It's September

It's September, everyone!  Wow!  The summer is almost a blur now.  All the students and teachers are back at JRES.  Of course, we've been here all summer and it has been quiet.  It's noticeably louder now, and the parking lot is full.  Pretty soon we will be back to volunteering in the school and we can't wait!  It was a good week and we look forward to heading into Fall...because it's coming fast!

We celebrated Bowling League Day and Cheese Pizza Day when we hit the lanes on Tuesday.  It was a remarkable day...over half of our friends had at least one game of 100 or higher!  The pizza was hot and delicious, as usual.  We wish to thank Devin and his family for sponsoring our lunch this week. 😊 We are very grateful...and blessed!

Each of our friends has their own style of throwing the bowling ball.  It's fun to watch them!

After bowling, we headed back to AFCC for some Choice Time since it was kind of steamy outside.  We are looking forward to milder weather so we can go outside and walk.  We do get a bit of  "weightlifting" at the end of the day when it's time to put away the tables and chairs!

Michael decided on Wednesday morning that it would be a "Chair Tai Chi" day, so we worked on upper body and core strength.  This also helps us with balance...at least balancing ourselves in the chairs, when, as you will see, Michael tries to get us to raise our feet off the floor.

Watching it on video is sure to put a smile on your face!

And then we did this...you can tell from Michael's reaction that most of us moving in unison is a big deal!

 

After a pretty busy summer of Eaton work, we now find ourselves in a dry spell.  So while we wait to hear from them with more work, we have to come up with our own version of vocational training.  That's how we ended up reorganizing our tubs of pencils, markers, crayons, glue sticks, and scissors.

It seemed a bit tedious at first, but everyone chipped in as we sorted all the pencils, markers, and crayons by color, and also separated the glue sticks and scissors.  We then talked about the concept of division, as we counted...yes, we counted...each separate pile and then divided them equally among our five tubs!

This led to a discussion of how we worked as a team, with great cooperation...and how we don't want our tubs to get disorganized again.  Because it is hard work to sort hundreds of items, even with all of your friends helping!

All that organizing left us ready for lunch and for some of us, happy that the JRES cafeteria is back in business.  Here, Chloe and Chris show just how happy the lunch buyers were!

As if having "popcorn chicken bowls" or "steak and mashed potatoes" wasn't enough, our happiness increased exponentially when Devin announced that he had played golf with Santa over the weekend and so his mom thought we would enjoy what must be one of Santa's favorite treats - Ho Hos!  Thanks, Devin and Mom!  We loved them!

A walk was in order later in the day...😊

And the next day, too!  Yes, it was such a beautiful day on Thursday that we squeezed in a short walk around Bicentennial Park in CW before visiting the art museum.  This is a small park situated right behind the museum, but it was just the right size for our short jaunt.

Once inside the museum, Christina took us straight away to the textiles exhibit.  She had shown us this display before and pointed out the beautiful designs on some of the clothing and other pieces of cloth that were used in the 18th century.  This time, she pointed out more specifically the pictures that were printed on the cloth...and told us stories about them.  Our friends are always ready to answer, or ask, great questions.

Christina showed us cloth that had pictures depicting a celebration taking place in England where a couple had to "prove" (by the witness of others in the community) they had been happily married for a year and a day.  If that was the case, the bishop would give them a "gammon of bacon," which was a highly coveted prize in those days!  She also showed us a handkerchief which had pictures depicting the "death of George Washington."  Prior to telling this story, she asked if we wanted to hear something "creepy and gross" and most of the gang said "yes" with great enthusiasm.  So that is how we came to find out that as Washington lay dying, the older doctors slit his wrists to bleed him out...while the younger doctor suggested they should cut a hole in his throat to aid his breathing.  The older doctors thought that was a terrible idea, and wouldn't do it.  It is now speculated that Washington may have lived many more years if he'd been given what we call a tracheotomy today! 

In the education room, Christina taught us how to use a block printing technique to decorate our own handkerchiefs!  

Our friends really got into creating their designs.

All were just as proud as Alexis! (And most were still working when this pic was snapped!)

We really enjoy our once a month visits to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, and we can't say enough about what a wonderful job Christina does with our group!  It's a great experience.  If you haven't visited, we highly recommend it.  The exhibits are varied and very, very interesting.

Friday was a day we looked forward to all week, as we were planning to celebrate September 6-10 as being Play Week.  Our friend Ms. Teri gifted us each with a colonial-themed game of Hangman and that got us started on a day that turned out to be a lot of fun!  Someone's Revolutionary Spy got hung before this word was solved!

Kacie and Chloe were a good team as they tried to stump each other with their secret words!

Carol helped this table try to figure out Sam's word "soldier" and Kate's word "Frozen" (of course)!

Disney Trivia is one of our favorite games.  We usually play a version that includes clips from songs or movies and our friends are very good at identifying the Disney movie.  On Friday, we played a version that had some challenging questions, and required more collaboration and assistance between the team members.  Here, from the boys' team, Bo and Devin confer on a question, which they ultimately got correct!

Earlier in the day we played outside for a lengthy period since it was a gorgeous day.  Some of the guys played with basketballs, always a favorite.  It was fun to see Chris trying to get Devin, Drew, and Kevin to bounce the basketball hard enough to get it into the basket...he called it Basketball Bounce!

Laura, Patrick, Josie, and Kate set up Corn Hole in the shade.

Sam enjoys tossing the lawn darts.  Laura had never played this game and Sam was happy to teach her how it goes!

Even though it isn't "playing," since it was a day of fun, we enjoyed seeing Chloe's choice to don sunglasses and read in the warm sunshine!

And Liz and Kate found their "play" in the garden where they harvested tomatoes that we were excited to put in our pasta salad for lunch!

Tasty!

We also participated in the first fire drill of the year for James River Elementary School.  We left "play mode" for a while to discuss the importance of this and the other drills we will practice in the coming weeks, like tornado and lockdown drills.  

Everyone made it out safely!  😊

Thus ended the first week of September at the AoA.  Here's what is coming up for the second week:

Tuesday: We usually travel on Tuesdays, but currently, the weather forecast is calling for storms.  We will probably stay put at AFCC, so lunch on your own**. We will have the vans, so if the weather is nice we may head out after lunch to take a walk at a local park.

Wednesday:  Dress for Tai Chi with Michael.  It's National Peanut Day so we will have fun learning about, sampling, and playing with peanuts.  We are not aware of anyone with peanut allergies. Please let us know if you have concerns about your associate interacting with peanuts. Lunch on your own**, but there will be peanut snacks.

Thursday:  It's National Eat a Hoagie Day and most of our guys want meatballs on theirs!  So we will prepare hoagies for lunch, and if meatballs aren't your thing, we will also have turkey and cheese. 😋

Friday:  It happens to be National Online Learning Day, and since our computers didn't arrive last week, we hope to have them up and running by today so we can begin to talk about how to, among other things, use the internet safely.  Lunch on your own**.

** Just to clarify, by "lunch on your own" we mean you may order from the JRES cafeteria, or bring something from home.  These are always options when we are at AFCC, even when we cook something.  Generally, when we go on an outing, we will request "bag lunch" (except for bowling when we have pizza), and that means bring lunch from home, making sure it doesn't need to be heated in a microwave. 😉 

We are thankful that Irma is sparing us, but have our thoughts and prayers with the people of Florida.  We discuss current events each day as we feel it's important for our associates to be aware of what's going on in the news, but we don't want to cause them any anxiety.  Please let us know if your loved one seems negatively affected by our lessons on current events.  Many of the stories we cover are positive and uplifting, but the reality of our world is not always pretty.

Have a nice weekend!

Lisa, Carol, and Nan