Happy New Year 2019!

Happy New Year, families and friends!  We hope everyone had a joyful holiday season and enjoyed quality time with loved ones.  Our guys were excited to be back among their friends when we returned on Wednesday, and eager to share about their holiday experiences.  It sounded like everyone had a wonderful holiday!

We had a lot to do when we got back.  We began by letting Kevin give Chris his Secret Santa gift.  Neither Chris nor Kevin were with us at our holiday party on December 19th, so we saved Chris's gift for today.  (Kacie had taken Kevin's gift from Patrick to him after the party.) You can see by the look on Chris's face that he loved the Buffalo Bills cap Kevin picked for him!

Cameron received a 300 piece puzzle/poster from Sam...but Sam was under the weather and not here on Wednesday to give it to Cam in person!  Cameron enjoys puzzles so he was happy with his gift, including the candy that was attached to it!

After our dance warm up, we had to remove Christmas decorations from the walls.  

They sure came down a lot faster than they went up!  We will soon need to put up Valentine's Day decorations! (Say it isn't so...💕 !)

Since we are so blessed by the many gifts and opportunities provided to us by family and friends, we had a few thank you notes to write when we returned to the center.  Our Rotary friend Jeff came today, so he worked with Alexis and Liz to write a couple of notes for Carol, who had graciously opened her home to us on December 18th for a lovely holiday gathering.  

Jeff helped the girls with a bit of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and suggested some changes to the font they were using.  But THEY impressed him with their word processing skills and attention to details in their writing!  They also remembered how to insert pictures that they found online!  Jeff, and all of us, were proud of their final products, and Carol loved them.  

We continued working on thank you notes in the big room, with this group "hunting and pecking" but finding the keys needed (letters were called to them orally) to create a sweet note to Cristin and Samantha, the friends from Anheuser-Busch who came last month to help us make the gumball machine ornaments.

Devin actually hunted and pecked with both his left and right hands!

Carol helped Bo and Kevin organize their thoughts as they wrote a wonderful letter to Nina, who had gifted us with enough Wendy's gift cards to have Frosties all year!  Nina's grandson, Sam, would have been in this group but he was home feeling a little under the weather.  🤧 We missed you, Sam, but you would have approved of the letter these guys wrote to Nina!

Technology has a place in the lives of all of our friends, and having access to it at our center helps them keep the skills they have and, in many cases, acquire new ones.  Thanks, again, Williamsburg Rotary, for providing us the equipment needed to have a computer lab at our center!

Look who came back to work today!  Heike was missed for a couple of months and we were happy to see her back on duty.  She has a few restrictions, but for the most part, her doctors told her to use her left arm as much as she can and her strength will eventually return.  Welcome home, Heike!  

It was Personal Trainer Awareness Day on Wednesday, so we used some markers and colored pencils recently donated by Sam's family to make some special cards for Patti!  We didn't get a picture, but she was happy to find out it was "her" special day, and she loved the cards we made!

Patti's focus in today's yoga lesson was to have us think about setting "intentions" for 2019, instead of resolutions.  Resolutions can set us up to fall short of sometimes challenging goals. Intentions nurture our consciousness and raise our awareness, helping us to "resolve" with purpose... 😉☮👌

We also did lots of twisting with Patti.  She explained that twists help open our bodies for better breathing, circulation, and digestion!

We learned that our internal organs really appreciate us twisting and stretching!  

On Thursday, we got a lot done!  We didn't get around to updating our January calendar on Wednesday, so we worked on that first thing.  Being a new year, we wanted to try something different.  Our guys usually draw pictures on the calendar squares for each day's events, but we decided to use online images this time, since our internet access had been upgraded!  We had to use the Guest Network in the past (with a few issues maintaining connectivity), but over the holidays, the IT folks from Parks & Rec increased our bandwidth!!  That means we will be able to use all of our computers online at the same time!  We are super excited about this!  Thank you John Carnifax at Parks & Rec for helping us with this situation and for setting up the improved connectivity.  We will be able to use our computers more productively now!

Chris was excited to find images to match his assignment of preparing a square for visiting the art museum, collecting pine cones, and celebrating Bird Day.

Dev and Cameron searched for images for Popcorn Day, Soup and Grilled Cheese Day, and Save the Eagles Day.  They found a lot of images and had to decide which ones they liked best!

Alexis was happy to help Laura, find images for yoga and puzzles.

This is a shot of Patrick's screen.  He had a couple of calendar squares to complete, and needed images for hats, fig newtons, the Mariners Museum, and others!  Another skill we worked on was sizing the images, as they needed to be fairly small to fit on our calendar squares.

Looks like we were enjoying this change up to putting our calendar together!

Devin and Kevin had worked with a partner to find images, and then they double checked that the numbers were correctly placed on our calendar poster.

This is what our calendar squares looked like once they were placed on the poster, which goes on the bulletin board.  By printing images from online, we could fit more on each square.  Our guys liked the way it turned out!  We don't always get to do everything we plan for, but we do most of it.  Sometimes things get rescheduled, and sometimes we have to say we'll get to it "next year."  Our calendar helps us learn to monitor and adjust!

After being hunched over computers for a while, we needed to stretch and get in some fitness time.  We have recently enjoyed working out with an online trainer named Lucy.  She is from England, like our online yoga teacher, Jaime.  There must be something about those English accents that motivates us to move, because we gave it our all for 15 minutes!

We got our thinking revved up when we worked on crossword puzzles.  First, we completed a custom made puzzle that had clues relating to each of us.  That was fun!

This group also worked an online crossword.  It took all of them working together to analzye the clues, figure out the answer...and then spell it correctly!

During our afternoon group work, we created our own crosswords using letter cards.  That was the easy part.  😊

Thinking of clues was a little more challenging! 🤔

At the end of the day we played a game that involved using context clues and listening carefully to the player before us.  Everyone had a card to pay attention to, with word and picture clues.  It was fun to watch them waiting expectantly for their friends to read the clues that lead to their cards!

Annmarie took reading her clue card very seriously!  She did a great job!

🍝Hooray for National Spaghetti Day, which was Friday!🍝  Being one of our favorite meals, it didn't take much to get everyone assigned to a lunch preparation team so we could pull off a yummy midday meal!

"Meat" the sauce group:  Laura, Dev, Cameron, and Xavier!  They also helped prepare garlic bread and the pasta.

Alexis and Drew volunteered for salad prep.  Drew has been trying veggies for us lately, so we were excited that he wanted to make salads.  At lunch, he ate all of his salad and had a little extra, too!  Way to go, Drew!

Dev's grandmother sent us a package of sugar cookie dough (in a pretty little cookie jar that we forgot to take a picture of 😢) so this team of Liz, Kate, and Devin worked together to bake them from start to finish!

Since the sugar cookies wouldn't be enough for our large group, Kevin, Sam, Annmarie, Patrick, and Chris followed a simple recipe to make a few extra peanut butter cookies.

Before lunch we got proactive and worked off a few of the pasta and cookie calories we would soon consume!

One thing we learned during our research on spaghetti is that most Italians do not put heavy meat sauce on it like "Americanos" do!  But that's how we like it, so we also learned that mixing the sauce in with the pasta before serving is the best way to coat the noodles. Plus, adding some of the water that the pasta cooked in can add extra flavor and help to thin the sauce, which will also make it coat the noodles better!

We also learned that a trick for serving spaghetti is to use tongs and give it a twirl when placing it on the plate.  Cameron used a two-hand twirling method, and Sam couldn't wait to take that plate back to his seat!

It was a fun morning with our cooking and baking activities.  Our spaghetti and salad lunch hit the spot, but we saved a little room for either a sugar or peanut butter cookie!  We froze the leftovers and will enjoy them another time.  Many thanks to Dev's grandmother for sending us the sugar cookie mix!  We enjoy our sweets!

We also had fun celebrating Trivia Day on Friday.  Our guys enjoy showing off their vast amount of knowledge on lots of trivial topics!  One game we played was NFL Trivia.  The boys were excited to get a question about the Buffalo Bills...which is Chris's favorite team!  Of course he knew the answer to this was "The Jills" and his team earned a point!

We probably should have given the girls a point for this question that also came up on the boys' turn, because they got a huge assist from Kate!  The boys came up with "Jaguars" and "Panthers," but couldn't think of any more, and 2 wasn't one of the answer choices.  Kate mentioned the "Lions" and after more thinking, she asked which team has stripes on their helmets, which led the boys to say "Bengals" and voila, the answer is 4!

Games of Animal Trivia and (of course!) Disney Movie Trivia rounded out our day, and in the end, the teams had tied scores!  That happens a lot with our smarties!

We're back to a full four days next week.  Here's what you need to know:  

Tuesday:  It's bowling today!  Seems like it's been forever since we bowled, as our last scheduled day turned out to be a snow day!  We also have a special treat for lunch:  Choice of pizza, hot dog, or chicken tenders, courtesy of Kate's family!  Thank you for this very special treat!  After bowling, we will visit with Katy for a yoga session at Studio South.  It will be an active day for us, and that's the best kind! Wear your Arc shirts!

Wednesday:  Today will be interesting as we celebrate Static Electricity Day (yay, science!) and Ninja Day, which was was back on December 5, but we never got around to it.  Lots of our guys like Ninjas, so we'll have a little fun with it!  Dress to stretch as we'll have yoga with Patti, too.  Lunch on your own.

Thursday:  Tomorrow is National Milk Day but we are celebrating today by using milk in a recipe for Broccoli Alfredo for lunch!   It's also Save the Eagles Day.  We enjoy checking out eagle cams and learning about our majestic national bird each year.  

Friday:  Jorie has requested our services for a work day at Eaton, so please wear Arc shirts and bring a bag lunch!  We will also plan to stop by Wendy's for a treat on the way back to AFCC, courtesy of Sam's grandmother!!  Thanks again, Nina, for the gift cards!

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The Arc of GW has some awesome events coming up, so save these dates: 

January 19th is the Family Health Fair at the Rec Center on Longhill Road.  Presented by The Arc of GW and JCC Parks and Rec, it's a morning not to be missed!  Come join us!




Sunday, January 27th will be the 2nd Annual  Film Screening & Community Conversation at the Kimball Theater.  This year the film is "Intelligent Lives."  It's about three young adults with intellectual disabilities who challenge the perceptions of intelligence.  The tease is:  "You never know what people can do!"  Tickets are free, with donations to The Arc of Greater Williamsburg accepted. Doors open at 1:30.   Follow this link for more information:  Intelligent Lives Film Screening

Hope to see you there!



Have a great weekend,

Lisa, Carol, and Nan