Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and family and friends. We are very thankful for the family and friends we have here at Blue Ridge.

Our residents had a wonderful Christmas thanks to the kindness of others who donated items to fill their stockings, gifts, treats, and those who shared their talent and time.

Each year, it seems that more people of Patrick County want to donate items for our residents to have a merry Christmas. Our area churches donated items to fill their stockings.

We were truly blessed with so much that we had some left over. We will be pulling those items on our Bingo cart so the residents will have a choice of gifts to get when they win.

We would like to thank Stella Christian Church, Patrick Springs Christian Church, Grace Baptist Church, Mayo Baptist Church, Stuart Presbyterian Church, and individuals from Mountain View Baptist Church who helped with the stocking stuffers.

Many individuals donated gifts; Wal-Mart adopted 10 of our residents along with Rhonda Spencer and friends and Mayo Mountain Church. Thank you all for your generosity. Because of you, each resident received a gift this Christmas.

I would like to thank many of the staff members who fixed the residents a stocking filled with gifts and candy. I also would like to thank Penny Pauliks and Billy Parsons for being Mrs. Claus and Santa during many of our events.

We celebrated our Angel Tree on December 17th. We would like to thank Mountain Valley Hospice, Robert Barnwell, Pastor Joe Pauliks and our unit managers for their help with our program.

Many of our passed family members returned to receive their loved one’s ornament off our Angel Tree. This year we had around 50 or more people to come to this event. The tree is our way of remembering those who have passed away and a way to say they aren’t forgotten.

This tree is also very special to our staff members. They will come in and look at the ornaments and remember their residents and their favorite memories of them. We all get very attached to our residents and many of them seem like our grandparents.

We are truly the ones who are blessed because if they didn’t come to the center, we would have never been able to meet these wonderful people which become our family. We are getting ready for the new year and hope to have many different kinds of activities for our residents to enjoy. We hope you have a happy new year.