This week we celebrated the birthday of one of our very special friends, the Arc's Bette Faye! What a joy it is to know Bette Faye and get to spend time with her at so many fun events. Her 75th birthday was Tuesday, and we made sure to stop by the office to drop off a pretty card and a "beachy" themed gift from the AoA. Unfortunately, she was taking a well-deserved day off to spend her birthday with family, but we left our surprise on her desk. Bette Faye, you are so very special to EVERYONE at The Arc of Greater Williamsburg! Here at the Arc of Abilities, you have some of your biggest fans, and we hope your birthday was as wonderful as you are! Thank you for ALL you do for The Arc. We love you!
Here's what else we were up to for the week of May 17, 2022, when the weather went from gorgeous and appropriate spring-like comfort to hot and sticky summer-like discomfort in a matter of days!
Tuesday
Bette Faye must have charmed Mother Nature because the weather today couldn't have been any better. It was just warm enough and not too humid! After we delivered Bette Faye's birthday surprise, we went to Freedom Park. First, we took a nice walk.
After our walk, we ended up in the garden, where we harvested a few goodies. Liz and Abraham pulled up some beautiful radishes.
We also picked strawberries today! Drew shows off a plump, red berry while Abraham looks on...or not?! Tomorrow we are making a fruit salad and we will incorporate the strawberries into it! 🍓🍓🍓
Sam, Devin B., and Erik harvested a few onions! They smelled very good and we know they will come in handy with all the salads we eat!
Here is a sample of the paver stones that Krafty Karen made, which surround the fairy garden. They are so pretty and make the perfect accent around the area!
Thanks, again, Karen! We love the color and pizzazz these add to the fairy garden! Everyone, make sure you check these out the next time you visit the Williamsburg Botanical Garden!
We thought the fairy garden was a perfect spot to record a birthday video to send Bette Faye!
After enjoying a picnic at the park, we met up with Christina at The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. Today was National Pack Rat Day and she had a great lesson to match it!
Christina explained that the term "pack rat" came from the fact that rats/mice like to "collect" things, whether they need them or not. She told us about archaeologists in CW that found rats' nests loaded with artifacts from Colonial times, and that these artifacts can tell us a lot about how people lived back then. (She also told us that Williamsburg rats were small, more like what we think of as mouse-sized...they were not big like the rats found in large cities like New York.)
Rats were a part of life in the 18th century and they built their nests in walls, between floors, or in any other space they could get into. This is a recreation of a rat's nest that was found between floor boards of CW's Wetherburn's Tavern. It includes pieces of ceramic dishes, utensils, textiles, paper, and many other items a rat may have found "interesting." After learning about the history to be discovered in finding an old rat's nest, we went on a scavenger hunt in the museums to find objects that could have ended up in one!
We found examples of textiles, silver items like utensils, animal bones, and these ceramic punch bowls. Christina explained that a tavern in the 18th century would have been a place not only for dining and drinking, but also a gathering place for discussion, receiving news, entertainment, and gaming. Taverns could also have served as boarding houses, so there was much for curious rats to find and "save."
After learning about the original pack rats of CW, we went to the education studio for a "quirky" project, as Christina called it. We made "marble rats." We colored, cut, folded, and glued pieces from a pattern to make a small rat with a hole cut out of the bottom piece so that a marble placed inside would allow us to move the rat around easily on a solid surface. Devin T. and Laura enjoyed the coloring part and made their rats very attractive!
Here are a few of our marble rats. Our staff and Christina were super busy helping everyone with the assembly, so we didn't get a lot of pictures, but everyone was happy with how their rats turned out, and they will be a fun reminder of the interesting lesson we had with Christina on National Pack Rat Day! Thanks, Christina! We learned a lot of fascinating information today!
Wednesday
Happy "Official" 27th Birthday to Xavier today! We celebrated his birthday with the Pancake Party last Friday because his mom had to be out of town for work this week. So today, Xavier enjoyed a quieter celebration, with lots of good wishes from his friends, and happily working on his favorite puzzle during Choice Time!
Here are Patrick and Alexis modeling with our fresh strawberries that were picked at the garden yesterday! We washed them so they would be ready to add to a yummy fruit salad we were making for today's lunch. 🍓🍓🍓
One of our lessons today was a Mystery Doug episode called "Are Killer Whales Really Dangerous?" and it explored whether or not orcas are dangerous to humans. We learned that, in the wild, killer whales are not known to attack humans, and the reason why, surprised us. We learned that the parents and grandparents of killer whales teach them what to eat, mainly certain fish (salmon), squid, seals, sea lions, and sea birds. Since they aren't taught to eat humans, they leave us alone!
We took a break before our killer whale brain work, and went outside on a perfect weather morning. It was so nice we stayed out a little longer than usual!
Back inside, we worked in small groups on work with a killer whale theme. These groups had reading comprehension and spelling tasks.
This group worked on counting and following direction tasks. Everyone was focused and did great work!
We still had time before lunch, so we made bald eagles to add to our patriotic wall. Earlier, we had traced everyone's hands and cut them out, along with a few other pieces. Abraham and Patrick showed how the hands were glued together to become the eagle's wings. (Not sure what was going on in the background with Liz, Devin B., and Erik! 😜)
Here's how our patriotic wall is coming along! We're going to give it a title: The AoA Loves the USA! 🦅
Laura has a favorite shirt that features peanut butter and jelly, and she always wears it when we make PB&J sandwiches! But today, we had additional options and she chose peanut butter with marshmallow creme and bananas - a banana fluffernutter!
Along with our peanut butter sandwiches, we also had chips and a delicious fruit salad that included the strawberries we picked at the garden yesterday! They were sweet, and just what we needed to take this fruit salad over the top! We were celebrating National No Dirty Dishes Day (one of Nan's favorites 😂), so we didn't go all out with our "cooking" this time!
During today's yoga session, Laura got a kick out of peeking through what Jaime calls our "cosmic-noculars" to see who today's adventure was about! Turns out, it was Norris the Sea Horse.
We experienced fun poses today. The story Jaime told while we practiced took place in the ocean, so we tried shark and dolphin poses.
Another part of today's session included some Yoga Disco, and this favorite called "The Washing Machine" song! Fun times with Jaime!
Despite having to cancel our visit to The Watermen's Museum due to Mike's illness, and Eaton (tomorrow), due to their air conditioning breaking down, things couldn't have worked out better for our backup plans. The first thing that went well was Jorie being able to bring us work that we can do at AFCC tomorrow! The Eaton van wasn't available, but that didn't discourage her from LOADING up her Explorer! Our early bird arrivals were happy to help bring it all inside!
Jorie brought us 12 boxes of PowerSlide Doors to assemble (12 per box), some parts to unpack, and assorted screws and other small parts to count and place into individual bags. We will still have an Eaton Work Day on Friday, but we'll be happy at AFCC with the AC blasting. The forecast calls for a high of 97! Thank you, Jorie, for making sure we can get our vocational fix. It means a lot to our guys to do work for Eaton!
Jorie must have been a good luck charm because shortly after she left, one of our hummingbirds returned! We had not seen the two who first appeared in April, for about three weeks. Lisa happened to be walking toward this window with the camera in her hand when she saw this little fella peeking in on us!
After putting away the Eaton work, saying hi to the hummingbird, and having a rocking dance warm up, we made our way to Yorktown, where things continued to go well for Plan B, which was to take a walk, play games, have a picnic, and ride the trolley before it got too hot. We were pleasantly surprised that it wasn't terribly warm for our walk, and there was a nice breeze as well!
By the time these three struck a sassy pose, we were about halfway back to the vans. We were able to walk around a bit longer than we had planned because of the nice breeze.
We may spread out a ways when we're walking, but we have designated points where we stop for everyone to catch up, and we haven't left anyone behind yet!
Our good luck continued when we drove over to the picnic area. We were able to snag the only covered shelter, which has just enough seating for our group! It was only around 11:15. at this point, so we played our games first. We were close to a shady area for bocce and corn hole.
We played for fun today, not keeping score. It was fun to hang out and play informally.
Everyone had a chance to play both games, or just one if they preferred. It worked out nicely!
Here's the sheltered area where we ate lunch. There were a few other people in the area, but they were eating at the tables near the water. We felt so lucky to get this spot! AND, it still wasn't too hot outside, so we decided to ride the trolley!
We think this was Devin T.'s first time riding the trolley with us. He loved it!
In fact, all of us enjoyed it! There were a lot of visitors in Yorktown today, so we felt our luck continuing when we boarded the trolley and there were EXACTLY enough seats left for our group! Not only that, but it arrived within two minutes of us getting to the stop!
After a nice loop around Yorktown, it was time to head back to the center. We all agreed our Plan B for today worked out nicely! 🌞🌞🌞
Friday
It started out like a regular day, with friends greeting each other and the tunes blasting for our dance warm up.
But next thing we knew, we were having a big Eaton Work Day right here at the AFCC. It's been a while since we set up to assemble PowerSlide Doors, and it was kind of fun to change up the location!
Here's a video clip of us working today! We weren't worried...just happy!
More specifically, we each had certain jobs to do. Sam started the door assembly line by unpacking and getting them to Liz, who inserted the amber lenses.
We had a few members who were absent today, so the only available "Label Ladies" were Nan and Alexis! They applied 4 labels to the inside of each door.
The next assembly step involved Kevin and Xavier inserting the nuts and bolts that would hold the amber lenses in place. In the background, Erik is tightening the nuts and bolts with the electric screwdriver, while Carol (tucked behind Kevin) packed the finished doors back into the boxes.
Another job today involved placing two brackets and four screws in individual plastic bags. Devin B. and Patrick handled this job for us.
Abraham, Laura, Drew, and Devin T. did double duty today. First, shown here, they removed the white plastic pieces from the packaging, and discarded excess parts from the packaging that weren't needed. Later, they counted screws so that we could fill small bags with 50 in each. Our entire team had a productive work day!
Later, Laura and Sam handled the chores of refilling the bird feeders and watering our "Pizza Pot" garden. The birds are eating a lot these days, and our tomato, basil, and oregano plants are growing nicely!
Everyone also chipped in to get letters colored for the wording on our patriotic wall. The lesson here was to use the margins of our papers to test the crayons to make sure they were "American" colors! We wanted to use true red and blue, not "Wild Strawberry" and "Cornflower!" 😃
We wrapped up a busy Friday with a light and refreshing treat of Italian ice. It hit the spot on this 95+ degree day! We hope the temps go down a little for next week!
Tuesday: It's time to join the master gardeners again at the WBG for an educational and interactive lesson. As usual, that will be fun, but the highlight of today will be our celebration of Devin T.'s 30th birthday!!!! We're so happy he's back with us and we look forward to celebrating with a trip to Wendy's for his very favorite treat, Frosties! We'll also play his favorite games: Disney Movie Trivia and Birthday Bingo (including new prizes)! Wear Arc shirts and bring a bagged lunch for eating at the park if it doesn't rain. After that, we'll stop by Wendy's to get Devin's party started! 🥳🥳🥳
Wednesday: We'll add another patriotic decoration to our wall display, and also make some preparations for Tracy's 40th birthday celebration tomorrow (shh...it's a secret!). It's National Tap Dance Day, so we'll have fun trying to tap dance, too! Lunch on your own. The JRES Cafeteria is available, offering Cheesy Pasta or Hamburger on Bun!
Thursday: We'll celebrate one last May birthday today, Tracy, from Parks & Rec (May 23rd)! We appreciate everything Tracy does to make sure we have what we need at AFCC, as well as the vans for our travels, so we've invited her for lunch today. The menu will be chicken salad on croissants, spinach and strawberry salad, and blueberry cheesecake, since it's National Blueberry Cheesecake Day, too! We'll also prepare for our upcoming trip to the Jamestown Discovery (boat tour) with an activity we think Tracy will love!
Friday: It's PSP Day, so wear your Pet Supplies Plus shirts! The Cooking Crew will stay at AFCC to prepare today's lunch: breakfast casserole with fruit. We'll also have a Memorial Day lesson and yoga, so dress to stretch with your PSP shirt!
Reminder! This weekend (May 21-22) we're having the culminating rounds of the inaugural Community Pickleball Challenge! Stop by Veterans Park on Saturday or Sunday mornings (around 8-11:30) and check out the action!
🏌🏌🏌🏌🏌🏌🏌🏌🏌🏌
We hope you're saving the date: August 6 at Royal New Kent Golf Club!
It's Moose Patti and the WOTM's 7th Annual Charity Golf Tournament! Always a blast and a big FUNdraiser for The Arc of GW and The Arc of Abilities! ✅✅✅
Contact Lisa for more info about sponsorships or registering to play!
Also, don't forget to SAVE this DATE, too!
Have a wonderful weekend! Stay cool and hydrated!
Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang
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