January 2016 - First Post of the New Year!

Fist of all, Happy New Year.

Now, it's time to catch up on my blogging. Here are a few photos to start the New Year.

So, let's start by welcoming our newly elected President and Vice President of Resident Council, Alvin Gray and Alice Sayre. They call themselves The A-Team.

As usual, we had a blast at our New Year Party.

Watch for programs labeled "Brain Health." It's a new kind of programming - which I can talk about in more detail in another post - which includes physical exercise, relaxation and meditation, various  kinds of classes, and Brain Aerobic Exercises. Below are photos from our first Meditative Coloring Social. 

We've already had many outings to all kinds of places including Severance Hall, CIM, several restaurants, and just this week, the Cleveland Zoo Rainforest.

The last three photos are not pictures of us. They are a mother and baby orangutan and a Spoonbill Ibis. There was certainly much more to see and we spent a lot of time there, but I couldn't take photos of everything. And you wouldn't want to slog through 37 photos of us looking at a duck, and us looking at a porcupine, and us looking at a fruit bat, and us looking at...the time. Wow, it's getting late. I'd better sign off for now. 

If you have a chance to visit the Rainforest, I highly recommend it. Better yet, visit us here at Stone Gardens. It's difficult to hold a conversation with a porcupine - with us, you'll get better results.

It's the Little Things

Some of the best moments where I work are small and often go unnoticed. As Mother Teresa said, "We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

Challah Baking

Last week we participated in the World-Wide Shabbos Project. We joined the menorah Park Campus, the greater Jewish community of Cleveland, and over 465 cities around the world in celebrating Shabbos. One of the ways that we celebrated was by making our own challah from scratch. It turns out we have a master challah baker among our residents. (I'll bet we have more, but she was the one who showed up.) They looked great, and guess what...? They tasted as good as they looked.

Our Trip to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Gone Fishing

One of the great things about my job is that I get to spend time with residents in places like this.

These photos are from our fishing trip to Punderson last month.

We took a picnic lunch, ate outdoors, and went to the water's edge to cast our lines. We couldn't have done it without Larry Betlejewski our Director of Environmental Services, who knows how to bait the hooks, cast the lines, and reel 'em in (he reeled in all two of them).

The trip was so popular and enjoyable that we're repeating it again this month, possibly in a different location, possibly at Lake Erie. We've hit the big time.

There's never a bad time to pull out the cell phone and tell your family in Michigan what you're doing.

That's our old friend Sandy who met us there and stopped by to join in the fun. She knows how to handle the bait and line, too.

 Here's one of our residents, um, "admiring" her catch.

And this is the one that got away.

The Cavs Aren't the Only Ones on Fire

I was looking back through the posts on this blog and it wasn't too many posts ago that I posted some very similar pictures. That tells me two things:

1. We love our campfires and have them every summer, and

2. I have not been posting nearly enough on this blog.

I'm sure both of my followers have noticed this. Mom?

Well, anyway, here is a picture of our trusty fire pit, ready and waiting for the first match of the season. In case you were wondering, I collect most of this wood - the tinder and kindling -  from around our grounds before the program, and then sort it into neat piles to use very carefully to build a "one-match-fire." 

Here is the beginning of my one-match-fire. It was going along fine and then Ross, who happened to be there, and who happens to be an Eagle Scout, said, "You want me to show you how to make that fire real big, real fast?"

Before I could say, "We don't really need a real big fire because we're not going to be out here that long..." he had piled up all the wood I had collected, plus all the fuel (large wood purchased from the Giant Eagle) all at once, tepee style. The doctor says my eyebrows should grow back in about three weeks. 

Just kidding about the eyebrows, but the fire did get very big very quickly.

We told stories, sang songs, and roasted marshmallows. The weather was perfect.

Oh, Say Can You See

Flag Day Ceremony

June 12, 2015

Stone Gardens Rose Garden

Three of our residents who are vets presented the flag. Up it went while we sang the Star Spangled Banner, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and then sang patriotic songs.