Saturday, September 28, 2019

Congratulations, Arc of GW!


Andy Dayton, Arc Board president, Pam McGregor, Executive Director, Susan Harmon, Merrill-Lynch, and Charles Henderson, Bank of America

We're excited this week to say "congratulations" to The Arc of Greater Williamsburg upon receipt of a $50,000 grant from Bank of America to launch our exciting new "Wheels4Work" program!  James City Rotary member, Susan Harmon, who works for Merrill-Lynch, which is under the Bank of America flagship, wrote the grant for us.  Out of 2,800 grant submissions (from around the world), 13 were granted and Susan's was one of them!  In a nutshell, Wheels4Work is an initiative that involves partnerships with Williamsburg Landing and WindsorMeade to provide job descriptions for which Arc clients can apply.  The jobs will offer competitive wages and benefits and will include onsite mentors/coaches to support our workers.  The Arc will provide transportation to and from the job for those who need assistance.  Stay tuned for more infomation about The Arc's Wheels4Work program as we fully develop it!

It was back to Freedom Park and the Botanical Garden on Tuesday for a fun session with our master gardener friends.  We helped create a beautiful fairy garden in the raised bed!  It already had a few succulent plants and a couple of decorative items, but it needed much more.


Krafty Karen had a paint station set up and some of our guys worked on painting little houses, mushrooms, toad houses, and rocks to add to the fairy garden.


Another group worked at the raised bed to construct paths out of rocks and create a pond and stream!


With MGs Carolyn and Rich looking on, Annmarie and Kacie added finishing touches to the fairy houses.


MG Linda and Sam planted sedum in the fairy garden.  Sedum is a type of succulent plant that doesn't require a lot of watering.  The raised bed is in direct sun, so succulent plants should do well there.


Some of us cut and "deadheaded" the zinnias and marigolds.  MG Rick said, "Stop hamming for the camera, Drew!  I need some help over here!"  (Just kidding!)


MG Elizabeth helped Kevin clip the dead flowers off which would encourage new growth.  We heard her say, "Slow down a little!  Don't clip my finger off!"  (Not kidding! 😉)  Kevin is just very efficient!


MG Joanne and Abraham checked the progress of the radish seeds he planted a couple of weeks ago.  He was excited to see they are growing beautifully!  You must have a green thumb, Abraham!


Here's the finished fairy garden!  We love it!  All of our little touches made for a nice finished product.


Karen remembered that we mentioned it would be Kacie's birthday when we came next, and she brought her some lovely cut flowers from her yard!  MG Linda also brought mini birthday cupcakes for our snack, which we ate after our lunch!  THANK YOU, Master Gardeners, for always treating us with love and thoughtfulness!


A one mile Fun Walk at Freedom Park after lunch was good practice for the upcoming 5K!


After our walk, we stopped by Studio South for a yoga session with Kiley.  Kacie was excited to give her some pretty zinnias we had picked at the garden!

  

We did a combination of chair and floor yoga with Kiley.  Here, we are in tree pose.


This is a good stretch for the hip joint.  We try to keep our backs straight.


This is kind of what Warrior Two pose looks like from a chair.  Thanks, Kiley, for a soothing session!


Comic Book Day was on Wednesday.  We didn't have any comic books, but we learned things about comics like they are sometimes called "funnies" and each section is called a "panel."  For our educational activity, we tried to sequence a Peanuts comic strip.


This group was perplexed as it seemed some of the panels could go in more than one place.  What a challenge!


This group had fun putting a knock-knock joke comic strip in sequence.  They laughed way too much!


Later, Annmarie chose to read the Sunday comics!  


The highlight of the day on Wednesday was celebrating Kacie's birthday!  She asked if we could play a round of pool-noodle volleyball and her friends readily agreed!


Kacie's parents treated us to a scrumptious lunch of chicken strips, watermelon, chips, cupcakes, and fruit-infused water.  Thank you, Frank and Stacey, for this oh-so-tasty meal!  It really hit the spot!


We love birthday pictures when the person of the day is surrounded by his or her friends.  Kacie was all smiles all day, and so were her friends!


We enjoyed our second yoga session of the week when Patti returned!  She worked with us on balance today.


One thing we did was try to walk along the perimeter of our mats in a heel-toe step.  


It's a good balance exercise, but a little tricky for us.


Yum!  Our friend Melinda B. recently visited Japan and she brought these candies back for us to try!  We're going to save them for next week and we'll have a lesson on Japan.  Thank you, Melinda!  It was very thoughtful of you to think of us while you were thousands of miles away!  


At Eaton on Friday, we counted hundreds of parts.  The deadline for finishing inventory for them is October 1st, so James just kept bringing us more.  Annmarie, Drew, and Patrick are counting parts we have never even seen before!


Laura and Kevin were counting the same parts. It didn't take them long to get through several tubs.


Kate and Devin also counted things we had never seen.  These were square and stacked easily, like blocks.  They were verifying that they had 5 in each stack.


Sam and Cameron made a good team as they counted lenses that go into the PowerSlide doors we sometimes assemble.


It's nice to see smiles as our guys work.  They are proud of what they do.  It shows on the faces of Kacie and Alexis here.


Xavier and Drew counted covers and bases that we sometimes apply gaskets to, so they were familiar with the parts they had.  Notice that Xavier is smiling and Drew is practicing picking up more than one piece at a time!


Speaking of applying gaskets, Liz was at it again and today she got to show Tracy how it's done!  Tracy, Parks & Rec Inclusion Coordinator and Arc board member, stopped by to check out our work day!


After lunch, Kacie and Becky worked together counting more of the block-like parts.  It's not in the volunteer job description that Becky has to get INTO the bin...she just does what needs to be done! 😊


💙💚 Meemaw was a little under the weather today, and couldn't join us!  We heard on Friday that she was feeling much better.  We missed you, Meemaw! 💛💜

Just as we were about to leave, a few of us thought we should make a video to document the work we did today.  Every bin or barrel with a pink label attached is full of parts we inventoried!  We had earned Frosties, for sure!


Cheers to us, for a great day's work...and of course to Nina, whose generosity in giving us the Wendy's gift cards continues to provide for us to enjoy special treats!


Friday's weather was sunny and nice so we went outside.  Some chose to walk and talk.


Others chose to shoot baskets or throw the ball with friends.


We noticed that a group of volunteers has been working on the garden since Mr. Rob passed away.  Much of the overgrowth has been removed and it's looking good in there.


We studied the Empire State, New York today.  It was the 11th to enter the Union.  We worked on our map skills and learning other facts about New York, but the highlight was trying our hands at making New York Cheesecake...with a Jell-O brand cheesecake mix!  Kacie and Devin figured it out!


Before we could try our cheesecake, we also made a lunch of chicken fried rice.  Another thing we learned about New York was that over 12 million immigrants entered the U.S. through Ellis Island, and in New York City there are neighborhoods representing many cultures as a result.  There are also over 30,000 restaurants in NYC, and many of them serve foods from other countries.


The fried rice was very good, but the cheesecake was a huge hit!  When it comes to lunch, we 💓 New York, for sure!


We also love visiting the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg and spending time with Christina.  When we arrived today, she took us to the peek-through windows to show us the progress being made on what will be the new cafe area.


This is the view through the window.  Yes, we can see ourselves having lunch here in the future!


With all the construction going on, Christina decided it would be better today for us to play 19th century games in the education room.  We were also joined by Jan, Christina's coworker, whom we had not seen in a while.  She is the curator of toys and games at the museums, so she knew a lot about the first game, Lotto. We immediately recognized Lotto as similar to Bingo, and were excited to play.  In the 1800s, "cards" were made of paper and they had a lot of different pictures on them, and by then they were able to be in color, too.  We learned that the game also served to help players see what things (especially animals) looked like that they had only heard or read about otherwise.


The next game we played was called "Earth, Sky, or Water."  Player 1 tosses or passes the ball to player 2 and gives them one of the categories from which player 2 must name an animal.  We used a ball, but in the 1800s, a handkerchief was tossed in the air and player 2 had to jump up and catch the handkerchief and name an animal from the correct category before the handkerchief touched the ground! (That is Jan sitting to the right of Christina.  We didn't end up with a better picture. After this game, she had to leave for a meeting.  We'll make sure to get a better one next time, Jan!)


Next, we tried a puzzle-type game called Tangrams.  This was a game that President Lincoln played!  We were given picture clues to help us arrange the tangram pieces into the shapes of letters.  Many of us found this to be extremely challenging, but Cameron aced it right from the start!  (From his perspective, that's a "V" for victory!)


We have tangram sets at the center, but we haven't used them much.  This is something we are going to revisit!  


Finally, with our time running out, Christina told us that folks in the 1800s also liked to read stories to each other and insert silly parts, kind of like what some of us call Mad Libs.  We didn't have time to really get into this one, so Christina gave us copies to take back to the center.  We will do this in small groups next week.  Many thanks, Christina and Jan, for a fun, fun, fun afternoon!  What a great way to end our week!


We're not on the go quite as much next week, but we will have plenty to keep us busy!  Here's the scoop for the first week in October:

Tuesday:  Please wear Arc shirts and bring your bowling balls!  We'll head to AMF Williamsburg Lanes for a fun morning of bowling and pizza for lunch, courtesy of Cameron's family.  Thank you so much! Afterward, we'll stop by CW for a walk, weather permitting.

Wednesday:  We have welcomed the month of October so today we'll work in the computer lab to create our activities calendar.  We're happy to welcome our Rotary friends back to work with us a couple of times each month, beginning today!  It's also National Custodial Workers Day, so we will celebrate our sensational custodians with a luncheon of baked ziti and salad.  Patti will be here after lunch for yoga, so dress to stretch!

Thursday:  Since our friend Melinda brought us candy samples from her trip to Japan, we will spend some time learning about Japan this morning.  We will also work on a couple of activities Christina gave us when we visited the museum last week.  Lunch on your own.

Friday:  We have a couple of things to celebrate today!  It's North Carolina Day and Lisa's birthday (Monday), so we are combining the two with bbq and sides for lunch provided by Lisa's dad (aka, Grandad) and Nan.  It's also National Body Language Day, so we will explore this topic (to include its relationship to Autism), too.

ONE WEEK AWAY! Saturday, October 5th:  The Williamsburg Landing 5K for the Arc will begin with the 1 Mile Fun Walk at 8:30.  We're so excited that lots of our AoA families will be there!  THANK YOU!



Have a great weekend,

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang