This Week @ Our PLACE

The Top Things at Our PLACE This Week – from Amanda

"The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy. It's all that matters." — Audrey Hepburn

We've been happily enjoying life this week! We celebrated National Spumoni Day with a yummy treat, let our hair down during the musician's visits, and had a ball playing fun games like balloon tennis. We learned new things during our Armchair Travels to the Great Lakes, loved on our pet therapists (4 this week!), and created more moments of joy each and every day. We enjoyed life together and were happy doing so. Take a look at a few of our favorite moments from this week.

The Top Things This Week:

• We started the week off with a bang! We had visitors from Creature Features in Athens, TN on Monday afternoon. Topher and his assistant brought all kinds of little critters for us to love on! We met many new animals, learned a lot, and laughed at all the crazy antics. Everyone adored the beautiful parrots Rosie and Pedro, the baby wallaby (only 6 months old!), and the little Mountain Coati. No one was very fond of the South African Pouch Rat... Only two brave participants let poor little Fig climb on their shoulders! A huge thank you to the anonymous family member who sponsored this amazing visit for us that created so many moments of joy!

• We visited the Great Lakes this week, right from our armchairs! We learned that there are 5 "great lakes." A beloved and iconic dish in this region is "pasties" (pronounced pass-tee). Pasties are savory hand pies that were brought here from Cornwell, England. We made our own pasties with hamburger meat, rutabaga, carrots, onions, and potatoes. At first we were a little leery of this traditional Yooper food, but after a sample bite we couldn't wait to devour them. Each participant took their homemade pastie home to share with their loved ones. 

• We LOVE music. Singing songs, dancing to it, or playing along; we enjoy each moment! Many of us have played an instrument of some sort in our life time. This week we played rhythm sticks together. Much like drumming, we tapped along to familiar simple songs and played a few of our own beats as well. We're excited to perfect our skill and try faster songs in the future.

• Sunflowers are still blooming all around us, but we needed some to hang up at home. We made pockets full of sunflowers with Julie this week. Each participant glued a denim pocket to a wood board then stuffed it with an assortment of sunflowers, tall grass, and faux wheat sprigs. After the glue dried a little some of us added embellishments to our pockets; but even those without them turned out so pretty! Everyone ooh'd and aww'd about how their project turned out and couldn't wait to show everyone at home.

This is just a peek at some of the moments of joy we created this week.  

Praying you have a blessed weekend,

Amanda Yanni

▼▼  Some pictures taken this week at Our PLACE  ▼▼