Breathe in Life: August Events

Our Alive in All Seasons’ theme for August is The Environment. Our communities will focus their efforts on maintaining healthy environments through environmentally conscious activities. Our “Green Canopy” program emphasizes designing and operating buildings that meet new standards of environmental sustainability. We are proud to be the first long-term care company with a building in the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

According to research by Go Green, Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour; 25 billion Styrofoam cups and 40 billion soft drink bottles and cans each year. Eighty-four percent of the average American’s household trash can be recycled. If we recycled just 1/10 of our newspapers 25 million trees could be saved. Are we all doing our part?

Join us this month as we learn more about the environment, expand our wide-scale recycling program, learn more about environmental sustainability programs and work with our community Green Teams to promote our “Green Canopy” initiative. We encourage you to accompany us on this environmental journey so that we can all continue to Breathe in Life!

Our fabulous activity offerings this month include our Preserving and Protecting Wildlife presentation on local Burrowing Owls and how we can preserve and protect these beautiful owls and keep them in their natural habitats on August 12^th from 3:00 to 4:00 pm; or our Let’s Get Pampered “Green” Style event where you can get a relaxing massage, learn about the benefits of using mineral based make-up, get a makeover using only natural products and even an environment friendly manicure on August 22^nd from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm (please RSVP by August 18^th to 239-542-3121). Take a look at our calendar and join us for any and all activities that will help you make the most of these last few weeks of summer.

Thanks to Grace Methodist Church

To our extended family at Grace Methodist Church,

Hello, my name is Daisy Godbee and I am the Activity Director at Juniper Village Assisted Living Community. I am sending you this email to share with you how much Grace Church has touched our hearts in so many wonderful ways. Our relationship with Grace started off with the gracious visits for Sunday service with Tom and Bonnie. Services started at 1:30pm every Sunday, but attendance was   low. Tom and Bonnie offered to change the time to 10am, traditionally our residents would always attend church on Sunday mornings. The turnaround in attendance was amazing.  Thank you Tom and Bonnie Kapla for all of the extra steps you take to make your mission possible.

Our next friendship was made with PAWS. Some of our residents are somewhat reclusive and choose not to attend many activities. However, with PAWS that is a different story. These residents thoroughly enjoy and look forward to the visits. For the time that they are visiting, our residents forget about anything that may be troubling them. This visit takes them to a pleasant place.

 We were proud to be part of The Grace Community Garden Project when it first started. We were asked if we would be interested in planting seeds in containers and when the time was right we would deliver our plants to Grace. Fortunately we were able to attend the blessing of the garden and a few of our residents assisted in planting some of the plants.

Children and animals bring out the true spirit in our seniors at Juniper.

Visiting Grace Small Wonders is always a successful outing. Our residents always look forward to the new school year for our visits. They tend to pick out a handful of children that they have decided to take home with them. As the year goes by, we take notice on how much the children have grown. We are also very proud of the nickname that we were given “The Village People”.

One of our highly involved programs is “Feed The Pack”. Thank you to Betty Andrews for allowing us to volunteer. Our residents are always ready to get to work. Some of our residents are visually challenged which sometimes limits their ability to be involved. Not in this case. This activity not only allows our residents to volunteer, but it is a social hour. They share many stories of the pets that have had over the years and funny habits their pets had. Our oldest volunteer will be 98 in November. Her family is so pleased that she is involved in such a wonderful program. 

Grace was generous enough to involve us in volunteering for a community project. Betty Andrews asked what services they could give to Juniper. We all decided that our courtyard was in need of much TLC. The crew came in and revamped everything. Even down to vacuuming the cushions on the outdoor furniture. One of our residents was out of the building for a month. Her passion is working in our courtyard. Upon her return, she was not able to care for the plants as she used to. She was so happy when she saw the miracle that Grace completed.

We recently had the pleasure in meeting Betty Henderson. She is the teacher with the “Exceptional Entrepreneurs”. Betty contacted me to ask if they could stop by and drop off some of the flowers that were created by her students. Absolutely was my reply. Taking the students to meet some of the recipients of these gifts was amazing. Our residents were so pleased to see something so unique and created with much love.  This made them feel extra special.

Our newest addition to this wonderful circle of friends is Robin Doffmeyer. Robin was kind enough to contact me and asked if her students could make some sort of craft for our residents celebrating Mother’s Day as well as Father’s day. Our residents were touched when they received their gifts. Just knowing someone was thinking of them truly touched their hearts.

There are not enough words to describe how we at Juniper Village are so thankful for all of the wonderful blessings you have sent our way. You have all touched our hearts in so many ways!!! We praise each and every person from Grace Church.

Sincerely,

Daisy Godbee 

Young Historians

What a pleasant surprise we had when we were honored  with a visit from Betsy Ross and Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross at a younger age. Our young historians went around and chatted with our residents. Our visitors were amazed when they had the pleasure of meeting one of our very own residents, Beth. She is the wonderful age of 102. Posing for a picture with her was a pleasure. Kael (Uncle Sam) just recently celebrated his 6^th birthday on July the 1^st. Keira, 8 years old (Betsy Ross) shared with us how she made the first flag and how many stars and stripes it had. Caleb was their personal escort (10 years old) and finally our little younger version of Betsy Ross, Kindall, 3 years old wished all of our residents a very Happy 4^th of July.