Yay for the Arc of Abilities! We are marking our 5th anniversary this week and couldn't be more excited or proud! We'd like to thank The Arc of Greater Williamsburg, James City Country Parks and Recreation, and ALL of our many supporters (families and friends) for all you do to ensure our success! We look forward to the next 5 years with excitement and enthusisasm. Here's how things shaped up during our anniversary week!
Tuesday
Before we began celebrating, there was gardening work to do! Our master gardener friend, Linda, had dropped off supplies and directions for us to plant sugar snap peas in one of our large containers, and potatoes in a large bag (Thursday's group). First, Alexis added fresh soil to what was already in the container.
Next, Sam and Liz used spades to thoroughly mix the new soil in with the old. They also added a small amount of fertilizer to give the peas a boost.
Patrick planted a couple of plants Linda had started for us, then he and Liz planted several more seeds. Linda had also soaked the seeds ahead of time, something the MGs have taught us is a good idea to help some seeds get off to a good start.
Next, Nancy set up this small trellis. She gently guided one of the plants that was already growing onto the bottom strip of the trellis. The sugar snap pea vines will grow up the trellis. That will be fun to watch!
Here's our wonderful intern Lilly showing the seed packet! She's as curious as we are to watch our sugar snap peas grow along the trellis. We look forward to enjoying them in a fresh salad! Many thanks to Linda for providing this project for us! We hope to make you proud when our peas and potatoes grow and we feed ourselves with the fruits of our labor! We miss you and the MGs so much!!
Meanwhile, Kevin assisted Carol in refilling the bird feeders, which were empty after the weekend. Our bird friends depend on us to keep their "restaurant" open!
Soon, it was 10:00 and time to hook up with our Zoomies at home! Our plan for today was to look back at hundreds of photos from past blogs and reminisce about our good times!
We had to stay connected for over an hour today, but it was worth it. Everyone enjoyed seeing the pictures from the past and hearing about AoA's history. Joining us from home were Devin, Becky, Annmarie and Teresa, Abraham and Mona, and Drew, Donna, AND Meemaw! (We were suprised and delighted to see Meemaw who had come over from Gloucester to watch with Drew!) We also had Laura and Mom, Dad, Olivia, and Eloise with us, but they had to leave to feed the little ones lunch before we took this picture.
First, we looked at a PowerPoint presentation that documented most of our first year. We didn't begin our blog posts until a little over a year after opening, so pictures from our early days aren't as easily accessible. This is our first day, and our Charter Group of 11 members. Seven of them are still with us, plus 8 others that have joined over the years!
We didn't have time to check all of our past blog posts, but we looked at the ones that showed when each new member joined the AoA. Here's a shot of Abraham's first visit with us...we knew right away he was going to be a dancing king!
Here's another old blog post from when we were all Zooming from home for most of last spring and summer. Our favorite "Junior Volunteer," Becky's granddaughter Emmy, joined us for this one! We hope she will be able to volunteer later in the summer, if we get back to "normal" operations. She's growing up on us! This was also one of the first times we met Lilly!
Liz and Tracy were at AFCC today, and spent time reminiscing and also helping us with some projects. It was Tracy who first met with Drew's mom, Donna, 5 years ago to brainstorm the possibility of The Arc using Parks & Rec space to start a "club" for us. They had lunch, and then contacted Pam...the rest is history! Thanks, Tracy and Donna, for helping get the AoA off the ground!
We ordered prints of all of us for our Memory Wall. This collage was an add-on to the order. Isn't it cool?!
Here's our Tuesday/Wednesday group posing in front of the Memory Wall. They are each pointing to their individual pictures and quotes they gave, sharing their favorite memories of being in the AoA.
Here are 3 pictures of our Memory Wall in smaller sections. for those who are inclined to zoom in and get a better look. 👀
It's so pretty, and really hard to see how nice it is without being here in person. 😔
We will leave it up for a while, and maybe visitors will be able to check it out eventually... 🤞
We also celebrated World Social Work Day today, since Lilly is a social work major! She told us about her reasons for going into social work, and her desire to help people. She explained different ways social workers help people, and told us she hopes to work with older students and the disability community in her future!! We are proud of her, so we also made awesome cards for her!
Yay!! Look who stopped by to drop off Zoom supplies for her lesson with us on Thursday. It's Christina!!! We LOVED seeing her in person for a few minutes. She brought everyone a small bag of watercolor supplies to use on Thursday. Our Zoom with her is going to be "celebratory" and all we need to add is water! Thank you, Christina! We can't wait!
Wednesday
We were curious on Wednesday to see if the squirrels would be upset that we removed the plant container that used to be under the bird feeder, and which caught spilled birdseed. They spent lots of time each day eating out of that container. Yesterday we planted sugar snap peas in it, and moved it so that no more birdseed would fall into it. We saw the squirrels throughout the morning, eating spilled seed off the ground. We also saw lots of sparrows, chickadees, house finches, tufted titmice, and our beautiful red cardinal this morning. Our trellis and pea plants looked good, too.
By lunchtime, when the woodpecker was visiting the feeder, we caught one of the squirrels digging in our pea container! We rushed out to shoo him off, but he had already destroyed one of the two plants that MG Linda had started for us. From the looks of the holes in the soil, we figured he had gotten the extra snap pea seeds we planted, too. We've moved the container indoors, and we'll add more soil and plant more seeds. When Pam came for lunch, she told us to try sprinkling cayenne pepper in the pot. It won't harm the birds (who don't seem to be interested in our pea plants anyway), and the squirrels don't like it. We're going to try it!
Our continent of the week was Europe. We learned it's the most visited of all the continents. It's the 2nd smallest continent by area (Australia is smaller), but the 3rd largest by population!
Kevin and his family visited Europe when he was 18. His mom sent us several pictures from their trip, and Kevin told us about them! Here, he was telling us he saw the Colosseum in Rome. He also visited London and Paris!
Liz delighted in showing us pictures of her parents' trip to Italy, and her mom's trip to Greece. (We delighted in Liz's St. Patrick's Day fashion! Isn't she festive?! 🍀)
We knew our lunch from Sal's by Victor would be arriving soon, so we made sure to get in a pretty good workout before eating. We did a routine that included a movement where we pranced like unicorns! This was fun!
After watching a video about St. Patrick's Day, we played everyone's favorite game. Nan was the caller and it was wild and fun!
Happy St. Patrick's Day and Happy 5th Anniversary to the Arc of Abilities! We enjoyed lunch provided by The Arc's Board of Directors very much! Even though we enjoy cooking (and we've gotten pretty good at it), it was nice to be treated this time! Thank you, Arc BOD! We wish you could have joined us!
Just yum............😋
Pam (who has been vaccinated) was able to join us for our special luncheon. She said very nice things about us and our program. She commended us and our families for being responsible and safe during the pandemic, which has contributed to us being able to remain open! We appreciate her thoughtful remarks. We also appreciate her stellar leadership of The Arc of Greater Williamsburg! 💚💛🍀💚💛
Our after lunch Choice Time was extended a bit today. We enjoyed the extra time to hang out and just chat. Later, we discussed World Down Syndrome Day, which is Sunday, and watched a short video that explored the lives, hopes, challenges, and dreams of three young people living with Down Syndrome. We had a nice discussion, too.
At the end of the day, we relaxed to a yoga session with Jaime. The theme was "Yoga with Friends," and it was perfect!
Thursday
Wow...what a big day for us! We had TWO big highlights today, and we have a lot of pictures to share... 📷
First, we Zoomed with Christina from the Art Museums of CW, and had a blast with a "celebratory" lesson she created for our 5th anniversary! Thank you, Christina, for celebrating with us and for creating this unique and special lesson!! To start it off, Christina showed us one of her past planner pages, and reminded us that we first started visiting with her at the museums on May 4, 2017! We have LOVED every visit with you, Christina, and by our count, we've had over 25 in person visits!
Christina showed us pieces from the museums that were representative of how people celebrate. For example, the young woman in this portrait was about to celebrate her wedding!
The artist who painted this picture was celebrating people she felt were important figures in making life better for all of us, so she wanted to celebrate them. Some of the recognizable people to us are Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Beethoven.
Christina also showed pieces that celebrated travel, holidays, and spending time with family. In the piece on the television screen in this photo, the artist had drawn a rainbow. We talked about how a rainbow is an arc...and we are an "arc," too. The AoA (Arc of Abilities) is part of the Arc of Greater Williamsburg...and we like to say that The Arc stretches over adults with disabilities and offers them care, support, and services. And a lot of fun! 🌈💜
Because she is so awesome, Christina had delivered watercolor kits for all of our associates earlier this week, so everyone had their own supplies for painting rainbows. We mean, Arcs!
Christina is getting pretty good at this Zooming business, and today she positioned the camera from above so that we could better see her work and follow along!
You could have heard a pin drop in the room, and at home, as everyone was very focused!
We loved showing Christina our finished rainbow arcs!
Here are the rainbows painted by the gang at the center today. The ones our friends painted at home were equally as beautiful! Thank you, Christina, for celebrating us! We really enjoyed our time with you today and appreciate everything you did to make it special. Thank you for the watercolor kits! We are grateful for you and love working with you so much!
After our time with Christina, we worked out to a video called "Leprechauns on the Run." It had us running, jumping, dodging, ducking, and grabbing the gold coins that kept flying off the screen! 😄 It was a lot of fun!
Next, we talked about World Social Work Day and made cards for our favorite social worker to-be, Lilly! Lilly wasn't with us today as she went out of town for a long weekend, but we want her to know we (like the Tuesday group) think she's pretty awesome, and we're very proud of her!
As lunchtime got closer, we posed for a 5 year anniversary picture! (We were also celebrating a belated St. Patrick's Day!) Our buffet table was ready for when Sal's delivered our luncheon. These "fives" are also high-fives to our Arc Board of Directors for treating us to a scrumptious lunch today!!
Speaking of celebrating St. Patrick's Day, Kate was our best-dressed and most spirited today! She lit up the room with her sparkly glasses and necklace!
The gang also enjoyed reading our Memory Wall and seeing what their friends had to say about being in the Arc of Abilities.
When lunchtime arrived, we were thrilled to see our surprise guest, Drew! He has had both of his Covid vaccinations, so he joined us, along with his dad, Arc BOD president, Andy, for today's lunch.
Our special guests today: Liz (Tracy's P&R intern), Andy, Drew, and Tracy! Note: All in this photo have received both vaccinations, and only stood close together long enough for us to get this picture. We hope having these few guests today is a harbinger of good things to come, including the day when we will be able to welcome even more friends and visitors back to our program.
Happy 5th Anniversary to us!
After our exciting (and did we say scrumptious?!) luncheon, we enjoyed extended Choice Time and then ended the day with Eaton work. We needed to finish up some inventory and assembly since James is coming tomorrow to pick it up and deliver more work for us to complete next week. 👏😀 What a great day we had!
Friday
Did anyone see the snow coming down on Friday morning? ❅❅❅ It was practically a blizzard, but that didn't stop James from bringing us work to do next week, including some NEW tasks! He also thanked us for all the work we got done this week, which he picked up to take back to Eaton. We're looking forward to our new tasks!
Abraham loved the part of our lesson on Europe where we learned about different animals found on that continent. We learned that there are European bison, but we agreed with Abraham, that it looks like the bison we have seen in pictures of the American bison. Further research taught us that the American bison has one more rib and more hair than its European counterpart!
Since Kevin is in the Tuesday / Wednesday group, he wasn't here to tell his other friends about his trip to Europe. We showed the pictures his mom sent, and Alexis stepped in and told them about Kevin visiting Italy, France, and Germany, and England, where he saw Shrek at the wax museum in London!
Friday gym time was fun as we got to hang with Lexi. Xavier and Abraham worked on their basketball skills, but the girls walked quite a few laps!
This group planted potatoes today! We used the supplies - grow bag, soil, potato "seeds," and fertilizer - that MG Linda dropped off earlier this week. Potato "seeds" are parts of potatoes that have sprouted eyes! Michelle and Abraham planted Yukon Gold and Adirondack Blue ones. Can't wait to see what we get!
We had to work inside because it was cold, rainy/snowy, and very windy outside. Alexis added a little bit of fertilizer, and then Kate mixed it into the soil. After that, Xavier put the small sign in...just in case we forget what we planted there! Thanks again, Linda, for providing the materials we needed to start our spring planting. We look forward to harvesting sugar snap peas and colorful potatoes!
Ugh! Look who's back! That pesky squirrel. We brought the snap peas inside so he's turned his attention to the squirrel-buster birdfeeder! He won't have much luck with that. But we've decided to keep our potato grow bag inside over the weekend, along with our sugar snap pea container. We will set them outside on Tuesday when we can keep a better eye on them, and bring in some cayenne pepper!
We played St. Patrick's Day Bingo with this group. Everyone used two cards to make it more challenging, and they
did very well! Lexi was the Bingo caller this time. Fun and prizes all around!!
Is this just a wacky yoga pose, or does it actually feel good? It does look like a nice stretch. It was the end of the day and the end of another amazing AoA week!
Check out what we'll be doing next week! Here's the plan:
Tuesday / Thursday: We will Zoom on Tuesday with Wisteria from the Mariners' Museum, who is planning a lesson on Women's History Month! On Thursday's Zoom, we will observe National Scribble Day, which occurs on the 27th. We have a fun "art" activity planned! At the AFCC, we will also do some Eaton work, create Easter decorations, and write thank you notes to the Arc's Board of Directors to thank them for our 5th Anniversary Luncheons! Lunch on your own.
Wednesday / Friday: Today we will be busy learning about our continent of the week, Antarctica. We'll also celebrate Puppy Day (23rd), so feel free to bring photos and fun tales about your pups! We're combining Cheesesteak Day (24th), Spinach Day (26th), and Something on a Stick Day (28th) and making cheesesteak skewers for lunch with a side of pasta salad with spinach. Before heading home we'll enjoy yoga, so dress to stretch, too!
We hope the sun comes out and everyone has a great weekend,
Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang
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