Happy Thanksgiving, 2025

 

Monday morning arrived and so did we!  Thanksgiving week finds us "trading" Wednesday for Monday so we have a two day week, and enjoy Wednesday-Friday for the holiday.  It's the only Monday of the year for us, and it's always fun to "feel funny" about coming on a day we are usually closed!  It didn't take long to get into our groove, though, and we enjoyed a delightful fall day outside in the cool sunshine.  On Tuesday, our second day this week, we stayed at the center and started preparing our room for December, which will be here when we return next week!  Here's a short, but sweet, highlight of our two-day week.

Monday

We welcomed Carol back from her trip to Utah last week where she got to do a bit of sightseeing and also attend her older brother's wedding.  She had a wonderful time in the Salt Lake City area, and we enjoyed hearing about it and looking at her photos.  Besides the wedding, a highlight was visiting the Utah Olympic Park, which hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics and will host again in 2034.  Thanks for sharing, Carol.  We are glad you had a great time visiting a beautiful state and spending time with lots of family members!

The temperature was cool, but felt warmer in the sun, and it was perfect for a day spent outside.  We visited the campus of William and Mary to get in a good walk and check out some fun spots, too.

The Christopher Wren building is undergoing renovations, so we couldn't get up close, but behind it, we found ourselves at the entrance to the Sunken Garden.  It's the sight of many fond memories of Arc Spring Carnivals for our guys!

W&M students were missing from campus as they were on Thanksgiving Break, so we walked across an empty and quiet Sunken Garden. 

Soon we came across this guy who was looking toward a building named for himself.  It's James Blair, who was the founder and first president of the college from 1693 until his death in 1743.  Next, we headed to the other side of James Blair Hall to check out a "secret spot" on campus.

On the west side of the building is the Tyler Family Garden which was dedicated in 2004 to recognize the legacy of the Tyler family, which included our 10th president, John Tyler.  That was interesting, but the fun part of this spot was standing in front of the Tyler family busts and shouting at the building wall.  It's called the "Echo Wall" and if you stand at just the right spot and say something loudly enough, you will get an unexpected echo!

One the way to the Crim Dell Meadow, we noticed a ginkgo tree, an ancient tree species and the only one in the world with leaves in the shape of a fan.  At the Crim Dell Bridge we learned that campus lore says if you hold hands walking across, you will be lifelong friends...and if you kiss the person you are holding hands with, you will be lifelong loves!  Then we noticed lots of locks attached to the bridge railing, many engraved with the names of what we hope are lifelong loves!  💕  By now, our tummies were growling so we headed back to the vans, having enjoyed our campus walk!

Our lunch spot was Freedom Park.

After eating, we walked to the garden where we saw that our fall plants are thriving.  We were excited to see small amounts of broccoli, so we left it in hopes that it will get bigger by the next time we check.  We also harvested lettuce, mesclun greens, and Swiss chard so we can make salad for tomorrow's lunch!

Our final stop on this fun day was at APEX-PT and Movement Center to collect donations for the food drive!  Kelly, Scott, Bret, and the entire APEX team, along with patients and Rock Steady boxers, collected another 161 pounds of nonperishable foods that we delivered to Grove Christian Outreach Center, for a grand total collected by Arc of Abilities of 626 pounds since early November!  Thank you, APEX-PT, for designating your collections to The Arc's Fall Food Drive!  We are thankful for your support!

As we loaded the APEX donations, we got to say "hi" to Bret, one of the physical therapists, who is also Devin's uncle.  Scott was working with a patient, so we didn't get a picture, but he gave us a quick "hello" when we arrived.

We got this shot with Kelly once the van was loaded.  Thanks for coordinating another successful collection, Kelly!  What a great day that ended with such a generous donation for the food drive!

Tuesday

After our dance warm up this morning, we played a couple of Thanksgiving themed games.  In the first one, we tried to avoid selecting the hiding place of Tom Turkey, and in the second one, we answered random questions like "Are you wearing anything orange?" and "Have you thanked someone today?" in order to see who would be first to color in all the turkey feathers on their game card.  Lots of laughter ensued!

We spent the rest of the morning preparing our lunch!  

Laura and Annmarie were on it from start to finish to prepare the spaghetti squash!

Our side dishes of salad (with greens harvested from the garden), grapes, and garlic bread were prepared by Michelle, Alexis, Erik, Kevin, Abraham, Devin, Kate, and Gail.

Thomas and Bryan marinated and then sauteed the chicken pieces.

Thanks to Patrick, Xavier, and Liz we had brownies for dessert!

Lunch came together nicely!  We had red sauce and basil pesto to add to the spaghetti squash and most of the guys chose both.  We added a little bit of chicken for protein, and grapes for a burst of refreshing fruit  The fresh salad with lettuce, Swiss chard, and mesclun that we picked at the garden yesterday and crisp garlic bread rounded out our meal. 😋

After Choice Time we selected our names for the Secret Santa gift exchange.  It is Gail's first Christmas with us and she's excited to participate!  Remember, keep your selection a secret until our party on December 19th!  Happy Shopping! 🎅

Our final activity of the day was to remove all of the fall decorations, update our calendar for December, and begin coloring some decorative pictures in holiday colors.

Updating the calendar each month is a fun job, as everyone has a specialty, but they also crossover to do other tasks.  This month, Bryan joined the computer team, having honed his copy/paste/print skills recently!  Yay, Bryan!

There were lots of decorations to remove after our fall season of reds, oranges, browns, and yellows!  We hated to remove the tree with its branches filled with colorful leaves and critters, but soon that wall will be filled with this year's Christmas tree project.  

By dismissal time, the walls were bare, tables and chairs were put away, and it was time to call it a (short) week!  When we return from Thanksgiving Break next week, we'll begin to transform our space for the Christmas season. 

Time for a Tessa update!  We are grateful for her progress toward a fully recovery that has taken place over the past year and a half.  She is ever so close to returning, and we cannot wait for that special day!  Tessa recently visited the Winter Lantern Festival at Jamestown Settlement, and attended a craft workshop where she made a resin tree.  She's made many strides with both her fine and gross motor skills.  You look great, Tessa!  Keep up the great work!  Your resin tree is so pretty!

As we depart to spend Thanksgiving with our families, we want to express our gratitude and appreciation for the many blessings we receive at the day program.  We're so thankful for our community and vocational partners who keep us productively engaged throughout each month, our wonderful families who support our endeavors, and our "mothership," the awesome Arc of Greater Williamsburg, whose dedication to the Arc of Abilities has enabled us to become such a thriving and vibrant program.  We are THRILLED that The Arc is now the proud owners of an amazing new home on McLaws Circle into which we will move in early 2026!  Thank you to ALL who have supported our Capital Campaign to help us come this far, and with your continued support of it, we will be able to create within the building a permanent home for The Arc of our dreams that will serve each and every deserving Arc client and their families for years to come.

Here are our plans for next week as we welcome December!

Tuesday:  We will go bowling and have pizza for lunch, most likely back at AFCC due to the weather looking cold and maybe rainy.  We'll spend time after lunch preparing for tomorrow's birthday party!

Wednesday:  This morning we will arrange flowers for CSL and volunteer at GCOC, so please wear Arc shirts.  We'll also cook baked spaghetti and salad for lunch to celebrate Carol's birthday!    In addition, we'll begin working on this year's Christmas tree that we put on the entry wall to our room.  It will be the last one at AFCC!

Thursday:  This morning we'll have fun with another bonus visit from Marisol and the corgis.  We'll also make birthday cards for a couple of special friends, and celebrate National Dice Day with fun and games.  Lunch on your own.  JRES Cafeteria is offering Domino's Pizza or Assorted Wraps.

Friday:  It's an Eaton Work Day and our friends there are planning some holiday fun for us, too!  Plan to bring a bagged lunch as we aren't sure how long we will be at Eaton.  We'll plan for Choice Time and corn hole once we return to the center.  Also, please wear Eaton shirts!

Image from Freepik

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang

A Week Without a Birthday!

 

We had our first week without a birthday celebration in a while.  Instead, we got to be princes and princesses (or kings and queens depending on who you asked) on Tuesday!  It was National Princess Day, but for us it was also National Prince Day.  We celebrated by channeling the prince or princess in all of us and spent the day being kind, helpful, and productive!  This week also found us visiting Christina at The Art Museums of CW, hanging out with our therapy dog friends, cooking and being absurd on the same day, and working at Eaton.  AND, we did it all without Carol.  She was visiting with family in Utah for her brother's wedding!

Tuesday

Carol was absent this week so we had some help from The Arc's Kasey.  She joined us today, but we didn't get a picture with her!  So sorry, Kasey!  You were a great substitute for Carol today.  👏👏  We will see you again on Friday, and we promise to get a photo then!  👍 

The first thing we worked on this morning was a follow up lesson to our food drive shopping trip from last Friday.  We learned that we did very well staying within our budget, only going over by 37 cents!  Some group members mentioned that they were happy to find items on sale, while others were proud to have gotten more for their money by shopping store brands.  One group mentioned reading labels to see how nutritious some of their items were!  Great job to our guys and once again, many thanks to one of Laura's neighbors for the cash donation that we used to make the purchases!

As mentioned previously, today was National Princess Day, but we included our guys, too.  Before decorating our crowns, Alexis and Kate shared the princess dolls they have.  Alexis also wore a shirt that features the horses of Disney princesses and Kate wore her Elsa shirt.  👸👸

We had fun decorating our crowns with bling, and using letter stickers to put our names on them!  There's a prince or princess inside us all.  💗  We're good looking as royalty, so here's another look at our group photo!

Next, we put our royal good natures to work making cards for Christina and our therapy dog friends so we could express our thankfulness for them.  After that, we took a walk around the garden and then had an early lunch.  Soon it was time to load up for a visit with Christina at The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg!

Christina picked up on our Prince and Princess Day theme by taking us on a search for museum objects that reminded us of royalty.  We found prints and paintings of kings and queens, a mirror that was gilded in gold, silver from the time of King George III (before the colonies revolted against him), a lovely painting that included a castle on a cliff, and a handkerchief that featured pictures of a royal family.  What a fun scavenger hunt it was!

In the education studio, we created our own royal shields that depicted some of our favorite things.

Thanks for making us feel like royalty today, Christina!  It was fun learning about things that princes and princesses (and kings and queens) would have used and how those things set them apart from "ordinary" folks.  We enjoyed making our shields, too!

Wednesday

It was all about Thanksgiving when our therapy dog friends visited today.  We needed books for our reading rotations, so Alexis and Liz went to the JRES Library and checked out these great selections for us!

We had 5 handlers and 6 dogs today, including a couple of new ones.  Here, we have "old" friends Carol and Darby, who were reading with Kevin and Devin; and Kent, Leo, and Tavish, who were reading with Liz and Bryan.  In the bottom photo is Vicky with her younger pup, Lucy!  Vicky usually brings Aubree, but now that Lucy is certified, she can bring either of them...or both!  Welcome, Lucy!

Our "old" friend Marisol brought Tucker today and along with Nan, they read with Xavier, Kate, and Erik.  The other photo shows new friend, Lisa, and her standard poodle, Lola, who enjoyed reading with Michelle, Thomas, and Laura.  Welcome Lisa and Lola!

After our reading rotations we all got together for a game of Thanksgiving trivia, followed by wonderful speeches to thank our dogs and handler friends for the time they spend with us each month.  It's a day we look forward to very much!  Great job by today's Speech Committee members Michelle, Alexis, Kate, Thomas, Liz, and Devin. We are thankful for all of our therapy dog friends, old AND new!

We are also very thankful for our dedicated volunteer, Allison!  She missed all the dog fun today so she could put together the arrangements for Commonwealth Senior Living.  We could have squeezed it in after lunch, but Allison was so gracious in offering to do it so we could do other things later.  The flowers from Trader Joe's were particularly pretty this week, and Allison made lovely jars.  She also brought us a treat of peanut butter oatmeal cookie bars!  Allison, we love having you as a volunteer!  You are an important part of our team!!  Thank you for the cookie bars...they were YUMMY!

Because Allison got the flowers done, we had time after lunch to listen to our read-aloud and play board games!  We were celebrating National Play Monopoly Day, but our guys give Monopoly a thumbs down for being "too long and boring!"  We celebrated by playing other board games instead.  It was a fun afternoon!

Thursday

On Carol's third day away this week, we held down the fort with a day at the center...no travel.  It was National Peanut Butter Fudge Day and we had been curious about trying a 2 ingredient recipe for it.  Devin, Gail, and Patrick helped mix up a jar of creamy peanut butter with a container of vanilla cake frosting.  Next, we heated it in the microwave for about 1 minute to get it kind of gooey.

 

After pouring it into a pan lined with parchment paper (thanks, Nan), Abraham smoothed it out and we put it in the fridge for a couple of hours so it could set.  Hmmm...easy peasy...but would it taste like peanut butter fudge?  We would find out later!

As if on cue, Liz mentioned that the smell of the peanut butter fudge was making her stomach growl, and our next activity happened to be a Mystery Science lesson about why our stomachs growl!!  We learned that muscles in our digestive tract help to squeeze food along from the time we swallow until the food reaches our intestines.  When there isn't as much food to move along, such as when it's getting close to time for our next meal, it's easier to hear the sounds those squeezing muscles make...which sound like growling!

After learning about digestion, we got into groups to discuss some of our favorite (supposedly) healthy foods.  We searched for pictures online that we could print, cut out, and use to complete pennants which we made into a banner.  This was a good activity for our more seasoned computer geeks to get a chance to teach others some copy and paste skills.

While working on our healthy food banner, some of us paused to help with lunch preparation.  

Erik, Devin, and Bryan needed to add more water to the pot of green beans.  They were checking how much was in the measuring pitcher so they would know how much more seasoning to add.

Alexis, Thomas, Laura, and Abraham put together the macaroni and cheese.  We used a combination of cheese packets and shredded cheese.  Note:  That large pan (a 2 lb. box of elbows) was waaaay too much for us and we didn't eat it all!

Our chicken grilling team of Michelle, Liz, and Gail got lots of credit for filling the room with a great aroma!  Made our stomachs start growling again!

Meanwhile, Patrick, Alexis, and Kate redistributed food drive donations so we could easily carry each bag.  We'll drop them off at GCOC tomorrow.  We're proud of how successful our food drive has been!

Lunch was delicious! 

Happy National Peanut Butter Fudge Day!  We were pleasantly surprised at how creamy and tasty the two ingredient fudge was.  We'll add this recipe to our keepers!

 

We finished the afternoon by being silly since it was also National Absurdity Day.  We tried a game where we had to say "Zip" or "Zap" and change direction each time the word changed.  We almost caught on near the end, but we were so seriously concentrating that it didn't seem all that silly!

During a game of Pie Face Showdown we let loose a little more! 😜

We also want to note that we've been working on Eaton tasks this week.  Erik, Alexis, and Liz have applied gaskets while Michelle packed and Bryan (not shown) cut the gaskets into individual pieces from the long rolls.  Thanks for getting this done, friends!

Friday

There was plenty of work to do at Eaton this visit.  We had a smaller than usual crew, with just 12, but unpacking, consolidating, and  assembling PowerSlide Doors happened!

Thanks to Kasey for filling in for Carol today!  She learned many skills including how to tighten screws and apply labels to PowerSlide Doors!

Erik taught Kasey the ins and outs of tightening screws.  Thomas, Kevin, and Xavier inserted hundreds of screws this morning, putting 4 sets on each door.  Nan, Alexis, and Liz taught Kasey how to apply labels, and Kate inserted amber lenses to begin the assembly process.

Gail and Bryan had a huge stack of yellow frames to transfer to bins and they also had to fold the paper surrounding them so it could be boxed for recycling.  Laura and Patrick consolidated parts by packing them more neatly, freeing up extra bins for Gail and Bryan.  Our man Devin set the pace for the PowerSlide Door assembly by making sure new boxes were opened and finished boxes were moved to the storage pallet.

We were proud of our team's work this morning, especially being a smaller crew and missing Carol!  When our work was done, we decided it was overcast and a bit chilly outside, so we returned to AFCC for lunch instead of going to the park.  We'll get our Turkey Trot in on Monday!

Our Fall Food Drive will come to an end next week, so please keep the donations coming.  After lunch today we delivered another 220 pounds of non-perishable food to GCOC!  That makes our total 465 pounds donated since the drive began.  Thank you, Arc of Abilities families!

The back of the van was full, and we had more bags on the seats with us.  Plus, we had to put some of the donations in Kasey's car!

Our last activity of the day was a relaxing segment of yoga with Jaime.  She has a new episode about Thanksgiving, which is cool since Jaime is British!  

Arc of Abilities will be in session on MONDAY and TUESDAY, November 24-25 to provide a two-day week.  We will be closed Wednesday-Friday for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Here's what we have planned for the shortened week:

Monday:  We're going to be outside today as we move around ahead of Thursday's Thanksgiving meal!  We'll take a "Turkey Trot" (walk) around the campus of William and Mary and then head to Freedom Park to check on the garden and have a picnic.  The weather forecast calls for sunny skies and 58 degrees.  Let's hope it sticks!  Please bring a bagged lunch.

Tuesday:  We'll have some Thanksgiving activities and also remove our fall decorations so we can update our calendar to prepare for December.  We will cook spaghetti squash with pesto sauce (that we made/froze with basil we harvested from the garden) for lunch.  We'll also draw our Secret Santa selections so please make sure you returned your Secret Santa Helper Form by today!

Have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see everyone on MONDAY!

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang