Happy Thanksgiving 2018

We could describe our Thanksgiving Week as short and sweet!  Our "tradition" at the Arc of Abilities has become meeting on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, in addition to Tuesday (as usual) and taking a holiday on Wednesday-Friday.  We would like to thank our families for supporting us in this change to our schedule, and we hope they enjoy the extra time with their loved ones!

Meanwhile, here's what we packed into a couple of beautiful November days...

First up on Monday morning, we had to give a big hand to our Special Olympic bowlers, who competed in a tournament last Friday night.  They all earned medals, even thought they didn't all wear them to the center.  We're so proud of them!  Our own Coach Teri, Sam's mom, along with his dad, Tim, coach the Friday night bowling league for Special Olympics.  We're sure they are proud of these friends, too!

Everyone knows how much our guys love all things Disney, so on Monday we spent the day celebrating the one and only, Mickey Mouse!  He turned 90 years old on Sunday, so a day devoted to him was a pretty easy choice for us.  Here we are in our Mickey birthday hats!



We watched a video on the history of Mickey Mouse and found out that Walt Disney originally wanted to name him Mortimer, but Disney's wife said that was too hard for kids to say!  After changing the name to Mickey, Disney set about making movies and in 1928, Mickey Mouse found stardom in Steamboat Willie. 

At mid-morning we took a break to check on the Kool-ickles (aka, dill pickles marinating in Kool-Aid) we set up last week.  We had put some in grape and others in cherry Kool-Aid and left them in the fridge for about 5 days.  This is how they looked on Monday!  The cherry ones were red all the way through.  The grape ones looked almost black.

Karen, our substitute custodian, stopped by just as we were about to taste them, and she joined us.  Our consensus was that the Kool-Aid changed the tartness of the dill pickles to a slightly sweeter taste, and, we could also taste cherry and grape flavors.

Next, we had to prepare a birthday treat since it was Mickey's birthday.  We turned mini-Moon Pies and chocolate-dipped vanilla wafer cookies  into Mickey pops!  Kate and Dev were waiting for the ears to complete their pops.

Drew and Patrick were also waiting for ears, and they weren't too sure where this "recipe" was taking us!

They turned out something like this...but tasted great!  (We noted that at Magic Kingdom a treat like this would cost you at least $5.95!)

We ended our day with a video version of Disney trivia called Disney scene it?, which is a game we haven't played in a long time.  It was fun and since it's an old game, it includes questions from some of Disney's movies that go way back.  It was hard to stump our guys, though!  What a fun day!

What better way to start the day on Tuesday than with our dance warm up AND Karaoke?!   We were having so much fun with this, that we have not one, but two videos to post this week!

After all that fun, we got serious for a while and discussed the meaning of Thanksgiving.  We watched a video that explained the history of this holiday and learned that the author of the children's rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," Sarah Josepha Hale, campaigned diligently to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.  She wrote letters to five presidents before Abraham Lincoln was persuaded to support legislation establishing it as a holiday in 1863.

Next, we shared things we are thankful for, and wrote them on our pumpkin!  This is something we should have done a week ago, however.  Our pumpkin was too far gone to save, so after we listed our gratitude, we had to chuck the stinky thing into the woods.  Hope the deer enjoy it!

It wasn't as warm as we hoped it would be, but it was still a nice afternoon outside so we took the short drive down to Newport News Park to take a pre-Thanksgiving feast walk.  

It is supposed to be quite chilly on Thanksgiving, but we hope our guys will be able to get some outside activity during our time off.  They really enjoy walking! 

In the past when we have walked across this bridge, we've seen fish and turtles in the water.  Today we saw seagulls, which surprised us since they are usually spotted at the beach!

Here, we stopped for a group shot near a cannon.  If you look carefully, you can see one of NN Park's Celebration in Lights display pieces, a Civil War soldier, near the cannon.  Workers were on scene at the park testing all the lights, so we got to see a preview of the big event.  This year, the Celebration in Lights begins on Thanksgiving night, and it will cost $12 per car to drive through the display.

On the way out of the park, we stopped at the playground near the Ranger Station to meet Kevin's mom, who was meeting us to pick up Kacie and him.  Noticing there were no little ones playing, our guys seized the opportunity to climb, swing, and slide for a few moments!

Kevin's mom arrived with his sister Julia in tow.  She's home from the University of Delaware, and enjoyed chatting with a few of Kevin's friends. 

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Drew enjoyed having the slide all to himself!

Xavier and Devin had the swings all to themselves!

Our visit to NN Park was a pleasant way to end our short week.  We hope to see everyone back next week.  Here's what we have planned for the last week of November: 

Tuesday: We will go bowling today and that means pizza and apples for lunch.  Many thanks to Sam's mom for sponsoring today's pizza lunch.  She is treating us for having made posters for her neighborhood Halloween party!  If the weather is good, we'll visit the garden at Freedom Park to see if any spinach or mustard greens are ready for harvesting!  Please wear Arc shirts.

Wednesday:  Tuesday was "Giving Tuesday" so we are going to start a Food Drive today.  We hope to help our friends at Grove Christian Outreach replenish their shelves for the Christmas season.  We will collect nonperishable food items this week and next week!  Look for a list of most-needed items to come home with your associates today.  (By the way, we're still collecting gently used clothing for Grove for those of you with closets to clean out!)  We'll also enjoy yoga with Patti, so dress to stretch.   Lunch on your own.

Thursday:  We're going to transform donated Mason jars into a few useful items today in honor of Mason Jar Day.  This will kick off our Christmas decorating season!  We'll also celebrate our successful event when the LEAD team visited by having pizza and salad for lunch, provided by The Arc's Executive Director, Pam!  Thank you, Pam and YAY, us!

Friday:  It's history time today!  Rosa Parks' birthday is coming up on December 1, and she's one of our favorite icons to study. We will also look ahead to December as we plan our calendar for the month.  Lunch on your own.

🦃 Finally, from us to you, our Turkey Trot 2018 Happy Thanksgiving wish! 🦃

Lisa, Carol, and Nan

Pickles and MREs

There were many highlights to our week, but one for sure had to be the fun we had with pickles and MREs! Here's what we were up to as November rolled along.

On Tuesday we made our way to bowling where we celebrated Patrick's birthday!  We would like to thank his mom for sponsoring our pizza lunch, and we also enjoyed cupcakes made by Alexis and Kacie and decorated with sprinkles in the colors of Patrick's favorite NFL team, the Carolina Panthers!  It was a great way to start our week.

Sam and Dev were ready with fist bumps when Bo scored an early strike in the first game.

Alexis likes to center her concentration by bringing the ball to her chin before beginning her approach.  

This was Chris's reaction to missing a spare by one pin!

And this was Kacie's reaction to scoring a strike!

Here's the birthday boy, Patrick, and his friends, just before they enjoyed the cupcakes!

We couldn't take a walk because it was drizzling rain after bowling, so we returned to AFCC where some of our friends prepared Arc's December mailing.  

BIG NEWS:  The Holiday Dinner and Dance is scheduled for December 15!!  Don't forget to complete your sign up sheet and return it to Bette Faye before the deadline.  You don't want to miss this wonderful evening with lots of FRIENDS! 

🎅🎄🎅🎄

It was National Pickle Day on Wednesday!  We had a rare morning snack when we celebrated by sampling dill, bread and butter, and sweet gherkins.  Most of our guys tried them and the bread and butter slices were the most popular.  We also did some worksheets with pickles for the theme!  So that's how pickles can make us smarter!

They can also make us sillier...as when we set up this experiment to find out how pickles would react to having Kool-Aid added to the brine!  We read on the National Day Calendar website that Kool-Aid pickles (or Kool-ickles, as we called them) are a thing!

So we added cherry and grape flavors to a couple of jars of dill spears and put them in the fridge to marinate for a few days.  We'll check them on Monday!  Yum...or not?!?!

Lisa recently traveled to the mountains of North Carolina where she spotted this brochure at one of the visitor centers.  Inside, it explains how certain forest animals move in order to hunt or escape predators. Then it shows how humans can incorporate similar moves into a fun workout.

We paired everyone up with a partner and taught the moves to each other.  Here, Chris and Drew demonstrate a move that represented how squirrels have great balance which enables them to dash along tree branches without falling.  We know balance exercises are good for us, too!

These friends are practicing push ups as a way to strengthen their arm muscles.  Ants can carry things that weigh more than they do, and humans need arm strength to help with lifting as well.

Laura and Devin taught us the hummingbird arm swing.  Even though we can't do 50 flaps a second, like hummingbirds, we can do a lot in a minute and that's a good cardio exercise!

We took time on Wednesday to reflect on the meaning of Veterans Day.  We watched an informational video, completed educational worksheets, and shared personal stories about veterans we know.  For fun, we got to learn about the military's MREs!  Sam's dad was able to send us a few samples of these complete, ready to eat meals.

This is an example of what came in the vegetable lasagna package.  The green pouch will heat up and warm the food when the white part inside is activated with water (there is a chemical reaction).  It got pretty hot, too!   

Here, Sam and Dev check out the beef patty meal.  They can't believe the included heat pouch could warm up the beef!

Even though the beef patty didn't warm all the way through, those who sampled it gave it a thumbs up.  Kacie and Alexis liked the bbq sauce for dipping, and despite Kevin's look of apparent apprehension, he said it was "really good!" 

Annmarie and Chris (and many others), said the best part of the MREs was the Skittles that came in one of them!

Patti was back this week for yoga and she led us through a great routine that included a lot of deep breathing.  We were kind of wound up from the excitement of the pickles and MREs from the morning, and this session of yoga helped to settle us significantly.

Look at these strong "warriors" grounding themselves in calmness!  Thanks, Patti.  We enjoyed our yoga practice!

By Thursday morning, we were ready to cook!  Our recipe for the day was a breakfast casserole that we would make in a Bundt pan (to celebrate Bundt Pan Day - which is a thing just like Kool-ickles are!).  We also decided to bake some of the casserole in muffin pans, since we couldn't fit two Bundt pans in the Nina.

First, ingredients had to be gathered, so armed with a checklist, Annmarie and Sam made a trip to the fridge.  We needed ham, eggs, milk, cheese, biscuits, and hash browns.

Liz made sure to preheat one of our toaster ovens, so we could bake the casserole we put in the muffin pans.  We make good use of both the toaster oven and the Nina!

Drew and Dev had to line the muffin pans with papers; the hands belong to Kacie and Liz who wanted to help "speed" them along!

Devin helped Alexis measure and add cheese.  Those who weren't working on their part of the casserole recipe worked on word puzzles and coloring pages.  It was a quiet, focused, and well-paced morning for us.

 

Bo, Laura, and Kacie made a plan for cracking eggs and cutting up biscuits.  In the background, Chris and Becky were preparing to cut ham.  We were excited when Becky came in early to help.  She wanted to check out this recipe for use later.  We were happy to teach Becky one of our favorite recipes!

Our efforts yielded a beautiful (if only half "golden") Bundt pan casserole and some single-serve muffin-sized ones as well!  We added bananas for a side, and it was another hit with our gang!

During Choice Time, Dev helped Drew with a new math program we added to our laptops.  It's based on the game of Plinko, which is one of Drew's favorites on the show, The Price is Right. 😊

During our group work, Nan and Carol led this group in a fun vocabulary game.  They had to be quick to find the answers!

Becky and Lisa led these groups through some word skills with Veterans Day as the theme.

After group work, we finished the afternoon with some crafts.  Patrick and Chris worked on the weaving project we started when we visited Christina at the Art Museums earlier this month.

Kacie and Alexis also worked on weaving.  Christina wants us to bring them back next month and she will show us how to take the finished project off of the small loom.

Other friends worked on Thanksgiving crafts, like these friendly scarecrows Sam and Devin are showing off!

Kevin added colorful "feather" stickers to a turkey he made!

We had saved some of the samples from the MREs so on Friday morning, we set up a buffet!  This time we sampled veggie lasagna (very tasty), mango-peach applesauce ("tastes like baby food!"), marble pound cake (very crumbly, but sweet), raisins and peanuts (good), wheat bread (not bad), and crackers with jalapeno cheese spread (yum!).  We also tasted "orange beverage" and lemonade, and they weren't too bad, either.  These samples helped us appreciate our military men and women just a little more as we realized how lucky we are to have access to fresh, tasty food whenever we want it.  😌

After our MRE buffet we had fun with this craft.  Turns out Bette Faye couldn't use all the TP rolls we collected, so we made these cute turkeys out of them!  Thanks to everyone who donated!!

Friday was National Button Day and we played an old-fashioned game to celebrate. Some players had a button tied to a string, while another player had a lid to a pot.  When a certain number was rolled with the die, the object was to yank your button away before the player with the lid captured it.  Sam was pretty quick with the lid, surprising Annmarie, Laura, and Kevin!

Looks like Liz and Patrick were pulling their buttons away in time, but Devin probably got caught by Kacie!

After lunch, we went to the park for a nice long walk/hike.  The weather was perfect.  Saturday is Take A Hike Day and we encouraged our friends to gather family this weekend and hit another trail!

We walked on the paved path at New Quarter Park for our hike, but they have lots of wooded trails, too.  We always have a great time when we come here.

As we finished a four day week, we're looking forward to a change in our usual schedule and a two-day week coming up.  Remember, we are going to be open MONDAY and TUESDAY next week, and closed Wednesday-Friday for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  

Here's what's up for Monday and Tuesday:

Monday:  Our favorite mouse, Mickey, turns 90 years old on Sunday, so we will spend today celebrating him and other things Disney, which we love!  Feel free to wear Disney clothes!  We'll make a special Mickey Mouse treat, but lunch on your own!

Tuesday:  We will reflect on the meaning of Thanksgiving and look into its history.  Weather permitting, we will take a short drive down to Newport News Park for some afternoon fresh air, and a pre-Thanksgiving feast walk to burn a few calories!  Lunch on your own.

So glad to hear that most of our guys (and staff/volunteers) have gotten their flu shots!  Thanks, Everyone! 👍

We'll see our friends on MONDAY!  Don't forget!!

Have a great weekend,

Lisa, Carol, and Nan