National Honor Society students from Ridgemont recently visited our community to spread some Christmas cheer! We enjoyed making knot-tie blankets, paper snowflakes and stars to embellish our dining areas. When we finished with the projects, it was time to reminisce and enjoy some hot chocolate and cookies while the students serenaded us with some of our favorite holiday songs! It is definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas here at Liberty!

Allen County Museum has hosted their Christmas Tree Festival for nearly 50 years, and this year our residents designed a tree to proudly display at the event. “A Shiny Bright Christmas” was the theme for this year’s festival, and we titled our entry “Our Residents Shine Bright”. And shine bright we did, because the fruits of our labor and creativity earned us Top Exhibitor recognition! The festival ran until Sunday, December 2 and now we are displaying the tree in our dining room so residents and guests can continue to enjoy it through the holiday season. Shown is resident Kristine Burnett, Beautification Club President, making some final adjustments.

Throughout the school year, Liberty residents have been enjoying monthly visits from students enrolled in Lima Senior High’s Patient Care Technology program. The program teams a junior patient care student with a Liberty resident and is an ideal win-win situation for both parties. On their monthly visits students engage with residents by bringing games and crafts, giving students real-world experience before graduation. This is often their first opportunity actually working in a skilled senior care environment. The program strives to promote heightened communication skills as well as hands-on experience in the Assisted Living, Skilled, Vent/Trach, and secured Dementia/Alzheimer’s units, and offers STNA licensure at the completion of the school year. Our residents eagerly look forward to the visits and staff appreciates the extra assistance.

Although most people think of Halloween as a holiday for children, Liberty of Lima made sure there were many ways to enjoy it regardless of age. Our residents delighted in passing out goodies to a great turnout of little ghosts and goblins. Some of the trick or treaters were grand and great grandchildren, staff children as well as youth from the surrounding community. On top of all the wonderful candy, everyone enjoyed face painting and crafts as well as cookies and punch. It truly was an event that was fun for all!

Early this month, some of our residents enjoyed a leisurely afternoon browsing and shopping at the Lima Mall's Baby Boomer Expo. The free event for seniors included door prizes, delicious tastings, as well as helpful information on community activities and resources. Insurance providers, financial advisors and experts on senior wellness were among many of the vendors and attendees were also treated to a fashion show hosted by some of the mall stores.

We take great pride in the diversity of our auxiliary services. It's these little conveniences that make life here easy and enjoyable. We offer beautician services, massages, a state-of-the-art workout facility, in-house movie matinees, and a delicious made-to-order bistro experience to name just a few. Residents also regularly have the opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of group outings. When getting out is inconvenient, our staff is happy to do your shopping for you or pick up your favorite meals from any of our local eateries. These are just a few of the many services we offer to help make you transition into our community feel like home, so we encourage you to take advantage of them.

Liberty of Lima is pleased to announce that we have been selected to attend training and receive grants from Opening Minds through Art (OMA). This will teach our staff how to integrate our intergenerational art program for people with dementia into the local community. This failure-free program provides opportunities for creative self-expression and social engagement for people with dementia. OMA also provides volunteers with opportunities to improve their attitudes toward aging through the weekly interaction with OMA program participants. We are excited to begin and eager to continue to offer new, innovative programming to our residents!

As a new way to recognize outstanding Liberty staff members, we've implemented a Liberty Stars program. Residents both nominate and vote on staff they'd like to recognize for outstanding service. Recommendations are submitted through Resident Council or the Activity Director. Winners receive a gift card and are highlighted in our newsletter. We're pleased to announce that this month's winner is Naomi Ramirez. Residents nominated her because she's so personable. Naomi always has a warm smile and goes above and beyond to make every day great at our facility. She consistently makes herself available to fill in whenever needed, and enjoys volunteering to help those residents who need individualized feeding assistance in our dining room. Congratulations Naomi, and thank you for all of your compassion!

We're taking full advantage of the nice weather by visiting local parks, and on a recent visit we took a wonderful picnic lunch prepared by our Dietary Department. Our residents enjoy the outdoors and nature, so we make an effort to visit locations that offer a variety of activities. They enjoy bird watching, ponds and visits with the Parks Department naturalists. We still have lots of fun lined up for the remainder of the summer. We're looking forward to visiting some of our favorite restaurants, a state park for some fishing and of course we can't miss the upcoming Allen County Fair!

Liberty of Lima's Dietary Manager, Rob Edgington, is very excited to be joining forces with our Food Committee to make changes to our menu this quarter. Our Food Committee is committed to championing for items they would like to see more of so many additions are being made to our menu rotation. Be on the look out for new items including Goulash, Turkey Subs, Philly Cheesesteaks, and BBQ Riblets. We've also added a seasonal fresh fruit and cottage cheese platter to our al a carte menu. Yummy!