Church came for our Sunday morning worship service.

Our residents enjoyed family visits all day, and many went out with family for get-togethers also. We held a Mother?s Day Tea and social on Monday afternoon with musical entertainment provided by Gene and Lori Hoyle, and everyone had such a great time! We exercised to Mexican mariachi music at our exercise classes all week long. Residents and employees danced the Macarena Dance together at an exercise class also, and I?m not sure which group had more fun ? there were lots of smiles and laughter during the dance!

We had Taco Tuesday with a Mexican meal of tacos, potato oles, refried beans, cinnamon ice cream with churro cookies, and fruit-flavored sangria with chunks of apples, oranges and pineapple floating on top. We played ?Bueno Bingo,? using the word ?Bueno? (Good) on our bingo cards instead and calling out ?Bueno!? when we got a bingo. Mexican-themed prizes were featured on the bingo prize carts, including taco chips, churro cookies, ?Sponch? marshmallow cookies, tartinas (strawberry-filled cookies), among many other prizes. We played fun games of ?Sail the Sombreros and Move the Maracas,? Mexican-themed ?Wheel of Fortune,? Mexican Memories, and Mexican-themed ?How Many?? guessing game. There were 939 pinto beans in a jar, and the resident guessing the closest was Mary Brinning, with a guess of 1,000, and Melody Moon was the employee who guessed the closest with a guess of 950.

Everyone had a great time guessing at it, and everyone went away with prizes, churro cookies and sangria! We had very interesting and informative sessions of Mexico trivia and Mexico fun facts. One of our interesting friends sessions was ?Habla Espanol?? Spanish class with Hortensia Unternahrer. She taught us some of the Spanish language including greetings, phrases, months of the year, days of the week, fruits, foods, alphabet, numbers, colors, meals, and family member names, among other things. She pronounced all of our names in Spanish and answered many questions that we had on how to say different things in Spanish. And of course we had a Mexican fiesta with a piñata stuffed full of treats, to break open!

We had at least a dozen residents take a turn hitting and whacking the colorful little donkey piñata with our piñata stick. We surely had a fun time with that, and it brought so many smiles and laughter to everyone ? residents, staff, volunteers and visitors.

Our fiesta also included Mexican food of tortilla chips with Mexican bean dip, tortilla chips with nacho cheese dip, churro cookies and sangria, as well as mariachi music. Helping me with our fiesta were volunteers April Hagist, Jim Hester, Sherri Rugg, Royce Roth, Carole Reschly, Pauline Wyse and Nathan Wyse. After the piñata came down and the fiesta was completed, Tom Hesseltine grinned ear to ear, gave us the ?two thumbs up? gesture and stated, ?That was fun!?

Also held during that week was a music program with Kate Benedict and Karen Diener, our annual fish fry supper with members of Faithful Followers Sunday school class for the delicious meal they provided at the fish fry, and the wonderful time of fellowship together with them. Our residents really look forward to it and feel it is such a special event to have. In regard to National Nursing Home Week, Virginia Soto commented, ?I thought it was very nice! I enjoyed it very much!

Other INTERESTing Friends groups that met during the month were a program with Cari Nicely about frogs and animals, and a meeting with Jody Brown about art and painting. Cari brought in a variety of different frogs, toads and tadpoles for us to look at, played many sounds of different frogs for us to listen to, and shared many informative and educational facts and tidbits about frogs, toads and tadpoles. Jody brought in a variety of art work and paintings that she had done, including paintings on ceiling fan blades, a little wooden sled, prints copied from slate, and paintings on old slate that came off a roof dating back to the 1800s. One painting on a ceiling fan was of a cowboy and a cowboy boot with the word ?Cowboy? on it. A painting on the old slate roof was of a ferret. Jody shared with the group what gives her inspiration and motivation in doing her art work, talked about each piece that she showed, and answered the many questions that the group had. She commented, ?My main focus, what I love to paint, is people; people is what I really like to do!? She also summed things up by saying, ?What is beauty without art?? Residents really enjoyed the meeting with Jody and seeing a lot of her art work. They thought it was a neat, creative and informative program.

INTERESTing Friends is a program in which people come and share in some way about a common interest with our residents. If anyone is interested in being a part of INTERESTing Friends, please call Jerilyn Winga, Activity Director, at 319-256-2775.

For one of our evening activities we enjoyed a very special visit, music and more, with the children?s church group of Bethel Mennonite Church. They sang songs for us, played different musical instruments including the piano, violin and viola, and visited with each resident and caught the residents up on what they have been up to. What a fun and energetic group they are! We always appreciate our visits with children of all ages.

Lydia Rotzinger brought her cat, Oreo, in for a pet visit with residents toward the end of the month, and we enjoyed other pet visits throughout the month as well.

Come and check out what we are doing here at Parkview Home ? you just never know what you might find us up to. We might be in Spanish class, we might be having a Mexican fiesta, we might be breaking open a piñata full of treats, we might be hanging out with and enjoying the company of our interesting friends, we might be having a fish fry with a Sunday school class, we might be enjoying a visit and music with a children?s church group, or we might be petting Oreo the cat. Stop in and visit us anytime; we are always glad to see our friends!