Happy Birthday, Kevin!

This week began last Saturday with the Disability Awareness Trick or Treat held at AFCC. The Arc was represented as one of the vendors, and several AoA members attended.  Our "regular" week began on Tuesday with a trip to visit Christina at The Art Museums of CW.  On Wednesday, we did our service projects and also played kickball outside!  Thursday was a cooking day that included a fun celebration for Boston Cream Pie Day, and we also celebrated Horror Movie Day with zombie movie!  By Friday, we were ready to celebrate Kevin's birthday, but first we worked at Pet Supplies Plus.  It was another busy week!

Saturday's Disability Awareness Trick or Treat

Tracy and Katrina knocked it out of the ballpark again with this year's Disability Awareness Trick or Treat event held on Saturday, October 18.

Tracy was excited to welcome everyone, and she and her team did a great job on decorations.  There were over a dozen vendors in the gym, all set up to give out treats and share information about how their organizations serve as a resource for the disabled community.

Debbie and Kevin, Alexis, and Liz were early birds who stuck around for the entire morning, not only having fun, but helping Tracy and Katrina with last minute details.  Here, they were part of the welcoming committee as visitors arrived!

This was the Sensory Room, which is our usual classroom.  It was transformed into a quiet, calm space for anyone to visit who may have felt over-stimulated in the gym.  Great job, Tracy and Katrina!  We can see why this is an award-winning event! 

The Arc was a proud vendor.  Lisa and Carol met many families as they stopped by with their young children, and told them to keep The Arc in mind for the future!

Alexis and Liz visited the vendors, chatted a bit, and got treats!

Soon Cowboy Jack, also known as Drew, joined the fun!

The trackless train is always fun to ride!

Thomas stopped by, too!  Our AoA friends had a fun morning at the Disability Awareness Trick or Treat event.  We just hope they didn't eat all of their candy treats in one day!

Tuesday

Today kicked off a beautiful fall weather week.  We spent the morning learning about reptiles, and then visited with Christina at the Art Museums where we learned even more!

We made turtle-shaped reptile wheels that highlighted some of the facts we learned for Reptile Awareness Day.  

In our video about reptiles, we learned that most of them lay eggs, but some snakes have live births, such as the garter snake.  Carol was excited to show us a picture of her son, Matt, taken last Sunday when they came across a garter snake while walking in the woods!  Something we learned from our reptile wheel is that a lizard-like reptile called a tuatara is very unique because it grows very slowly, lives to over 100 years old, and is the only survivor of an ancient group of reptiles that roamed with dinosaurs over 200 million years ago!  It's native to New Zealand.

Even though is was a pretty day outside, we opted to do fitness stations indoors.  This is our version of "step jacks."  😊

Here we are in various stages of squats!

Wall push-ups help us with upper body strength.

Before lunch, Annmarie told us about the wonderful time she had on her trip last week for a family reunion at Winter Clove in the Catskills of New York.  She was very proud of the hike she took with her cousins!  Way to go, Annmarie!!

After an early lunch, we joined Christina at The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg for a fun afternoon celebrating Reptile Awareness Day!  We didn't know that would be Christina's topic, but she was excited to point out that their are many examples of reptiles in the museums!  We were excited to share all the information we knew about reptiles!  She was impressed!

A few of the pieces we saw were a ceramic alligator, a silver soup-tureen in the shape of a turtle, and lots of snakes made of metal, ceramic, wood, and even gold-plated silver.  We compared alligators and crocodiles, and learned that the only place in the world where they coexist is in south Florida, primarily in the Everglades!  We also learned that turtle soup was very popular in Europe in the 1800s, and even though horses fear snakes, a trophy for a horse race was once made that featured snakes as the handles!

In the classroom, we enjoyed using markers to decorate toy wooden snakes.  They were very flexible, like real snakes, and some of us were surprised to learn that snakes are vertebrates, which means they have backbones.  How can they squirm like that?!!

After a relaxing few minutes of coloring, we played a game called "Huckleberry Beanstalk" which goes back to the 18th century.  While one player hides the snake in plain sight, the others turn their backs and sing "Yankee Doodle."  Then, everyone searches for the hidden snake, and the first to find it very casually returns to home base and says "Huckleberry Beanstalk!"  It was fun!

Some of us made it over in time for a quick photo with Christina, who had to dart off to a meeting.  Thanks for a fun afternoon, Christina.  We loved seeing how giddy you were at all the reptiles in the museums!!  Your enthusiasm was contagious!

All of us made it into this group shot outside of the museums!  We were missing Abraham today.  He's under the weather.  

Wednesday

Our busy morning included volunteering at the JRES Library and Grove Christian Outreach Center, as well as arranging flowers for Commonwealth Senior Living.  We have a great team who splits up and covers all the bases!

Ready to roll with the assembly line!

Yum!  Thanks, Ursula, for the peanut butter cookies!!

Our flower crew knows what do do...after setting up the tables they open, sort, and trim the flowers.  They also prepare the Mason jars by adding a small amount of water and making sure the ribbons are straight.

We only had one tub of flowers donated by Trader Joe's this week, so we did the best we could making 12 jars.

The jars aren't as full as usual, but they still look bright and cheerful!

It was a gorgeous day to finally play kickball outside!

We're getting the hang of this game and soon we'll try a more "kickball" type of ball.  The big one we use now doesn't pitch very fast...or go very far on a kick!

In the afternoon we learned that vampires are not real, but they do drink human blood in folklore.  However, vampire bats are real, and they do enjoy drinking animal blood...usually by landing on an animal's back for a bite, though! 

We also learned that wolves don't howl at the moon!  They howl to communicate with their packs and are most active during dawn and dusk when it's not quite dark enough to fully see the moon.  We ran out of time to make our werewolf craft, so we'll try to fit it in tomorrow.

Thursday

We enjoyed a full day at the center doing one of our favorite activities, cooking!  We're good at dividing up the tasks, so we got busy after our dance warm up this morning.

Lexi and Gail washed the potatoes for our baked potato bar.  They rubbed and scrubbed as hard as they could so we would be able to eat the potato skin!  Later, Lexi joined Laura and Patrick to make napkin rings featuring pictures of piping hot baked potatoes.  Drew, Bryan, and Kevin (with Nan's offscreen assistance) cooked a pot of green beans that would be one of our side dishes.

Kate, Devin, and Annmarie made our other side dish.  We'll let them share what it was!

October 23 is Boston Cream Pie Day, so we made minis.  We learned that it's really a cake, but it's called a pie because back in the day, pies and cakes were all baked in pie tins...so the word "pie" was used for both.  It didn't matter whether it was pie or cake to us!  Our minis were delicious!

Here, we had colored 16 pages that, when put together in the right order, would form a large banner.  It didn't matter which colors were used on each page, we knew it would look great once we got it assembled.

Voila!

Finally, those potatoes were baked and it was time for lunch!  Devin approved before even taking his first bite! 😋

We ended the day with a movie in honor of National Horror Movie Day!  Ours was a Disney version, but still....most of us enjoyed Zombies 3.  Others worked puzzles or colored.  Everyone was content!

Dancing at the end of the movie before putting away tables and chairs.  We had a good day!

Friday

This morning we split up and sent a group to work at Pet Supplies Plus while the others made a delivery to Eaton and got things set up for Kevin's birthday party.

A delivery truck had not arrived in time for us to help stock today, so we dusted, swept, folded towels, and stocked a few things.  Erik and Bryan got a workout lifting bags of dog food!

We didn't get a lot of pictures today, but the group insisted Carol get a shot of Sangria and Pina Colada, the latest two kittens that are up for adoption!  They're very cute, and we hope they find a fur-ever home very soon!

Our PSP group wants you to know that there is still time to pick up a Halloween costume for your pet!  Hurry over to PSP soon to make your selections!

Meanwhile, for our other group, it was nice to see Ethan, Rosemary, and Sam when we made the Eaton delivery.  We do appreciate the opportunity to do extra Eaton work at the center!

After our quick trip to Eaton, it was time for this group to get things ready for Kevin's party.  We put up decorations, made napkin rings, salads, and sweet potato tots, and also heated the chicken nuggets Kevin's dad dropped off this morning.

When the PSP group returned, we got the party started!  Kevin enjoys puzzles, so we pulled up a Halloween version of a matching puzzle and put Kevin in charge.  He took the first turn!

Each time the puzzle changed, Kevin called on a different friend to give it a try.  Kevin gave lots of help and encouragement, too!  He's a great teacher!

Kevin also loves to sing, and some of his favorite songs are by The Wiggles!  So of course, we had to have a Wiggles sing-a-long...led by Kevin!

We'd like to thank Kevin's family for providing a delicious lunch today!  Debbie, you know you can't go wrong with nuggets from Chick fil-A!  We also loved the sweet potato tots!  Thank you very much for treating us, and for hanging out with us, too!

Kevin, we hope all of your wishes come true!  Also, we loved having you lead us in singing to you!!

We ended the week with one more of Kevin's favorite activities, a walk!  We're grateful to be so close to Newport News Park and its great trails.  Kevin knows, and we agree, that a brisk walk after a filling lunch feels really good!!

That's a wrap on another fun week!  We'll close out October next week (wow, how did that happen?) by starting AND ending with parties!  LOL!  Here's a look at our plans:

Tuesday:  Believe it or not, we're celebrating another birthday today, and it's for Alexis!  First, we'll wrap up our fall sessions with the master gardeners as we travel to Freedom Park to work with them.  We will plant garlic and onions, prepare our annual bulb pot (for a spring surprise!), and go on a scavenger hunt before telling our friends goodbye for a few months.  When we return to the center, we'll celebrate Alexis with chili, cornbread, and birthday brownies for lunch.  After lunch Lexi has requested a game of pool noodle volleyball and a round of Disney trivia.

Wednesday:  We'll volunteer in the JRES Library and at GCOC today, and arrange flowers for CSL.  Please wear Arc shirts.  After volunteer work is done, we'll welcome Marisol for a Halloween edition of fun with the corgis!  After lunch, we'll learn more about pumpkins and Halloween, and carve the pumpkin we grew with the master gardeners!  Lunch on your own.  JRES Cafeteria is serving Cheesy Pasta Supreme or Assorted Wraps.

Thursday:  Today we'll combine two national days for a fun lesson:  Candy Corn Day and Wicked Day (the Broadway show and movie).  We'll learn about the history of each, create a tasty snack, and watch a few video clips.  We'll also work on preparations for tomorrow's Halloween party, including transforming our corn hole boards for a scary version of the game!  Lunch on your own.  JRES Cafeteria is offering Domino's Pizza, Chicken Wrap, or Chef's Salad.

Friday:  Happy Halloween!  We're going to party most of the day with dancing, games, and stories.  If the weather is nice, we'll end it with a walk at Bicentennial Park (behind the art museums).  Lunch will be Mummy Dogs, Spooky Fruits and Veggies, Haunted Chips, and a treat or two, too!  Feel free to wear your costumes and maybe bring a change of clothes in case you get uncomfortable.  Costumes optional!

Reminder:  We will be in session during Thanksgiving Week on Monday and Tuesday, November 24-25.  This is the only Monday of the year on which we are open!  We'll be closed November 26-28 for the holiday.

Enjoy the weekend,

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang