Happy Halloween, 2024!

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, and we had a blast celebrating it with our friends on Thursday this week!  Prior to that, a number of us attended Tracy's Disability Awareness Trick or Treat event last Saturday, and that was a blast, too!  We kicked off this week with a visit to The Mariners' Museum for spooky stories about shipwrecks, and we ended it with a work day at Pet Supplies Plus.  In between, we volunteered at GCOC on Wednesday.  Just a typical busy week for us.  😃 Check it out!

Saturday, October 26

Each year around this time, Tracy holds her award-winning Parks & Rec event called Disability Awareness Trick or Treat.  It takes place in the gym at the school, and there are a lot of community organizations represented who offer resources for individuals with disabilities.  The fun twist on it is they also give out treats to anyone who stops by their tables!  

Lots of kids from the community come with their families, but older kids as well as adults with interests in services come, too!  We were thrilled that several of our AoA members stopped by, and we send an extra thanks to Alexis, Liz, Lisa, and Carol for helping Tracy set up and take down for the event, and also man the table for The Arc.

Our room was transformed into a Sensory Room where visitors could relax in a quiet environment if they felt overwhelmed by the activities in the gym.

Liz, Kevin, and Alexis were hanging out when all of a sudden our past AoA member Adia showed up!  We were excited to catch up with her!

Recognize these dudes?  Looking groovy, Drew and Erik!

The trackless train rides are always a big hit!

Devin and Annmarie joined the gang, too!  Lexi's cousin Jordan was spending the day with her, and she enjoyed hanging out with her AoA friends!

A vampire even showed up and at first, startled us all!  Then, we realized it was just our Arc friend, Jason!

No worries when Tracy had to check on something else - her AoA buddies were there to man the welcome table!  Tracy, you did a great job, as usual, with this event!  Our pictures do not do it justice.  What a wonderful resource your vendors provided for the community.  We are very proud of you!

Tuesday, October 29

We were curious about what the lesson would be at The Mariners' Museum today, because all Wisteria told us was that it would involve "spooky" stories!  When we arrived, we met another one of her coworkers, Cindy, who was ready to thoroughly entertain us with tales of spooky shipwrecks and ghost sightings!

Cindy told us up front that the stories would be spooky, creepy, and even gross!  We couldn't wait to hear the juicy details!

The first story was the tale of a riverboat called Princess Alice that sailed on the Thames River in England in the 1870s.  It took passengers on day voyages that were very popular because they were afforable for "everyday" folks.  One day, in September of 1878, it carried about 800 passengers who were enjoying the cruise on a beautiful day.

Cindy is a great storyteller!

On its way back to London, the Princess Alice had a collison with a coal ship called the Bywell Castle.  It sustained very liitle damage in the collison, but the Princess Alice broke into two pieces and sank, and over 700 of its passengers drowned.  What made the story "spooky and gross," in addition to how horrible it was...was the fact that the Thames River was extremely polluted in that area with sewage and waste products due to the poor sewage system in London at the time.  The passengers who perished were almost instantly affected by the toxic water and their bodies became unrecognizable.  Families had to identify who was on the ship by their clothing and personal effects such as jewelry and watches.

Another spooky story Cindy told us was about the captain of a ship known as the Arlington that went down in Lake Superior.  His name was Captain Frederick Burke, but his nickname was Tatey Bug.  Nothing spooky about that!  We thought it was kind of funny!  Well, one day Captain Tatey Bug was acting strange and not interacting much with his crew.  They thought something was "off" about him that day.   

Later, when a storm came up and the entire crew made it to a lifeboat, Captain Tatey Bug just waved from the pilothouse.  No one knows why he decided to go down with the ship when he could have easily made it to the lifeboat.  Here's where the story gets spooky:  Was Captain Tatey Bug waving "Good-bye," or was his wave meant as a "Wait a minute...I'm coming!" which was not understood by the crew on the lifeboat?!  Captain Tatey Bug's body was never recovered from the deep waters of Lake Superior, and maybe his ghost haunts those waters to this day!

The last of the stories Cindy told us had to do with lighthouses that are supposedly haunted!  There are great stories about strange things that happen to this day at lighthouses, and "spirits" that are seen...  We enjoyed hearing a few of them!  Thanks, Cindy, for a fun and spooky storytelling experience today!  We really enjoyed your presentation!

We kind of look like ghosts in this picture that Lisa didn't realize had been taken with the wrong setting on the camera!

The final part of our visit to The Mariners' Museum today was a quick tour with Wisteria to see some of the museum's over 35,000 objects that have recently been taken out of storage for visitors to see.  The museum is working on ideas for allowing more objects to be seen, even thought the museum staff themselves may not be sure about all of the details regarding some of the objects.  While they continue to "solve mysteries," we can enjoy seeing nautical items from the past, and imagine them being used by our ancestors!

Elizabeth found her namesake!  It's a half model of the RMS Queen Elizabeth, which launched in 1938.

In this area are a lot of chairs, trunks, and other wooden objects that sailed on ships long, long ago.  Thanks for the tour, Wisteria.  We will look forward to future visits to see other objects as the museum puts them out, and hopefully learn more cool things as you and your team solve the mysteries about each of them!

It was a beautiful day so we enjoyed our lunch outside at The Mariners' Park's Harvey Field area.  After that, we took a walk on part of the Noland Trail we had not visited before, and we checked out a small grove of longleaf pine trees that the Mariners' Museum and the NN Shipyard have planted.  We learned from our master gardener friend Rick that there are efforts around the south to help the longleaf pine tree come back in numbers after it was almost logged into extinction during Colonial times.  It can take up to 20 years before they produce pine cones!  We'll have to tell Rick that one of those efforts is taking place in Newport News!

Wednesday, October 30

This morning we sent a crew to volunteer at the JRES Library, as is our usual Wednesday routine.  Liz, Beka, Alexis, and Emma shelved quickly and efficiently...which is also our usual Wednesday routine!  

We also sent a crew to volunteer at GCOC, which is another Wednesday routine each week, except on the week that the therapy dogs visit.  As you can see, there was a lot of food to organize and then place in distribution bags.  Our great team worked with Tom (light blue shirt), Peggy (striped shirt), Ally, Grove's Volunteer Coodinator (white shirt), Ursula (Halloween shirt), and Joel (light green shirt) to get the job done!

Back at the AFCC, we baked a cake and decorated it to look like a Black Cat! 

We will enjoy this tomorrow at our Halloween party!

Later, we enjoyed almost summer-like weather (minus the humidity) as we shot hoops outside.

There was also ball-bouncing and walking on this gorgeous day!

We celebrated today being National Candy Corn Day with a fun video that showed us how it's made.  Did you know the secret ingredient to giving candy corn good "mouth feel" is marshmallows?!  Now you do!

Each of us got a small sample of candy corn to try, but we also had to use a few of them to make fangs on these monsters!

From Liz's scarf, necklace, and desk ornament to Annmarie's leggings, and Lexi's earrings, Candy Corn was represented by our spirited friends!

We ended our day with a lesson about black cats and how they are misunderstood this time of year!  Black Cat Day was on the 27th, so that's why we made the cake this morning, too.

Our brain work consisted of crossword puzzles and scrambled words, two of our favorite activities.

Kevin worked hard to unscramble words to make a sentence!  Great job, ALL of our brain workers!!

Thursday, October 31

Happy Halloween!  It's one of our favorite days of the year.  Here's a peek at how we celebrated.  First, a Halloween Dance Warm Up!

Thanks, Laura and family, for bringing us delicious apples from the mountains of Virginia.  We enjoyed a few of them for our bobbing activity, and the rest for lunch!  

Bobbing for apples is hard!  We did a modified version by putting a smaller tub on the table, but it was still quite a challenge...a wet and fun challenge!

We decided to put a toothpick in the top of each apple since the stems were too short to get a grip on.  That made things much more successful!

We played Musical Candy!  Weave in and out between the numbered chairs until the music stops.  Sit in the nearest chair and hope you have the lucky number! When we spin the wheel, one lucky player wins a piece of candy!

 

Who was in the lucky seat this time?!  It was Thomas!  In this clip, you'll see our volunteer, Allison, handing out the candy prize to Thomas.  We appreciate Allison's help each week, and we're so glad Moose Patti hooked us up with her!

After Musical Candy, we played Elimination.  This time, when the wheel picked your number, you were out.  We got down to three numbers left and Emma, Thomas, and Laura were in the chairs.  On the next spin, Laura was eliminated.

Thomas's number was elimnated next, so Bo Peep (aka, Emma), won!  She was excited!

Our next game was Halloween Bingo, but first we shared a picture of Alexis and Liz who were Bingo callers at the Williamsburg Moose Lodge last Saturday night.  WOTM friends Moose Patti, Shelly, and Allison needed some help, so they turned to their AoA buddies for the assist.  Alexis and Liz did a GREAT job!

So we called upon them to be Bingo callers for our game.  They were great again, and we may be on to something here!

Eventually lunch time rolled around.  We had a fabulous lunch of chicken nuggets, meatballs, ghost chips, fresh veggies, fresh apples, scary eyeball punch, and our chocolate cat cake that we made yesterday!

We would like to send a HOWLING BIG THANK YOU to Moose Patti, Allison, and all of our friends from the Women of the Moose (WOTM) at Williamsburg Moose Lodge.  They gave us an "extra" donation after the golf proceeds were shared with The Arc, and we used part of it to fund today's party!  We had the best time, and we are very grateful for the love and support of WOTM!!

We would also like to thank our friend (and Lexi's cousin) Kelly from APEX-PT who gave us the Casper movie!  We didn't have a movie day in the plans for this week, but her timing was great!  It was just what we wanted after a busy party morning.  Some of us chose to do other activities quietly in the background, but most of us enjoyed kicking back and wrapping up a fun Halloween day with a classic movie!  Thanks for the treat, Kelly!

At the end of the day Nan couldn't resist our trick or treaters as they prepared to leave!  In the words of Kevin, "Trick or Treat...it's Halloween today!"

Friday, November 1

Just like that, October is gone and November has arrived!  This morning our crew that did not go to PSP cleared the room of all October / Halloween decorations, and updated our calendar for November.

This was as pretty as our windows have ever been.  We really enjoyed our October decorations.

But it had to go, so Thomas and Xavier got busy on removal duty!

Emma and Drew reset the calendar for November dates.

Alexis and Patrick created the activity squares for each day.

Our buddies Laura and Abraham created masterpieces by coloriing the bubble letters for NOVEMBER with beautiful fall colors...but someone forgot to snap their picture.  We'll try to remember to showcase their beautiful work next week.

Here's the November calendar.  Families, don't forget we will be in session for our only MONDAY of the year on November 25th!

Our other crew went to Pet Supplies Plus for a very productive work morning!  They had plenty of supplies to stock so customers would have everything they need.

Kevin

Bryan and Liz

Beka and Erik with Roxanne 

Meet Zoe and Bossy May, two sweet kitties who would love to find a furever home.  They are rescues who are available for adoption.  Stop by PSP for more information!

Our crew is showcasing Thanksgiving toys for your pets!  We are also excited that Devin's mom, Roxanne, will be working with us more often.  We can't thank her, and Devin's dad, Scott, enough for being a great vocational partner for us.  We love working at their store!

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We began our new read-aloud this week called Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli.  It's about being yourself, and letting others be themselves...

Today is National Authors Day, so we learned about Jerry Spinelli.  He's in his 80s now, but his books are still popular with older students and young adults, who can often see themselves in his characters.  We saw a video clip of Taylor Swift talking about how she was inspired to become a songwriter from reading Stargirl when she was young.  The title character, Stargirl, is quirky and not always accepted by her so-called "normal" group of peers, and we thought it was interesting how Taylor Swift related to that.

Our wonderful and busy week ended with yoga.  Ahhh...let the weekend begin!

We'll have to wait a little longer to see each other again, since we add an extra hour this weekend!  LOL!  Here's what we have planned for the first week of November:

Tuesday:  We're celebrating Thomas's birthday today with pumpkin pie!  It's also the first Tuesday of the month so we'll go bowling and have pizza and fruit for lunch.  Since it's Election Day, we'll have a civics lesson, too!  Arc shirts optional.

Wednesday:  We will send a group to volunteer at GCOC today, so please wear Arc shirts.  We'll also have a Mystery Science lesson on scarecrows (which we have rescheduled a couple of times) and a history lesson about the Yorktown Tea Party that will prepare us for tomorrow's field trip.  Lunch on your own.  Microwave available.  JRES is offering Cheesy Pasta Supreme or Sub of the Day.

Thursday:  Happy Birthday, Beka!  First this morning, we are going to Yorktown where Mike has organized a reenactment of the Yorktown Tea Party that took place in 1774!  Mike's very involved with the planning of local events leading up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which will be in 2026, and he's enthusiastic about us joining in when we can.  We'll return to the center for lunch and a celebration for Rebekah's birthday with chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, veggies, and cupcakes for lunch!

Friday:  It's been a few weeks, but we are headed back to Eaton for a work day, so please wear Eaton shirts and bring a bagged lunch.  We're watching the weather for a possible walk in the park or corn hole game after Eaton.

Month of November:

Please support our Food Drive for Grove Christian Outreach Center!   Thank you!

Enjoy the extra hour this weekend!

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang