FReeper Canteen ~ Which of The 12 Days of Christmas Are You? ~ 19 December 2012

Serving The Best Troops and Veterans In The World !! | The Canteen Crew

[SandRat]

At 5 a.m. Wednesday temperatures were in the 40s and it was raining hard.

By 5:30 a.m., the rain had turned to sleet and the thermometer read 37 degrees.

It was an all-out snowfall by 6 a.m. , with temperatures hovering at the freezing mark and a strong wind from the west.

That was the scene for newspaper carriers from the Herald/Review on Cherokee Drive in the southeast area of Sierra Vista, and other parts of the region after temperatures dropped just before sunrise.

The weather offered commuters wet pavement, strong winds and nearly-freezing temperatures, which creates slippery and potentially dangerous driving conditions.

Today’s National Weather Forecast calls for isolated showers before 11am. Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 49. Breezy, with a west northwest wind 13 to 23 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. Chance of precipitation is 10 percent.

[Kathy in Alaska]

“eight racers whining”....LOL!

[SandRat]

Beatrice Richardson • Herald/Review Life Care Center resident Janice Mowery reacts to a handmade holiday card from Carmichael Elementary School student Gustavo Miranda, 6. Miranda's kindergarten class visited the center to share the holiday spirit with the residents.

SIERRA VISTA— Surveying a busy dining room at the Life Care Center in Sierra Vista, 5-year-old Eleanor Clark picked a target, gathered herself and made a beeline for 93-year-old Erlinda Vidal.

Eleanor presented Vidal with a handmade pink Christmas card, introduced herself and shared a conversation with someone who was a total stranger moments ago.

Vidal’s eyes widened, she smiled and brushed Eleanor’s cheek with her index finger. She said, “thank you.”

Later, looking down at the card with a picture of stockings on the front and a drawing of a happy family on the back, Vidal said, “I love it, it’s beautiful.”

Eleanor had told her how she took her time making it. It reminded Vidal of her own children.

“To me, this is a blessing,” Vidal said.

A similar scene played out about two dozen times on Tuesday when Carmichael Elementary School kindergartners visited the center to sing carols and give the residents handmade ornaments and cards.

Gifts clutched in their hands, the students nervously calculated their routes before shooting to all corners of the room, making sure no one was left empty-handed. They left warm conversation and bright expressions in their wake.

“I showed her my gloves, she likes them,” Eleanor said, wiggling her purple fingers. “I usually call them mittens.”

Vidal was happy to get a Christmas card, Eleanor said. When asked how that made her feel, Eleanor said “happy too.”

Marcus Galligan, 6, and Andrew James, 5, agreed, saying they had fun making the residents happy.

Andrew said the way they got there was cool too because he got to take a city bus for the first time.

“They had a blast, they had their hands up in the air when they first got on like they were on a roller coaster,” kindergarten teacher Krystalynne Shojinaga said. The ride on a Vista Transit bus teaches the children about the importance of paying for a service and shows them how to use local transit.

“It’s a life skill,” Shojinaga said.

She has been doing this annual field trip for three years and was inspired by a similar trip she made when was a child, which Shojinaga said helped instill a sense of charity in her.

“I really liked being able to give to others,” she said.

The students learn how to interact with people they don’t know and who are a different age, while also seeing how some elderly people live away from their families in a facility that cares for them.

“For some of them, it was a shock,” Shojinaga said.

Senior buddies

Elsewhere in Sierra Vista, another elementary school class will go on a similar trip this week, but for them it’s part of a routine outing that allows the students to establish relationships with their elders.

Each student in Village Meadows Elementary School teacher Brian Haag’s sixth-grade class has “adopted” a resident at Hacienda Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, he said. They call them their “senior buddies.”

They spend hours with the residents each visit, making crafts, while getting to know their buddies, Haag said. They bring over items in short supply at the center, like large print crosswords, and never miss a holiday card.

“As the students visit with their buddies and gather more information, memories and stories, they are working on writing biographies for their buddies,” Haag said in an e-mail. “The main purpose for this project is to instill a sense of community responsibility in the students and the opportunity to get to know community members whose memories hold such a rich historical record of our area.”

At first, most of the students were nervous, but now they look forward to the visits and some even go back on their own, Haag said.

“The visits with their buddies gives the students a chance to be a part of a living history that can’t be read in books,” he said.

[Kathy in Alaska]

wh!!

ML.....#50!!

[Kathy in Alaska]

One should always have guitarists!

[NYTexan]

I like it!

[Arrowhead1952]

It hot and windy here at 6 PM. We need cooler weather.

[luvie]

It’s 60 here, but horribly windy and lots of sand and dirt blowing. We’ve had gusts up to 50 mph. I don’t want to have to get out even to go to bible class...but probably will.

I can smell the dirt in the air. Ugh

[Kathy in Alaska]

[Kathy in Alaska]

What a great project for the little ones....they sure made the older folks happy.

And the idea of “Senior Buddies” is terrific!!

[SandRat]

Thank you, but it is all melted off at this time. lol

[SandRat]

As the photo shows,...the seniors were surprised and overjoyed.

[left that other site]

Woo Hoo!
All my naughty Song titles added up!

[Publius]

I’m going to post both our naughty politically correct Winter Holiday songs on Friday night along with my other annual Publius Christmas stuff.

[left that other site]

I can’t Wait! :-)

[left that other site]

“We DEMAND a little Winter Holiday!”

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas...and the ACLU is ginning up a lawsuit”

“I’m Dreaming of an Ethnically Diverse Solstice”

And of course, the Holiday Movie favorites:

“It’s a Wonderful Life UNLESS you are a member of an oppressed minority”

“Easily Explained Scientific Phenomenon on 34th Street”

“How the Grinch brought Diversity and Cultural Sensitivity to Whoville”

[beachn4fun]

“How the Grinch brought Diversity and Cultural Sensitivity to Whoville”

LOL... you are really good at this.

[left that other site]

I just LOVE Bing Crosby and Rosie Clooney in the Winter Holiday Classic:

“Multicultural Solstice.”

Except for the Concerning Notion that the music for that one was written by a member of the Zionist Entity, Irving Berlin, it is a fun-filled family film.

[left that other site]

The Beloved Winter Holiday Ballet by P.I.Tchaikovsky:

The Hypoallergenic Non-Peanut-Cracker(Produced on Equipment that does not process Peanuts or other Tree Nuts)

1. The March of the Toy Fully Diversified and Non-Gender Biased Military Personnel

2. Dance of the Arab Spring Freedom Fighters

3. Dance of the Asians

4. Dance of the Melting Glacier due to Anthrogenic Global Warming Flakes

5. Dance of the Sugar-Free Plum Member of the GLBT Community.

6. Pas de deux of the Two-Spirit People

(It just ISN’T Winter Holiday without this CLASSIC!)

[Publius]

You’re on a roll!