It is hard to believe that another holiday season has come and gone, but as always it was so much fun again in our Residential Program!
It is our tradition to celebrate early and often! We start early in the month with several Christmas themed recreational activities which even included a Christmas light scavenger hunt around the community which was a huge hit with the residents. The favorite, as always, is our Secret Santa activity. Each resident had two staff assigned to them this year. One staff bought them $5 gifts for 2 days while the other bought them $5 gifts for the other 2 days leading up to our big Christmas celebration. On the night of our Residential Christmas Party, the residents opened their big gift from their Secret Santa’s, which was either 2 $20 gifts or a joint effort of one gift for $40.
Yvonne Duff and her son, Blaine took the lead preparing the Christmas dinner this year with some help from a number of others. The food was wonderful! A huge thank you to all who helped prepare the meal, the decorations for the dinner, and for preparing the space by setting up tables and chairs. Our residents were a big help with these activities as well. It really is a lot of work to make this event happen each year!
This year we had our Christmas celebration in our new building “The West Wing”. It was very nice to have the additional room to spread out as attendance was the best it’s been for a while and we would have been very crowded in the Residential Facility. Once everyone was finished with the wonderful food we worked to get everything put away and arrange the seating for gift giving time. As always, the first gifts to be passed out are the Secret Santa gifts. It is so much fun watching the residents open them and then try to guess the staff who bought for them. We had a couple correct guesses but most were wrong and they were very surprised by who their person really was.
After Secret Santa the residents receive their big bag full of Christmas presents. Each one gets their own large Santa bag filled with gifts for them from their Christmas list. After everyone is done opening we go around the room and have each resident show what they received so that all in attendance can see and hear. This year there were some new shoes, a lot of new clothes, some fingernail stuff, and a guitar to name a few. One resident was preparing to transition out of care and be on their own. This resident received a lot of items to help them out in their new apartment, including a vacuum sweeper.
Our residents receive really nice name brand items that they often times do not have the opportunity to get outside of care. Every year you see an extra big smile on at least one face as they receive that item on their list that they wanted the most and didn’t really think it would happen. Yvonne does the majority of the Christmas shopping for the residents each year and with her years of experience has developed the ability to excel at picking just the right items for them.
For several of the residents they are able to go home for at least part of Christmas day and spend time with family or someone special to them. Typically, there are at least one or two who have no place to go for Christmas. When this happens we make sure that they have some additional presents to open Christmas morning along with having a big breakfast and getting to stay in pajamas for most of the day. Staff like this too as they join in and wear their Christmas pajamas during the shift. This year we had two residents who were not able to have a Christmas visit.
On behalf of myself, the Board of Directors, staff, and most importantly the residents, we would like to thank all of this year’s donors as it is your support that allows us to create these life-long Christmas memories!
