Liz - I hope your sister remembers that your mom has dementia, so whether or not your mom thinks she is ready for a NH is probably not a way to make the decision. Her medical providers and perhaps an elder care social worker will be accurate sources for assessing her level of need currently and perhaps in the near future.
Loved the card & scrapbook ideas. Lynn

Evolution of a Tradition

A neighborhood near us started a street festival to celebrate Cinco de Mayo many years ago. Parking has always been a problem. (The parking lots for the businesses along the street were beer gardens or band stands for the day.) Pre-Lewy Coy and I used to go and park a half a mile or more away on a residential street and walk. We'd stand in line at the sidewalk food vendors and listen to the bands and watch the folk dancing and enjoy the almost foreign feeling of hearing more Spanish spoken than English. And then the event got more popular and more crowded and Coy got weaker. The organizers offered a park-and-shuttle service we used. We tried a wheelchair one year, but the event has drawn bigger crowds each year, streets were curb-to-curb people and it became very hard to navigate. So we gave it up and held our own family party with Cinco de Mayo themes. This year? Coy and I ate at a very nice restaurant in the area of the festivities, on the 6th. None of the chaos of a street festival, but nice flavors of Mexico and Tex-Mex cusisines, in relative quiet. The decor was much more sophisticated than the gaudy street scene, but that was OK.

So we are keeping an old tradition alive, but in an increasingly subdued format over the years.

(Frankly, I'm not sure I am up to wall-to-wall people, salsa dripping down my arm as I try to eat standing up, and long lines at porta-potties anymore myself. But I'm sure glad we did it while we could.)

Jeanne, I just love the way you adapt life to keep the quality going for you and Coy!

Hi to everyone who participated in this discussion topic:

This discussion thread was really interesting for me because exploring meaningful activities has become a passion of mine. The interaction between posters was great and I liked how ideas were tweaked and adapted. It was a big challenge to me when my Dad was still alive and I continue to work to try to make resources and ideas available as part of honoring his legacy.

I started a Facebook group called Meaningful Activities for Seniors with Dementia. My hopes for this group is that people can use it to find activity resources on the internet, and to share ideas and experiences about meaningful activities and projects. So far, the best success seems to be with using past interests and activities and scaling them down. The need to be creative, to be useful, and to have a purpose is universal. As things progress, activities may need become more sensory orientated rather than action orientated. If you are interested, please take a look.

Thanks.

PBiever, can you give us a url web link for your site on FB? I tried to find it and could not.
Thanks,
Pat

Hi Pat & others reading this thread - The location of my Facebook group Meaningful Activities for Seniors with Dementia is
http://www.facebook.com/groups/114739455221513.

I think you can find it by entering the name of the group in the "search" box in Facebook also. I found a lot of interesting groups that way.