Happy 25th Birthday, Annmarie!
Tuesday
How lucky are we to get to celebrate the birthday of ANOTHER one of our friends this week?! Our sweet girl, Annmarie, turned 25 on Monday and we celebrated her with a Zoom party on Tuesday. Like last week's Birthday Boy, Drew, Annmarie is also staying safer at home for now, but she joins us for Zoom and we're so glad!
We know that Annmarie loves The Wiggles, so we had to start her Zoom party with "Toot Toot, Chugga Chugga Big Red Car!" Such a fun song!
After we danced, Heike stopped by to say "Happy Birthday" to Annmarie. We were getting ready to play Disney Song Trivia, and Heike had on a Disney mask! She came up close to the camera so our friends at home could see. It's a pretty mask!
Something else Annmarie loves is to color, so after our trivia game, we all colored together! Annmarie's mom said this is when Annmarie "gets in her zone." 😍 We enjoyed being in the zone with you, Annmarie!
Sam and Lilly were in the zone, too! As our pictures say, we are grateful for our friends!
Becky drew a special birthday picture for Annmarie! It says "We love you, Annmarie." That is true! We hope our Birthday Girl had fun at her Zoom party. We sure did!
After Annmarie's party, we headed over to Colonial Williamsburg for a walk on this bright and sunny day, with the temperature warming up to the 60s. As we got near Bruton Parish, we ran into Liz's dad, Greg, and their new puppy, Nelly, who is growing! So sorry to have cut your head off in the picture, Greg, but it was great seeing you!
Our surprise destination was the candy store! We heard that it's one of Lilly's favorite places in CW, so we wanted to get her a "congratulations" treat and celebrate her recent good news - receiving the fellowship at CNU! We got some chocolate covered pretzel bites for us, and a truffle for her! (And we got enough pretzel bites for our friends who come on Thursday, too!)
As we headed back to the vans, we wondered if Christina was working at the Art Museums today?! Next time we'll let her know when we're in the neighborhood and maybe she can walk or picnic with us. This is the new entrance to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. Isn't it beautiful?!
We took a short drive over to the CW Visitor Center and enjoyed our lunch at the picnic area. It was warm in the sun and a perfect day to eat outside.
Congratulations, again, to our intern, Lilly! You're just as sweet as your celebratory truffle!
While we were out, we stopped by Eaton. It was exactly one year ago this week that we last visited the plant, and then Covid-19 took our trips away. We had some work we completed last week to deliver to James, who thanked us for getting it done for Eaton!
With still more time to spend together, we returned to AFCC to celebrate Plant a Flower Day, which is Friday. We set up a table outside and got to work potting pansies. Cameron and Sam chose green pots for theirs.
Alexis, Nancy, and Liz chose terracotta, green, and beige pots. We're going to use these pretty potted pansies as centerpieces next week for our anniversary luncheon!
Wednesday
On days like today, we spend time outside. This morning, we walked around the campus, shot hoops, and checked the new growth beginning to appear in the community garden.
This tree is located near the playground. We couldn't help but notice all the buds on the branches, and we know this tree will be covered with blooms very soon!
UPDATE: Here's what the same tree looked like just 2 days later when Friday's group went outside!
One year ago this week, Liz and her family gave us this gift of a beautiful birdbath to mark the AoA's 4th anniversary. We put it away when we closed for Covid-19 on March 13, 2019. With spring only a few days away, we are going to begin setting it out again each day. (We bring it in at night.) Hopefully, our bird friends will enjoy the fresh water! Beneath the birdbath, in one of our planters that our master gardener friends prepared for us, a daffodil and several crocuses are in bloom!
We learned about the Amazon Rainforest today when we studied the continent of South America. We were fascinated to learn about the millions of species of insects, mammals, fish, reptiles, and amphibians that live there. We learned that it used to be almost as big as the United States, and we were saddened to learn that human destruction has caused thousands of acres to be lost. Fortunately, we also learned that there are many people working to save the Amazon Rainforest. (It provides 20% of the Earth's oxygen!!!)
This week we were celebrating several "food holidays!" Sunday, March 6 was Frozen Food Day. We learned that Mr. Clarence Birdseye (sound familiar?!) discovered that flash-freezing (or very quickly freezing) food would help prevent the ice crystals from getting too big on the food, and thus make it taste better when cooked. March 9th is National Meatball Day, and you can buy them frozen, too! So we made Swedish meatballs with frozen veggies for lunch. Sam and Nancy handled the meatball recipe, with Nan's help!
Cameron and Kevin (aka, "Meatball Models") helped Carol prepare the frozen veggies, green beans and corn. They also prepped some pasta, and when we plated our lunch, it looked pretty good! (It was!) Love their shirts and masks!
Baking Blarney Stone Cookies is a tradition because it was the first thing we ever cooked, and we did it on our second day in operation, March 17, 2016. Drew's family had given us this "rotating oven" so we could heat pizzas, and we decided to try baking cookies on it. (We also used it for pizzas until we got The Nina!) The cookies turned out great, and we've been baking them on the Pizzazz Plus for St. Patrick's Day ever since!
Here's a throwback picture of Drew helping mix our very first batch of them back in 2016!
Here's Patrick with what was left of today's batch, after we had sampled a few! What a tasty tradition!
We welcomed Thursday's group and after our dance warm up, we checked last week's blog. Lilly read through it with us, and we loved remembering things like Drew's birthday and cooking shepherd's pie! Next week, we will look back over several of our blog posts from the past 5 years and reminisce about a lot of things!
Here's a picture of Elvis and his buddies singing "Spring Fever" for our Zoom session. We're getting excited that spring is just a few days away, and we like retro music videos like this one! It's from a 1965 movie of Elvis's called "Girl Happy."
Our main Zoom topic was about animals' heart sizes. Mystery Doug taught us that the larger the animal, the larger the heart. We saw a small animal called an elephant shrew that has a heart the size of the tip of our pinky! We learned that the giraffe's heart is stronger on the left side because that's the side that pumps blood allllll the way up its neck! The largest heart belongs to the blue whale. Its heart is about the size of a car! Very interesting information!
Our activity involved us trying to find items in our rooms that were about the same size as certain animal hearts. We learned that a large elephant has a heart about the size of a kid who balls himself up, like Devin is doing here.
See Liz's box with the yellow around it? She's not in the shot because she was also balled up on the floor, trying to imagine what size an elephant's heart is! Good job, Liz and Devin...and also Abraham who tried but wasn't in the picture!
After Zoom, we zipped over to the Botanical Garden at Freedom Park. Right away we noticed more bulbs are in bloom. Here, we were walking by some mini-irises that are very purple and very pretty!
A few weeks ago, Alexis, Michelle, and Kate painted mini-birdhouses that our master gardener friends gave us, and today they added them to the fairy garden. There were some other MGs working at the garden and they told us we had just missed our friend Linda, and that she had watered the fairy garden. We would have loved to run into Linda!
Lilly found a small stick which she used to stir around the water in this small barrel. We have seen goldfish in it before, but a couple of weeks ago it looked as though the water had frozen, at least on the top. We were happy to see at least one fish is still swimming around in there!
On this lovely day, we paused for a group picture at the butterfly bench. It's still somewhat bare in the garden, but we're going to be checking back every couple of weeks, and we'll post pictures as it begins to fill in with beautiful plants, flowers, bushes, and trees.
Lisa, Alexis, and Nan were happy to see Gdad when he surprised us at lunchtime, and then walked with us. We love it when friends and family are able to join us!
Our apologies to Tracy and her intern, Liz, who joined us for part of our walk today. We didn't get a picture, but we were happy to see them, too!
We walked about 1/2 mile before getting this picture and turning around to head back to the vans. It was a great day for a walk!
Kate has been helping Lilly with an assignment, and today they worked on another part of it. Lilly appreciates Kate's time and assistance. Kate enjoys the 1-1 time with Lilly! 💜
Finally today, here's a sneak peek at the beginning of our anniversary wall! We're gearing up for a fun celebration next week!
Friday
During our lesson on South America, we watched the video about the Amazon Rainforest. We learned that sloths live there, and that they are actually good swimmers! That is, if they happen to fall in the water. They also sleep for up to 20 hours a day, and are so inactive, algae grows on their fur! Alexis helped us reinforce our learning by sharing her stuffed animal sloth with us!
There were a few clouds outside today, but it was still warm and the air just as fresh! In fact, we discussed that we may have been breathing oxygen that was produced in the Amazon Rainforest!
We appreciate our guys for chipping in to help us beautify the room for spring and our anniversary celebration next week. Devin made a couple of colorful butterflies by coloring coffee filters. They are simply adorable!
We also appreciate our guys for preparing lunch. Here, Lexi worked with Kate and Devin to make the Blarney Stone Cookies for their group. Yum!
These two, Abraham and Alexis, made a good meatball team! Yum, yum!
And check out Mr. March...er, we mean Mr. Meatball! Xavier was so patient to pose for a picture with his lunch plate His meatballs are gluten-free, and he couldn't wait to eat them!
Meanwhile, the cookies were baking on the Pizzazz! The room smelled so good!
Devin is eyeing one of these tasty nuggets while Kate carefully holds the tray! Happy St. Patrick's Day a few days early!
We had Eaton work to complete today. Our Super Sorter, Abraham, got right to work putting rectangle pieces in one tub and lids in another.
As quickly as Abraham sorted, Xavier organized. Look how nicely he arranged the pieces in this tub!
Alexis and Kate worked with Lexi to assemble photo cell plates, while Devin handled an inventory task. Isn't it wonderful how the many Eaton tasks fit our guys' varied talents?!
What? Is it the end of the week already? Must be, since these friends are enjoying yoga together!
We are so looking forward to next week and our 5th anniversary celebration! But that's not all we will be doing. Here's our agenda for the coming week:
Tuesday / Thursday: Tuesday is our actual 5th anniversary, so we will Zoom with our friends at home and spend the entire time reminiscing about the past 5 years! Bring your memories! Celebrating will continue on Thursday's Zoom when we will have a "celebratory" visit with Christina. She has something exciting planned! Here at the center, we will probably reminisce some more, and then learn about Lilly's major, Social Work, as today is also World Social Work Day. We have a bit more decorating to do for our celebrations, too. TUESDAY GROUP: Lunch on your own.
THURSDAY GROUP: Celebration Luncheon (pasta, salad, cake)
Wednesday / Friday: It's St. Patrick's Day so we will learn a little and play a little...Bingo, that is! Our continent of the week is Europe. We'll also discuss World Down Syndrome Day, which comes up on Sunday, the 21st, We also send our beloved, and missed, volunteer, Meemaw (Drew's grandmother) a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY on the 21st! Dress to stretch for yoga!
WEDNESDAY GROUP: Celebration Luncheon (pasta, salad, cake)
FRIDAY GROUP: Lunch on your own.
Have a great weekend!
Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.