January Birthdays

January 11 Carol

January 13 Gene

January 15 Eleanor

January 16 Georgia

January 31 Marge

The Villa Welcomes:

Words of Wisdom:

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe we’ve bid farewell to

2016 and all the wonderful memories we’ve made last year! December was a great way to end the year together as we cele-brated all the festivities of the holiday season. From learning more about Christianity to pairing our favorite Christmas movies with some festive Christmas foods, to making Christmas cards for our loved ones, to decorating a Hawaiian Christmas tree, we really enjoyed our Randall University themed activities with a Christmas twist. We also enjoyed many Villa Christmas traditions together. Many thanks to Opal, Mary, Eonia, and Kay for their hard work in creating our all old-fashioned Christmas tree! And I’m truly amazed by Opal’s dedication to stringing our popcorn and cranberries. She came into the activity room time and again to work on them to ensure we had enough popcorn and cran-berries to cover our whole tree! Mary, Kay, and Opal also

worked diligently (with the help of Kay & Ka-ren—thank you!) to create a beautiful ginger-bread house! That was definitely a time-intensive craft, but lots of fun! I also want to thank everyone for sharing their favorite holi-day desserts. Mary introduced us to her deli-cious bobulki and church window recipes, Lois shared her amazing scones and nut bread, and Opal made her fabulous peanut butter fudge! Our trip to Lights on the Lake was a lot of fun, and our resident and family Christmas party turned out beautifully! I think I speak for everyone when I say it was a very enjoyable night of visiting, delicious food, and beautiful music by harpist, Sue Kreig. Thanks to everyone who made the night a huge suc-cess!

Although it’s hard to say goodbye to 2016, I promise we will have just as much to look forward to in our journeys together in 2017. In fact, our Randall University theme for 2017 will be based on The Great Northern Road Trip where we will be traveling from Washing-ton to Maine being sure to stop at each state in between each month. January will be fo-cused on planning our trip for the year, so make sure you stop in and help us! We’ll get the chance to enjoy Opal’s “Ugly Cookies” while we sit down together to decide how we’ll travel and where we’ll go. We’ll also be exploring the history of the Great Northern Railway, enjoying an old time radio hour while enjoying Opal’s pecan rolls, seeing how many postcards we can collect from assisted living facilities along our route, teasing our brains with license plate trivia while dining on Mary’s “Heavenly Hash,” and sharing our own favorite travel memories with a show and tell (feel free to share some photos or just share your memories!). Also on the agen-da for January—we’ll continue our cooking with Mary’s wilted lettuce salad and get out a bit when we go out for coffee, enjoy the win-ter scenery with a scenic ride, and do some with our general shopping trip as well as those to Conneaut Thrift Store and Peggy Gray Candies. See you next month!

Resident Spotlight!

Richard W.

Words of Wisdom About Traveling, Journeys, and Discoveries:

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” ~Matsuo Basho “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” ~Lao Tzu “To travel is to take a journey into your-self.” ~Danny Kaye “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

~Martin Buber “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ~Marcel Proust “The traveler sees what he sees, the tour-ist sees what he has come to see.”

~Gilbert K. Chesterton “Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.” ~Frank Borman

You may know Eleanor from exercise, bingo, or anything related to music. What you may not know about Eleanor is that she was born and raised in Ashtabula Harbor and is the granddaughter of two sets of grandparents who emi-grated here from Finland. Eleanor attended Harbor H.S., was married in the former Finnish National Church, and worked at Carlisle’s in the harbor. Eleanor’s career at Car-lisle’s began with her simply working for extra money at Christmas and eventually morphed into her position as

Assistant Buyer. The position yielded many great opportu-nities for her to travel first the buyers’ market in L.A. and eventually to San Francisco and several times to New York City. With her lifelong love of music, one of her favorite perks of the job was the opportunity to see many musi-cals, and she even had the chance to watch a show at the Old Opera House in New York shortly before it was demol-ished. Some other things you may not know about Elea-nor—she was active in her church (now Lighted Cross Lu-theran Church) and she enjoyed both sports and traveling with her husband. She has seen London, Ireland, and the Caribbean through several cruises she and her husband embarked on together. Thank you for sharing your many wonderful stories, Eleanor!

Opal & Eonia string popcorn & cranberries for our old-fashioned Christmas tree.

Mary F. & Opal keep stringing the popcorn & cranberries, while Dick R., Paul W., Chuck, & Merle play cards.

Mary F., Doris B., Carol S., Kay, & Eleanor pose with their beach-themed tropical Hawaiian Christmas tree.

Lois W., Marge G., Trudy & Eonia wait for their coffee to arrive at All Things Coffee House.

Kay, Mary, & Opal make Mary’s bobulki recipe.

Trudy & Opal display the Christmas cards they created.

Eleanor