The annual fall festival at Prestige Estates Assisted Living and Memory Care was celebrated with residents and their families on Friday.

Prestige Estates Assisted Living and Memory Care celebrated its annual fall festival with residents and their families Friday.

“We made it about just being together as a family with the nice weather and the camaraderie because it also includes our staff, our employees… their families join and they bring their kids out,” said Director of Operations Yvonne Sturrock. “It’s just been great and you really could not have asked for better weather than this.”

With a petting zoo, face painting, photo booth and a bouncy house, the assisted living facility was filled with smiles and laughter from the residents who enjoyed spending time with their families.

Such as Terry Turner’s mom, Dottie, a resident who used to be a teacher.

“She loves being able to see the kids and watch them run around and have fun,” Turner said. “It makes her happy… and seeing her happy makes me happy.”

Owned by the Redman family, the facility opened its doors in October 2007. Then in 2012, the facility broke ground on a new Memory Care building which offers a program that focuses on an individual’s cognitive status with activities provided by their life enrichment team.

“I think this is just amazing,” said Dana Walton, whose mother is also a resident at Prestige Estates. “I have looked forward to this for months and it completely makes our hearts happy.”

Walton said her mother enjoys being able to interact with the animals in the petting zoo, especially the rabbits.

“She has been all smiles… and loves how soft the animals are,” Walton said.

Prestige Estates Assisted Living has 50 apartments with three different floor plan options from which to choose. Services include housekeeping, laundry, personal care, transportation, activities and more.

“When residents go into assisted living memory care communities, their world becomes small so we like to incorporate family time,” Sturrock said. “It was our activity directors (and) our life enrichment team who are responsible for getting all of this together. Then we, as an administration team, help them and do the things that we can.”

According to Sturrock, it was a team of four people from memory care and assisted living cares who put the festival together, from calling vendors to making sure families were involved.

“This is a joint effort and they did an amazing job,” she said.

This year, they decided to add a food truck, Big Mouf Catering.

Minus the year it was shut down because of COVID, the fall festival has been going on for five years.

“We usually have it on Halloween but we wanted it to make it a little more intimate so that it wasn’t about costumes and dressing up,” Sturrock said. “We wanted to make sure it was all about family.”