Out with August

Well, we watched August end this week and even the associates were talking about how quickly it went by!  We had a great week, though, and said goodbye to August but kept a lot of memories.

On a rainy Tuesday morning we did our dance thing and then got to cooking.  First we made "trail mix" bread in mini-loaf pans to have with our lunch of scrambled eggs.  Trail Mix Day would be on Thursday, but we had switched our days around since we couldn't travel on Tuesday, so we celebrated Trail Mix Day a little early. 

We also had the rare morning snack because, of course, we had to make our own trail mix.  From a variety of ingredients (Cheerios, granola, dried fruit, M&Ms), everyone made a custom order for themselves...and there were no leftovers.  

There was still egg "stuff" to do, so we continued our egg-citing adventures.  This time we tried to get our eggs to stand on end without rolling over.  

Alexis managed to do it - before we shared a tip for success! Wow!

Everyone else had success after trying again, but with a dab of salt to rest the egg upon!

From there, we moved on to cracking eggs and separating the yolks from the whites!  One technique we tried was shifting the yolk from shell to shell while letting the white slide into a bowl.  Liz mastered it pretty quickly!

Less successfully, and much more work, was the "suck the yolk up into the bottle" technique!  Kind of fun, but our guys had trouble releasing the bottle once the yolk got inside, and so the yolk just came back out...

...until Kate gave it a try!

Later in the day, we revisited the egg drop trick, only this time we decided to try it with 3 glasses of water and 3 eggs.  Laura tried, but the eggs only rolled onto the table (except for the one that crashed on the floor)!

Alexis gave it a try and managed to get two of the three eggs into the glasses.

Then along came Chris and, "BOOM!"  All three eggs into the glass!  (By the way, thanks to our grant from the Rotary Club, not only are we getting computers for the AoA, but we also got a nice digital camera that records videos in a way YouTube likes.  Thus, we are back to posting live action!)

The final "trick" we tried was "boiling" eggs by baking them.  According to the Internet, it's just as easy to bake eggs as to boil them, so we tried it. 

They tasted very good, if a little dry, and the whites were browned on one side, but otherwise, we found that baking eggs actually works!  If we ever do this again (emphasis on "if"), we will cut the baking time back just a bit! 😋

All of that fun with eggs left us egg-hausted...so we were glad to have a relaxing morning of Tai Chi on Wednesday!

Here we are warming up so we would look good for our video.  

This is a snippet of today's routine!  All together now...

Remember that hip rotation move we were working on last week?  Michael called Kate out on it today...for her gracefulness!  Way to go, Kate!

 More highlights included Alexis and Josie co-teaching...

Kevin's chin up posture (!)...

And Sam, who loves to channel his inner Bruce Lee...but needs to do it the Tai Chi way, which is s-l-o-w-l-y.  Michael says he's getting there!

We also enjoyed a group cooking project on Wednesday!  Using last week's leftovers, and adding chicken and sauce, we made a green chile enchilada casserole.  Here's our pic by pic tutorial. (We're a food blog now!)

First, preheat the oven and then add some enchilada sauce to the pans.

Next add a layer of the corn tortillas we had cut into equal parts (fourths) during our fraction lesson.  We needed lots of those fourths!

Step 3 is divide the bowl of shredded chicken into halves...

...and then layer it over the tortillas.

Last week's leftover cheese is layered next.

A two man job!

More chicken and then top with more tortilla fourths.

A nervous, but brave Xavier popped it into the oven and next thing we knew...

Yum!  

We also had these very delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies that were sent in by Josie's stepmom, Lisa.  What a special treat!  Come join us for lunch sometime!

After lunch we worked in our small groups on more fraction skills.

After groups, we played "Back and Forth Bingo" so we ended the day with movement. 😎

Once everyone arrived on Thursday morning we revealed that our Mystery Travel trip was to the Mariner's Museum in Newport News.  After a brief overview of what to expect, including an explanation of the term "mariner," we loaded up and hit the road.  We were met by our new museum friend, Bree, who had helped set up our trip.  After buying our Sumertime Special $1 admission tickets (movie an additional fee! 😏), our adventure began!

Bree took this shot our our fine looking group.  See that handsome (and tall) fella in the back?  Carol's son David joined us today!  He even sported his mom's extra Arc shirt! 

Kacie found the figureheads very interesting!

These three tried lifting cannonballs and found out they are kind of heavy!

We had already enjoyed a 3D double feature in the main theater, but throughout the museum there are shorter films that help inform your visit.  We enjoyed checking out a few of them, too.

We learned that the great British admiral, Horatio Nelson, died in battle, but in a prior battle, he had to have his right arm amputated.  We came across a display of surgical instruments and read that after his amputation, he insisted that the doctor heat the instruments before operating on others...so as to make the procedure less painful!

Kevin will guide us home as soon as we find a compass!

We headed to check out the small crafts on display.  Lots of wooden boats in here.  They looked so "old timey!"

Lunch on the patio was nice.  Sam and Xavier chose to sit in the warm sunshine!

Flies were uninvited guests, but we took one of Devin's empty applesauce containers and set up a decoy.  It actually worked!  Gross, but true...

After lunch we enjoyed a walk on the beautiful Noland Trail.  It was a little warm, but the trail is heavily wooded and it was much cooler in the shade.

On Lake Maury we observed a lot of turtles.  There were all sizes of them in this lake and they were playful.  We could have watched them all afternoon.

After about a half-mile in we had to turn around and begin our journey back to the center, but we decided this trail would be very pretty to revisit in the fall!

 Friday was a quiet day at the center.  In the morning we beat the rain and took a brisk walk down to Grove Christian Outreach Center to deliver our food drive donations.

Devin and Drew helped weigh our donations.  We send a huge thank you to our AoA families for your generosity.  We collected 167 pounds of nonperishable food.  That is a great contribution from a group our size!

We also worked on our September calendar and planned some fun days to "celebrate" in the month ahead!

After lunch we put together a small mailing job for The Arc.  Be on the lookout for an update letter and a survey to come in the mail!

At the end of the day we enjoyed the gym.  This will be the last time we can go in there whenever we want since school starts on Tuesday.  We'll miss "open gym" time!  Luckily, the PE teacher has lunch at 11:00 each day, so we will be able to use it sometimes, if other groups, such as adaptive PE classes or photographers on school picture days, are not.

Speaking of school beginning again, that also means school lunches will be available for purchase!  Several of our associates have accounts in place, and Carol has communicated with families what their balances are.  If your associate does not have a lunch account, and you would like to establish one, just send in some cash or a check made payable to JRES, and Carol will set it up.  Please note, the price of lunch this year has increased to $2.70.  If your associate wants to order milk only, it's still 55 cents.  We will send September's menu home on Tuesday, and you can also check it here:

WJCC Schools Lunch Menu

Here's what else is up for next week:

Tuesday:  Wear Arc shirts!  We will go bowling and celebrate two days:  Bowling League Day (which is Sept. 3) AND Cheese Pizza Day!  Pizza for lunch!

Wednesday:  Dress for Tai Chi with Michael.  Lunch on your own!

Thursday:  It's the first Thursday of the month so we will travel to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg to see what Christina has in store for us!  Please wear Arc shirts.  Lunch on your own!

Friday: We hope to be introducing our Learning Lab today and using our new laptops!  We will also prepare grilled chicken pasta salad for lunch.

Don't forget the 5K is coming up on October 7th!

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

Lisa, Carol, and Nan