Welcome, Erik!

 

  We have 8 handsome fellas now:  Patrick, Kevin, Erik, Xavier, Drew, Devin (Abraham and Sam were absent.)

This week we were excited to bring on a new member to the Arc of Abilities, Erik!  He comes from a military family and ended up in Williamsburg by way of Charlottesville, and after several years in the United Kingdom.  Erik took it all in this week, and right away began making contributions to the social, academic, recreational, and vocational aspects of our program.  We're happy to welcome him and his parents, Art and Diane, to the AoA Family!  Here's what we accomplished during Erik's first week:

Tuesday

Today was a Terrific Tuesday, if there ever was one!  We welcomed Erik as an official member of our team, and Cameron visited with us, too! 👦👦 We also sent a group to work at Pet Supplies Plus! 🐠🐍🐹🐶 Then...we went bowling! 🎳🎳🎳 And, we had pizza for lunch!! 🍕🍕🍕

Sam and Cam were in the group that did not go to PSP today, so they worked on making bird feeders.  For some reason, the birds seem to like these homemade feeders better than our "squirrel buster" ones!

We convinced Xavier to roll his peanut butter covered roll in the seed, but he didn't seem too thrilled by the opportunity.  He said, "Thank you!" when Lisa told him he could go wash his hands!

Xavier, Cameron, Drew, and Laura helped hang the feeders.  We also put fresh food in our two squirrel-buster feeders.  We saw several birds nibbling on all of them before we left!

Right before time to leave for bowling, we had a fire drill!  We all dashed out without grabbing coats, and Laura said she was cold.  Her friends gave her a "warm up" group hug, and then the signal was given that we could go back inside.

Meanwhile, this professional looking group was at PSP working diligently!  From left to right it's PSP Manager Lee, Devin, Liz, Kate, Kevin, and Erik!  They left the center at 9 so they could work from about 9:30-11:00, and then meet up with the rest of us at AMF Lanes, which is just down the road from the pet store.

Devin's dad, Scott (PSP owner with wife, Roxanne), was also there with us today.  He climbed up the ladder and handed Devin and Liz bags of dog food to place on the lower shelves.

Here, Kevin and Devin were straightening product on the shelves.  If something was out of place, they moved it to the proper location.

Erik and Kate dusted shelves and also made sure product placement was neat and correct.  Great attention to detail today!  Thanks, Scott, Roxanne, and Lee for today's experience.  We look forward to sending a few more of our friends who haven't come yet, and also growing in our skillsets!

We were all back together for bowling, and as usual, it was a lot of fun.  We didn't get action shots today since we would have too many blog pictures if we did (lol!), but we got team shots.  In this one, Devin, Sam, and Erik criss-crossed their arms to show a made up sign for "strike" because sassy Kate had just bowled one!

Alexis, Patrick, and Michelle kept the balls rolling on Lane 3!  

Drew, Laura, and Kevin made a good team.  They had a few strikes and spares between them today!

Cameron, Liz, and Xavier were our quiet team, and that's how they like it.  They all bowled well, and Cameron got the high score of the day (among all of us) with 146!

We would like to extend a big THANK YOU to Cameron's family for treating us to pizza today!  Here's a round of applause from Kate, Michelle, Erik, and Cameron...but we ALL enjoyed it very much!

After bowling we needed to drop some things at Eaton, so we switched our walking location to nearby New Quarter Park.  It looks like we were in Colorado!  It was a nice walk in the sunshine and not too cold.  A great end to our Terrific Tuesday!

Wednesday

Happy Groundhog Day!  We thought it would be a good time to show how our bulb pots are doing since spring could be on the way!  We planted a lot of bulbs in these pots back in October with our master gardener friends, and they are doing well.  There are a few long leaves beginning to emerge from the soil.  We wonder when we'll see blooms?

It was a busy morning as we switched the calendar over to February.  Sam and Erik prepared the calendar squares by adding the activity notes for each day.  Devin was selecting which ones he wanted to find images for on the computer.

Alexis was helping Drew get ready to color some of the letters in the word FEBRUARY that we put on the wall.  He had already picked out appropriate colors to use for the month of "love."  Nan assisted Kevin as he removed January dates and reset the calendar with February dates.  Later, Drew would be in charge of putting the calendar squares we made into the right slots.

Patrick searched for images while Laura and Michelle helped color decorative pictures.  It takes us about 1 hour to get all of this done and have a head start on decorating the room for the new month.

Liz and Kate also searched for images, which they must size to fit on the calendar squares, and then print.  After that, the images are cut out and glued on the calendar squares.  We discovered that Erik is great at cutting out small images, so he will be a big help in that deapartment.  Xavier enjoys coloring our big bubble letters! 

Erik and Sam were also responsible for removing old decorations from the walls, after preparing their part of the calendar squares.  Today, we had them relocate our snowmen to the back door...just because we weren't quite ready to let them go!  The guys were learning to place the snowmen in random, "floating" like positions on the window!

We always love the transformation from one month to the new month on our calendar.  We have a lot of fun activities coming up in February!

For movement, we aimed for at least 1,000 steps in the hallway.  Our route was to go from our room to the office, then turn around and head past the restrooms to the PE office and back.

We did 10 big laps in 15 minutes!

Next, we tuned in to the Virginia Living Museum's Groundhog Day event with Chesapeake Chuck!  He did not see his shadow, and thus predicted an early spring!  We were skeptical, though, since the VLM had Chuck trying to see his shadow on a dark background!  Chuck also predicted that the Los Angeles Rams would win Super Bowl LVI, based on which snack he chose!  We will make our Super Bowl predictions during our party next week.

We also decided to check in with Punxsutawny Phil, up in Pennsylvania, as everyone knows he's the recognized authority when it comes to predicting spring on Groundhog Day.  He saw his shadow, and predicted six more weeks of winter.  So, we have a conflict between Phil and Chuck!  We'll go with both, since the weather around here changes from winter to spring on a daily/weekly basis anyway! 😜

Right before we sat down for lunch, Lilly showed up for a surprise visit.  We were excited to see her.  Check out the joyful noise in the video!

Erik wasn't sure what the commotion was all about until we explained to him that Lilly was our beloved intern from Christopher Newport University during the 2020-2021 school year.  She's still local as she works in a fellowship program in the admission's office at CNU, but may soon be headed to graduate school somewhere!  UPDATE:  On Friday, Lilly was accepted into her "dream" graduate program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN!

After having lunch with us, Lilly hung around and worked on continuing education with us.  She assisted this group on a worksheet about groundhogs. 

Carol worked with these guys, and we learned that Erik likes to read.  Our worksheet was a nonfiction article about groundhogs and included a lot of interesting facts.

Drew and Nan listened to Laura read about the burrows that groundhogs dig!

Just as we finished our groundhog lesson, Tracy popped in with her interns, Karryna and Madison.  The gang was eager to visit with them, and introduce Erik, too!

Here's our group shot with Lilly!  Thanks for visiting today, Lilly, and having lunch with us and helping us with our work.  It was just like old times.  We miss you!!

Our day ended with a Zoom session led by Bette Faye and special guests from the W&M Best Buddies program.  Several of our guys participate in Best Buddies and have wonderful relationships with W&M students.  Today, we said goodbye to the outgoing leaders and welcomed the new ones.  Bette Faye will send info on getting signed up with the Best Buddies program, and we encourage any of our friends who aren't involved to consider joining.  Those who are already involved report having a blast with their buddies!

Thursday

It was National Send a Card to a Friend Day, so we made cards to send to some of the friends we have missed hanging out with, mainly because of the pandemic.  Patrick and Laura added their artistic touches to these cards.

 

After creating 13 fabulous cards, our ROCK STARS lined up to "autograph" each and every one!

The cards will include this group picture, too! (Missing Abraham, who will be back soon!)

One of the friends who will be getting a card from us is Drew's good buddy, Melinda.  Before COVID, Melinda hung out with us doing things like taking walks and working at Eaton.  This week, she treated us to a box of granola bars. and after working hard on creating all the cards, we had a morning snack!  Thank you, Melinda!  We loved the granola bars and have some left for another time, too!  We hope you will be able to hang out with us again soon!

We recently tidied up in the outside storage closet and realized we haven't used our parachute for movement activities in a long time.  Kevin's family gave it to us "back in the day."  We had fun with it!

It took a lot of teamwork to keep the ball from rolling off, but we practiced until we could keep it on there for about 5 seconds!

We also had fun trying to make a mushroom to cover Sam and Devin, and eventually a few more of us, too.  You need to bend your knees and get low, friends!  

Well...........it seems we didn't get any other pictures from today!  We had a good afternoon enjoying lunch, listening to our read aloud story, and talking about what it means to be "optimistic" since it was National Optimist Day.  So, well be optimistic and say we're sure we will take more pictures tomorrow!

Friday

Yep, here are more pictures than yesterday!  We had a busy Friday!

It began with a simple craft project.  We made "love bugs" to decorate our entry wall.  Instead of spots, these bugs have hearts!

We love the sweet look of the love bugs, and they remind us of our loving friends.

Just before we finished our "love bugs" there was a call for a lockdown drill.  We were pleasantly surprised that it was a quick one.  We had barely settled into the girls' locker room when Mr. Weaver, Supervisor for Building Operations at WJCC Schools, unlocked the door and said it was OK for us to resume our day.  We had stayed silent and didn't open when he jiggled the door handle and knocked, just as we were trained.

Mr. Weaver told us we did a great job on the lockdown drill.  We were happy to get back to our day!  

This is Mystery Doug  He's the main host on a video series we like that is created by a team called "Mystery Science."  We have enjoyed Mystery Doug's free programs for a while, but wanted access to all the episodes and extras the website offers.  Memberships are generally for schools, but Lisa let the Mystery Science team know about us and our AoA program, so they gave us a scholarship that is good through June, 2023!  We're going to send them thank you notes next week!  #staycurious

It took lots of help to get lunch ready today.  Alexis and Michelle made sure we would all have a grilled cheese sandwich, or in Xavier's case, a dairy and gluten-free PB&J!

Nan, Kevin, and Devin were happy to find out that Erik is good with a skillet!  This team browned the ground beef for our veggie soup, and sauteed onions, too.

We forgot to get a picture of Drew and Patrick getting the veggies and broth going in our big soup pot, but here they are being impressed by Laura, Liz, and Annmarie's preparation of chocolate chip cookies.

We looked awesome in red for Wear Red Day!  We talked about ways to stay heart-healthy, including through movement, like the GoNoodle guided dances we were doing here!  Click on the pic for a link to one of our favorites, "Pop See Ko."  We guarantee you can't sit still for this one!

We had a lot of veggies in our soup and it really hit the spot with the grilled cheese (PB&J for Xavier) on National Homemade Soup Day!  We had a couple of bite-sized chocolate chip cookies for dessert, and called lunch a success!  Yum! 😋

Our friend Sam was out of town at his beach cottage for the weekend, but he asked if we could Zoom with him for yoga today.  It's Sam's favorite activity of our week, and we were happy to include him, thanks to Zoom!  

As usual, stretching and reaching with Jaime was a wonderful way to end our week!  Great to see you, Sam!

Our first week of February is finished and it was a great one.  We hope Erik enjoyed getting to know us and we look forward to showing him even more of what we do next week.  Here's a look at our schedule, and yes, it includes a double party on Friday!

Tuesday:  Our master gardener friends "Krafty" Karen, Barb, and Carolyn are coming to the center today to work with us on a special Valentine's Day craft.  We're so excited to see them!  We'll write thank you letters to the team at Mystery Science, too.  No traveling today.  Lunch on your own.  JRES cafeteria is available for pizza or chicken fajita.

Wednesday:  We'll go to Eaton today and we hear one thing we will work on is assembling PowerSlide Doors...one of our specialities!  Please wear your Eaton shirts and bring a bagged lunch.

Thursday:  Today we will learn about the Chinese New Year which began on February 1 and lasts for 15 days.  It gives us an excuse to make chicken fried rice for lunch.  The Winter Olympics are taking place in Beijing, so we will catch up on some of the highlights.  We'll also work on some preparations for tomorrow's party.  We will also welcome Carrie, the Arc's Programs and Volunteer Coordinator, to spend the day with us!  Welcome, Carrie!

Friday:  It's going to be a busy day.  We'll send a group to work at PSP in the morning while the rest of us prepare party food and get decorations in place for our dual Super Bowl / "Pal"entines Party! Party lunch will be mini-pigs in a blanket, baked beans, chips, fruit, veggies, and sweet treats we'll make ourselves.  We will dance and play Valentines Day Bingo before ending the day with "love-inspired" yoga.  Feel free to wear sports and/or Valentine outfits, but keep in mind that we'll have yoga.  PSP folks, please wear your PSP shirts, and bring sports and/or Valentine clothes to change into if you'd like.  Drew, Annmarie, Xavier, Sam, and Alexis will be going to PSP today! 

Enjoy the weekend,

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang