This week we were saddened to hear the news that our friend Nancy's last day would be Friday. She is moving to her beloved Kentucky, where she will live and be a part of everyday life at the Stewart Home and School. And while we are sad to lose her, we are also excited for the opportunities that await her at Stewart. We checked their website, and it's awesome! Nancy will be making tons of new friends, engaging in a wide variety of fun activities, participating in continuing education classes, and have an opportunity to continue vocational work (she has a lot of skills and an excellent work ethic)...and that's just for starters! And the best new of all? Her darling cat, Mollie, gets to move with her. 😻 So, we spent this week doing many of Nancy's favorite things, especially on Friday, and we hope her farewell week was a good one. Take a look at our week!
Tuesday
We took advantage of lower temperatures and humidity by visiting New Quarter Park today. We got an early start, in case rain decided to start, but it held off and the cloud cover made for a very comfortable morning outside!
New Quarter Park is one of the best places to take our guys for walking. It has a long and smoothly paved path that is fairly straight. We can spread out on it, keep our eyes on everyone, and not lose anyone! Alexis, Kevin, and Drew took an early lead on today's walk.
The rest of the gang was not far behind!
From the entrance of the park, where we started today, to the main parking lot, the path is about 1 mile long. We planned to walk almost 3/4 of it before turning around. That way, we didn't have to cross the road (the path continues through partial woods, on the other side).
Not all of us made it to the turn around point, but this group did. Look at the long legs on them! Most of our guys walked a good half a mile before turning around, so EVERYONE got a good walk today! We need to ramp up our practice for The Arc 5k on October 2nd!
Next, we set up our corn hole boards for a game of AoA Challenge: Boys v. Girls!
We were also celebrating Friendship Day (which was Sunday) as we enjoyed the company of each other. Laura was so happy to be a friend, that she even cheered for her opponent, Patrick, who had just sunk a beanbag!
Under Sam's watchful eye, Carol gave Xavier some pointers, and he did a good job keeping his eye on the hole when he tossed his beanbags!
We played our version of corn hole, and by our rules, so players had the option of standing within a certain distance of their board. Nancy stood slightly in front, and this toss by her landed in the hole on the guys' board, garnering her team 2 points!
Not to be outdone, Abraham stood at the same spot at his team's board, and his tosses on this turn earned 2 points for his team! After the girls held the lead for most of the game, the guys rallied back and we ended with a 6-6 tie! What a perfect score for Friendship Day!
The usually quiet New Quarter Park was buzzing with a bunch of kids attending archery camp today, so all the picnic shelters were in use. We meandered our way to the fire pit area beyond the shelters, and enjoyed our picnic on these benches. As is the case with lots of AoA adventures these days..."all's well that end's well!" What a great morning!
Back at the ranch, we enjoyed Choice Time. Drew and Devin chose to listen to music on the computer, as did Abraham. Alexis, Liz, and Carol worked on gasketing for Eaton, and Kevin worked a puzzle. Kate was also on the computer, checking out video clips of her favorite Disney stars.
Over on the other side, Laura and Xavier worked puzzles, Sam flipped through a book, and Nancy hunted for words in a wordsearch puzzle. It was kind of quiet...and everyone was content with their Choice Time activities!
At the end of the day, we learned a bit of the history of the ice cream sandwich (it started being sold for a penny a piece on pushcarts in NYC around 1899), and then chowed down on some! Yesterday was National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, y'all! We love to end the day in a yummy way, and we had earned this treat with all of our walking today! (Drew and Xavier enjoyed cookies, as they aren't fans of ice cream. They were invited to join our photo but decided to stay put with their cookies instead! 😜)
Wednesday
We had so much fun at New Quarter Park yesterday that we didn't get back in time to work on our August calendar. It was fine that we moved the task to today, because we are so efficient that it didn't take us long to knock it out. Organizational Specialists Nancy and Kevin removed July dates and reset everything for August.
Interior Specialists Sam and Xavier removed July items from the wall, being careful not to also remove paint! (Great job, by the way!) Kate pointed out the picture she thought would be "doggone" perfect for National Dog Day!
Aren't all of these great?!
And just like that, it's August, 2021!
In the spirit of the Olympic Games taking place, we learned about Greece and Ancient Greece today. Liz's lucky mom, Lise, visited Greece with her mom and sisters back in 2011, so Liz brought souvenirs to enhance our lesson! She's modeling jewelry, including a bracelet made from olive wood, worry beads, and a lovely beach coverup!
Liz also shared her mom's photos from the trip. Liz's favorite picture is of her mom and aunts learning a Greek dance!
Laura wore her Greek colors today! How cool is that?! Her mom sent a book about the island of Kos, which she and Laura's dad had visited on a "belated honeymoon." Turns out, Laura was there too...but still in Mom's tummy! 👶 We loved that story! Thank you, AoA families, for supplementing our lessons when you have things to share (and stories to tell)!
Looking forward to our spanakopita, Greek salad, and baklava at lunch, we burned calories with an Olympic fitness routine. The coach (on video) led us through a series of movements that simulated Olympic sports like swimming (shown here), soccer, tennis, boxing, and rowing, which we did from our chairs. It was fun and got our heart rates up!
Our sweet friend Liz (and her equally sweet family) treated us to spanakopita for lunch today! We learned it is "spinach pie" and is made with spinach and cheese wrapped in several layers of phyllo dough. It was sooo good!
We added a side Greek salad that was tasty, too. We learned that the Greeks eat one of the healthiest diets in the world.
August 4th is Coast Guard Day and there is so much to learn about this military branch! We joined a webinar given by a docent at Mariners' Museum. He was very knowledgeable and had cool pictures, but his presentation was just a bit over our heads! However, we stuck with it and did learn a few things, such as Alexander Hamilton started what became the modern Coast Guard in 1790, and during WWII, the Coast Guard Beach Patrol protected almost 4,000 miles of American coastline from potential enemy invasion, including along Virginia's shores!
After the webinar, we enjoyed a slide show that Carol put together for us a few years back. It shows the journey of her oldest son, Adam, into the Coast Guard back in 2010. Since then, Adam has embarked on a stellar career with the Coast Guard. He was recently reassigned from Mobile, Alabama back to Yorktown, which makes Carol happy!
Our Coast Guard Day lesson ended with handouts that detailed the many, many responsibilities of today's Coasties.
Thursday
August 5th is National Oyster Day. We have never learned about oysters, so we had a lesson today. One takeaway was that oysters are vital in the cleaning of the water environments in which they live, and efforts to restore the oyster population are ongoing all over the world. They are also very nutritious. We learned that most of our guys do NOT like oysters, but Liz loves them! Her favorite way to enjoy them is as Oysters Rockefeller! 😋
On our walk, we were noticing things. Abraham thought he had found a huge bug, but it turned out to be a pit from a peach. There are peach trees in the garden, and we think animals are helping themselves, as when we looked around further, we saw a lot more pits in the area!
Around another corner, this group wondererd what in the world a Tesla was doing parked at the back of the school?! We have never noticed this car before, so it definitely stood out! It was a beauty.
Back inside, we had a blast celebrating National Underwear Day! We kept it G-rated with funny jokes, like this one: "Why does a pirate wear underwear? To hide his booty!" 😃 Then we watched a story called A Tighty Whitie Wind by Izzy B. It's a hilarious tale about what happens when a farmer's undies get blown around the farm!
We colored a few pairs of undies and hung them out to dry in our room...hoping that when we opened the back door a "tighty whitie wind" would not blow them all over the place. 😂🩲😂🩲😂🩲
On a more serious note, Pam popped in to say "Happy Birthday" to Nan! How sweet!
Finally, our busy day ended with one more activity. We made these thank you cards for Patti and our Women of the Moose friends. We are so appreciative of the hard word they put into making this year's golf tournament a big success!
Friday
💙💚💛💜 Today was proclaimed "Nancy Day." As we prepared to say good-bye to her and wish her well on her move to Kentucky, we aimed to keep things light-hearted and fun. We knew it was going to be an emotional day for our sweet friend. Here follow a lot of pictures from our fun, but bittersweet, farewell to Nancy. 💙💚💛💜
It was all about Nancy's favorite things today, so during dance warm up, that meant a lot of country music and Beach Boys!
Nancy was sent to the kitchen with Nan to prepare our breakfast casserole for lunch while we worked on good-bye cards for her. Laura and Patrick composed very nice messages.
Nancy's brother and sister-in-law, Randy and Sally, stopped by this morning and brought us cookies! These cookies were smaller than the ones they sent us in June on Randy's birthday, so we decided to have a morning treat, since we were planning to have root beer floats later. Thanks, Randy and Sally, we love cookies from Cheryl's Cookies! We celebrated our friendship with Nancy!
We moved on to a Wordsearch Battle! Nancy loves wordsearch puzzles so we found versions that worked for everyone, and the guys helped one another. Nancy enjoyed seeing everyone participate. Here, she checked Kevin's work, which he was proud to have finished!
Nancy made her way around the room offering help to all of her friends, including Drew and Alexis. Nancy is a wordsearch whiz!
We had time to celebrate that today was National Water Balloon Day! Check out our "Best Dressed for Water Balloon Day" gal, Annmarie. We were gathering things to head outside when she slipped to the locker room and changed into her swimsuit! We 💓💓💓 it!
We loved the expressions on our guys' faces as they played toss with the water balloons, wondering if a burst of water was coming!
Kevin had some kind of magic touch. He kept throwing the same water balloon, but it wouldn't break! It hit Laura a couple of times, as well as the ground, but just wouldn't break. We finally gave him a different balloon and he got Laura's feet wet when it popped after hitting her!
Xavier had no trouble tossing a balloon through the hoop to wet Miss Best Dressed! She loved it!
Things got a little serious when Alexis smack-talked Liz, prompting Liz to get just a little closer. Check out Kate's expression over Liz's shoulder. Alexis got wet here!
After a couple of "loosely organized" activities, we let the gang have a free-for-all with the rest of the water balloons.
Water was flying everywhere! No one got too soaked, but everyone had a great time!
We played Nancy's favorite game, Bingo, and had a rousing good time! Unfortunately, Carol took pictures unaware that Lisa had removed the memory card from the camera. 🤷 But it was really fun and...true story...Nancy was the first winner! 👏👏
Look how wonderful our breakfast casseroles turned out! Thanks Nancy and Nan! They were great!
After Choice Time, we continued our celebration of Nancy's friendship by making root beer floats. We also had them because it was National Root Beer Float Day!
Our parting gift to Nancy was a small photo album loaded with pictures of her and her friends. Nancy is a big fan of a good old-fashioned photo album, and we hope she will cherish this one as much as we cherish her.
Our final group picture with Nancy was incomplete. Annmarie had quietly slipped out to go to the bathroom! That's OK. Nancy's got photos of Annmarie in her new album! Good-bye and best wishes at your new home, Nancy. We know your sweet nature will serve you well in Kentucky, and you will make many new friends. Kentucky is LUCKY! We'll miss you. 💜
Our very busy Nancy Day ended with a special Tokyo 2020 Olympics edition of yoga with Jaime. We guess she made it last year... It still worked for us!
One week in August is behind us! Here's what's up for next week:
Tuesday: It's National Lazy Day, but we're not celebrating! Instead, we're going to visit the campus of W&M and hunt for "secret spots," including the echo wall! If it's not too hot, we'll have a picnic lunch while we're out, so please bring a bagged lunch and wear your Arc shirts. We will also assemble The Arc's September mailing today!
Wednesday: Even though the Summer Olympics in Tokyo are over, we're still going to study the country of Japan today. In addition to our usual culture and geography lessons, we'll also make a Japanese inspired craft and prepare teriyaki chicken with cucumber sunomono (a popular Japanese cucumber salad). Monday was Rice Pudding Day, so we'll make a batch of that, too! National Book Lovers Day is this week, too, so please bring a favorite book or two to share, and we'll try to read some (or excerpts) of them!
Thursday: We're going to do a hodge-podge of activities today, all in some way related to Left-Handers Day (13th), Joke Day (16th), and Roller Coaster Day (16th)! For lunch, we're going to make pigs in a blanket, baked beans, and marshmallow/pistachio salad. You'll need to dress to stretch today for yoga, too. (We will be at Eaton tomorrow.)
Friday: We're headed to Eaton for a work day, so please bring a bagged lunch and wear your Eaton shirt!
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REMINDER: The 5k is less than two months away!! Registration is underway and you can sign up by clicking HERE! We hope to see you at Williamsburg Landing on October 2nd!
Have a great weekend,
Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang
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