Leading the Pledge

Our first full week of 2019, found us with a lot on our agenda including a return to Studio South for yoga, a big work day at Eaton, and a few of our friends representing us in a big way!  Here's a look at our week:

It had been over a month since we went bowling and the gang was ready to return to the lanes on Tuesday.  Both Liz and Laura began the new year with new bowling balls!  Aren't they beautiful?  (Blue for Liz, pink for Laura!)

You may be wondering how the balls worked for the girls? Quite well!  In fact, they each rolled strikes early on in game 1.  They were happy!

In this picture, Kacie is waving her hand...trying to send some air to her ball to get it to head back toward the center of the lane!  Does it really work?  Not usually, but in this case, it brought her an "almost" spare!

  

Bowling wasn't the only thing that excited our guys today.  Kate's family was sponsoring our lunch and instead of just pizza (which we enjoy very much), we had a choice of pizza, hot dog, or chicken tenders...and a few fries, too.  Our favorite "chef," Tracy, got 19 orders correct and as always, the food was hot and tasty.  It's fun to get to change it up every now and then!  Thank you, Thompson family, for this yummy treat!  We really enjoyed it!  It got our new bowling year off to a great start!

We also enjoyed the bottles of sparkling (non-alcoholic) bubbly that manager Ed gave us so we could toast the new year!  Thanks, Ed!  You're so cool!  (Wish we had gotten you in the photo!)

Of course we love to highlight how helpful our friends are to each other.  Here, Patrick happily helped Devin change his shoes.

From bowling we made our way to Studio South, where we had a fabulous yoga session with Katy and Kiley!  Our schedules (and theirs) had not worked out for us to be together since October, and we had missed them.  That's Katy near the door.  She got us started by having everyone share what we are grateful for in the new year, and then she led us through gentle stretches with her relaxing tone.

Kiley popped in for a few minutes and led us through some of our favorite poses, then she had to go to a meeting.  She said she was disappointed she couldn't stay, and she looks forward to being with us next time!  Both Katy and Kiley have a great rapport with our friends and make us feel confident and strong during our practice.

We can't wait to visit Studio South again next month.  Thank you Katy, for offering this experience to our Arc of Abilities group.  It's a wonderful partnership that we enjoy very much!

The highlight of this week was having four of our superstars - Sam, Devin, Drew, and Laura - represent us at the JCC Board of Supervisors meeting!  The AoA was invited by our friend and Arc board member (and JCC Attorney), Adam Kinsman, to lead the pledge at the January 8 meeting.  These four answered the call and did us proud!

Check this out!  They practiced for a week (thanks, families!) and it showed!

They also got to meet some of the board members.  Carol and Pam joined them, and reported that they gave great handshakes!

Of course, they had to pose with the board members and Pam and Carol!

Here, they proudly (and rightly so) show the certificates they earned.  Each of them also got an "official" pin!  Great job, guys!!!!

Sam's great evening continued when he and his parents stopped by Honey Butter's for dinner and he got to say "Hi!" to our favorite Moose, Patti!!  It was a great day for the AoA!

Our upgraded internet access continues to make it easier for us to use all computers at one time.  On Wednesday morning we made thank you notes using images from online searches for Kate's mom, who treated us to lunch yesterday.

Don't they look great?!  Our guys are using many features from the word processing program, in addition to inserting pictures from online.  Today we began to teach how to save a document. 

Who knew Ninja Day would be so much fun (besides Sam!)?  Even though it was officially marked on December 5th, we carried the celebration into the new year.  We learned what Ninjas are, and talked about how they are mindful (ties in well with our yoga practice) and disciplined.  We decided our Ninjas would be good guys!  For fun, we learned how to make Ninja masks using t-shirts.  Liz was our guinea pig as we figured it out!

Next thing we knew, most of our friends wanted to be AoA Ninjas!  Sam even brought a pair of nunchuks, but we only used them for show!  

We put on the jackets we used when we took Tai-Chi classes, and decided our Ninja style was pretty fashionable!

Our volunteer and friend Pam W. owns Ninja cookie cutters!  She loaned them to us and we made Ninja cookies out of rolled dough.  Here, Sam works up close to put some details on his cookie.

Thanks, Pam W.!  We had a lot of fun using the cookie cutters for our Ninja Day event!

Yoga with Patti was different for us on Wednesday.  We did a few stretches, then spent the rest of our session on a mindfulness activity that found us relaxed and seated while Patti guided us through visual imagery as a way to focus mind and body.

She gave each of us a drop of orange essential oil on our palms to inhale as we listened.  We were surprised at how quietly focused (for several minutes) everyone was, but should we have been surprised?  Our guys amaze us every day!

After yoga, we channeled our creative juices as everyone decorated a mitten which we would use to make a garland to hang on our board as a winter decoration.  What a peaceful end to our day!

Thursday morning found us doing a short yoga session with online Jaime.  We try to incorporate purposeful movement a couple of times each day, the first time being during our dance warm up first thing in the morning, and then again, usually before lunch.  

When the weather is too chilly to go outdoors, and the gym isn't availabe, it can be challenging to get our friends moving within the confines of our room.  After some dedicated practice, we have finally gotten to the point where they can quickly (and kind of quietly) move tables and chairs enough out of the way for us to spread out, without having to take them down like we do at the end of each day.  When we're done, they efficiently move the tables and chairs back...which kind of qualifies as strength training, eh? 😉

Ahh, after an energetic yoga session with Jaime, we enjoy the well-deserved moments of shavasana...stillness and quiet.

Prior to our yoga, we had been busily working in teams to prepare today's lunch:  Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo.  With 17 on the roster, we have to divvy up the work creatively in order to include everyone.  Today we had teams for cutting and sauteing chicken, preparing sauce (from scratch), assembling salads, setting the tables, and making decorations!  We didn't take pictures of our busy workers, but here's the end result.  As usual, our cooking skills yielded a tasty dish!

Our favorite Moose Lady joined us for lunch today when Patti stopped by for a visit!  She also brought her dog, Cam.  Cam's a certified Service Animal, but we would have let her in anyway!  

Here's a sweet moment when Cam said "Hi" to Devin!

When it was time for Patti to leave, Chris reminded her that he will be leaving us next month as his family relocates to sunny Florida.  He knew this may be the last time he sees Patti, so a hug was appropriate.  😍

Our afternoon educational time consisted of learning about static electricity, since it was Static Electricity Day (yesterday)!  After a short discussion about positive and negative charges, we just wanted the balloons!  Here, Laura rubs a balloon on Bo's jacket to collect some negative atoms which will then cause her ballon to stick to the wall as it attracts itself to the positive atoms there.

Hey, Xavier...don't just leave your balloon hanging!

Of course, no study in static electricity is complete without making someone's hair stand on end!

Our mitten garland adds a nice touch to our whiteboard as Becky, who is only a few years removed from teaching all about electricity to 4th graders, demonstrates that objects with like charges will repel each other.  See how her hand seemingly moves the balloons from each other so they don't touch?  It's not magic though, its science!

In this experiment, we mixed salt and pepper and then used static electricty to separate it.  Since pepper is lighter, it will jump onto a negatively charged plastic spoon.  Dev had just proved it and was saying, "WOW!" when we took this picture.

Our gang and balloons...always a good time whether it's science or just plain fun!

There is a great website called BrainPOP that Becky and Lisa are familiar with from their teaching days.  It has lots of lessons, video clips, games, and extension activity ideas on all kinds of subjects.  When Becky found out we couldn't find a suitable YouTube clip on static electricity...she suggested BrainPOP and signed us up for a yearlong subscription!  Thank you, Becky!  You know how much our guys like to learn, so we will get a lot of mileage out of this generous gift!

After science, we put together The Arc's February mailing.  There are many events to choose from, including the Valentine's Dance, so make your selections and return the sign up sheet to Bette Faye by the January 25th deadline!! 💖

Our first work day at Eaton for 2019 was on Friday.  Lisa wasn't feeling well and had to miss it, but Carol, Nan, Becky, Meemaw, and our awesome crew got the job done!  Here are a few pictures from the day.

Our work day, and week, ended with a Frosty run at Wendy's!  We remembered we still had some coupons for Frosties that Meemaw had given us for Halloween, so we used them today and will begin using our gift cards from Nina next time.  Thank you, Meemaw!  We love our Frosties.  It's hard to believe we hadn't made a Wendy's stop since Halloween! 

Another great ending to another great week!  As we head into mid-January, here's what's up for next week:

Tuesday:  We will remain at AFCC for the morning where we will make up Save the Eagles Day, which we didn't get to last week.    After lunch on your own, we'll go to the Art Museums for a visit with Christina.  While out, we will collect pine cones so we can make bird feeders to put in the Community Garden.  Please wear Arc shirts!

Wednesday:  Today we will welcome a Rotary volunteer and work together in our computer lab.  Feel free to wear a hat, too, as we will celebrate Hat Day!  Dress for yoga with Patti, and plan for lunch on your own.  Finally, we'll also have fun with Ivory soap...and that's all we can say about that for now! 😜

Thursday:  It's Popcorn Day so we are going to prepare soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, with popcorn for a side.  We're going to celebrate Bird Day (Jan. 5) by making popcorn ball and pine cone bird feeders.  We will also visit our BrainPop website for a fun lesson on birds and a game of Bird Song Hero! Thanks again, Becky, for the subscription!  With our upgraded internet, using BrainPOP will be easy-peasy!

Friday:  We will have history on our minds today as we recognize the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. whose birthday is observed on Monday as a federal holiday.  We will also get whimsical as we celebrate Winnie the Pooh Day, one of our guys' favorites each year.  Feel free to wear Pooh or Disney clothes!  Lunch on your own, but just for Pooh, we're going to make Peanut Butter Honey Truffles with Coconut - a simple, unprocessed, healthy snack (or dessert).

Please keep these dates in mind, as The Arc of GW has some great events coming up!

The Family Health Fair is always lots of fun, especially the dance and fitness breakouts and gathering up goodies from the vendor tables!

We're very excited to partner with the W&M Law School Special Education Advocacy Clinic to present the film "Intelligent Lives" this year!  Come join us as we find out why the film teases with "You never know what people can do!"  More info here:

Intelligent Lives Film Screening - January 27

Did you miss our golf tournament last August?  It's time for another one, and this one is indoors!  We're stoked to be partnering this time with Revolution Golf and Grille and Rotary Clubs of James City County to offer a fun tourney on February 23rd!  Get a team togther and stay tuned for more info on times and registration.

Stay warm and have a great weekend,

Lisa, Carol, and Nan

Happy New Year 2019!

Happy New Year, families and friends!  We hope everyone had a joyful holiday season and enjoyed quality time with loved ones.  Our guys were excited to be back among their friends when we returned on Wednesday, and eager to share about their holiday experiences.  It sounded like everyone had a wonderful holiday!

We had a lot to do when we got back.  We began by letting Kevin give Chris his Secret Santa gift.  Neither Chris nor Kevin were with us at our holiday party on December 19th, so we saved Chris's gift for today.  (Kacie had taken Kevin's gift from Patrick to him after the party.) You can see by the look on Chris's face that he loved the Buffalo Bills cap Kevin picked for him!

Cameron received a 300 piece puzzle/poster from Sam...but Sam was under the weather and not here on Wednesday to give it to Cam in person!  Cameron enjoys puzzles so he was happy with his gift, including the candy that was attached to it!

After our dance warm up, we had to remove Christmas decorations from the walls.  

They sure came down a lot faster than they went up!  We will soon need to put up Valentine's Day decorations! (Say it isn't so...💕 !)

Since we are so blessed by the many gifts and opportunities provided to us by family and friends, we had a few thank you notes to write when we returned to the center.  Our Rotary friend Jeff came today, so he worked with Alexis and Liz to write a couple of notes for Carol, who had graciously opened her home to us on December 18th for a lovely holiday gathering.  

Jeff helped the girls with a bit of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and suggested some changes to the font they were using.  But THEY impressed him with their word processing skills and attention to details in their writing!  They also remembered how to insert pictures that they found online!  Jeff, and all of us, were proud of their final products, and Carol loved them.  

We continued working on thank you notes in the big room, with this group "hunting and pecking" but finding the keys needed (letters were called to them orally) to create a sweet note to Cristin and Samantha, the friends from Anheuser-Busch who came last month to help us make the gumball machine ornaments.

Devin actually hunted and pecked with both his left and right hands!

Carol helped Bo and Kevin organize their thoughts as they wrote a wonderful letter to Nina, who had gifted us with enough Wendy's gift cards to have Frosties all year!  Nina's grandson, Sam, would have been in this group but he was home feeling a little under the weather.  🤧 We missed you, Sam, but you would have approved of the letter these guys wrote to Nina!

Technology has a place in the lives of all of our friends, and having access to it at our center helps them keep the skills they have and, in many cases, acquire new ones.  Thanks, again, Williamsburg Rotary, for providing us the equipment needed to have a computer lab at our center!

Look who came back to work today!  Heike was missed for a couple of months and we were happy to see her back on duty.  She has a few restrictions, but for the most part, her doctors told her to use her left arm as much as she can and her strength will eventually return.  Welcome home, Heike!  

It was Personal Trainer Awareness Day on Wednesday, so we used some markers and colored pencils recently donated by Sam's family to make some special cards for Patti!  We didn't get a picture, but she was happy to find out it was "her" special day, and she loved the cards we made!

Patti's focus in today's yoga lesson was to have us think about setting "intentions" for 2019, instead of resolutions.  Resolutions can set us up to fall short of sometimes challenging goals. Intentions nurture our consciousness and raise our awareness, helping us to "resolve" with purpose... 😉☮👌

We also did lots of twisting with Patti.  She explained that twists help open our bodies for better breathing, circulation, and digestion!

We learned that our internal organs really appreciate us twisting and stretching!  

On Thursday, we got a lot done!  We didn't get around to updating our January calendar on Wednesday, so we worked on that first thing.  Being a new year, we wanted to try something different.  Our guys usually draw pictures on the calendar squares for each day's events, but we decided to use online images this time, since our internet access had been upgraded!  We had to use the Guest Network in the past (with a few issues maintaining connectivity), but over the holidays, the IT folks from Parks & Rec increased our bandwidth!!  That means we will be able to use all of our computers online at the same time!  We are super excited about this!  Thank you John Carnifax at Parks & Rec for helping us with this situation and for setting up the improved connectivity.  We will be able to use our computers more productively now!

Chris was excited to find images to match his assignment of preparing a square for visiting the art museum, collecting pine cones, and celebrating Bird Day.

Dev and Cameron searched for images for Popcorn Day, Soup and Grilled Cheese Day, and Save the Eagles Day.  They found a lot of images and had to decide which ones they liked best!

Alexis was happy to help Laura, find images for yoga and puzzles.

This is a shot of Patrick's screen.  He had a couple of calendar squares to complete, and needed images for hats, fig newtons, the Mariners Museum, and others!  Another skill we worked on was sizing the images, as they needed to be fairly small to fit on our calendar squares.

Looks like we were enjoying this change up to putting our calendar together!

Devin and Kevin had worked with a partner to find images, and then they double checked that the numbers were correctly placed on our calendar poster.

This is what our calendar squares looked like once they were placed on the poster, which goes on the bulletin board.  By printing images from online, we could fit more on each square.  Our guys liked the way it turned out!  We don't always get to do everything we plan for, but we do most of it.  Sometimes things get rescheduled, and sometimes we have to say we'll get to it "next year."  Our calendar helps us learn to monitor and adjust!

After being hunched over computers for a while, we needed to stretch and get in some fitness time.  We have recently enjoyed working out with an online trainer named Lucy.  She is from England, like our online yoga teacher, Jaime.  There must be something about those English accents that motivates us to move, because we gave it our all for 15 minutes!

We got our thinking revved up when we worked on crossword puzzles.  First, we completed a custom made puzzle that had clues relating to each of us.  That was fun!

This group also worked an online crossword.  It took all of them working together to analzye the clues, figure out the answer...and then spell it correctly!

During our afternoon group work, we created our own crosswords using letter cards.  That was the easy part.  😊

Thinking of clues was a little more challenging! 🤔

At the end of the day we played a game that involved using context clues and listening carefully to the player before us.  Everyone had a card to pay attention to, with word and picture clues.  It was fun to watch them waiting expectantly for their friends to read the clues that lead to their cards!

Annmarie took reading her clue card very seriously!  She did a great job!

🍝Hooray for National Spaghetti Day, which was Friday!🍝  Being one of our favorite meals, it didn't take much to get everyone assigned to a lunch preparation team so we could pull off a yummy midday meal!

"Meat" the sauce group:  Laura, Dev, Cameron, and Xavier!  They also helped prepare garlic bread and the pasta.

Alexis and Drew volunteered for salad prep.  Drew has been trying veggies for us lately, so we were excited that he wanted to make salads.  At lunch, he ate all of his salad and had a little extra, too!  Way to go, Drew!

Dev's grandmother sent us a package of sugar cookie dough (in a pretty little cookie jar that we forgot to take a picture of 😢) so this team of Liz, Kate, and Devin worked together to bake them from start to finish!

Since the sugar cookies wouldn't be enough for our large group, Kevin, Sam, Annmarie, Patrick, and Chris followed a simple recipe to make a few extra peanut butter cookies.

Before lunch we got proactive and worked off a few of the pasta and cookie calories we would soon consume!

One thing we learned during our research on spaghetti is that most Italians do not put heavy meat sauce on it like "Americanos" do!  But that's how we like it, so we also learned that mixing the sauce in with the pasta before serving is the best way to coat the noodles. Plus, adding some of the water that the pasta cooked in can add extra flavor and help to thin the sauce, which will also make it coat the noodles better!

We also learned that a trick for serving spaghetti is to use tongs and give it a twirl when placing it on the plate.  Cameron used a two-hand twirling method, and Sam couldn't wait to take that plate back to his seat!

It was a fun morning with our cooking and baking activities.  Our spaghetti and salad lunch hit the spot, but we saved a little room for either a sugar or peanut butter cookie!  We froze the leftovers and will enjoy them another time.  Many thanks to Dev's grandmother for sending us the sugar cookie mix!  We enjoy our sweets!

We also had fun celebrating Trivia Day on Friday.  Our guys enjoy showing off their vast amount of knowledge on lots of trivial topics!  One game we played was NFL Trivia.  The boys were excited to get a question about the Buffalo Bills...which is Chris's favorite team!  Of course he knew the answer to this was "The Jills" and his team earned a point!

We probably should have given the girls a point for this question that also came up on the boys' turn, because they got a huge assist from Kate!  The boys came up with "Jaguars" and "Panthers," but couldn't think of any more, and 2 wasn't one of the answer choices.  Kate mentioned the "Lions" and after more thinking, she asked which team has stripes on their helmets, which led the boys to say "Bengals" and voila, the answer is 4!

Games of Animal Trivia and (of course!) Disney Movie Trivia rounded out our day, and in the end, the teams had tied scores!  That happens a lot with our smarties!

We're back to a full four days next week.  Here's what you need to know:  

Tuesday:  It's bowling today!  Seems like it's been forever since we bowled, as our last scheduled day turned out to be a snow day!  We also have a special treat for lunch:  Choice of pizza, hot dog, or chicken tenders, courtesy of Kate's family!  Thank you for this very special treat!  After bowling, we will visit with Katy for a yoga session at Studio South.  It will be an active day for us, and that's the best kind! Wear your Arc shirts!

Wednesday:  Today will be interesting as we celebrate Static Electricity Day (yay, science!) and Ninja Day, which was was back on December 5, but we never got around to it.  Lots of our guys like Ninjas, so we'll have a little fun with it!  Dress to stretch as we'll have yoga with Patti, too.  Lunch on your own.

Thursday:  Tomorrow is National Milk Day but we are celebrating today by using milk in a recipe for Broccoli Alfredo for lunch!   It's also Save the Eagles Day.  We enjoy checking out eagle cams and learning about our majestic national bird each year.  

Friday:  Jorie has requested our services for a work day at Eaton, so please wear Arc shirts and bring a bag lunch!  We will also plan to stop by Wendy's for a treat on the way back to AFCC, courtesy of Sam's grandmother!!  Thanks again, Nina, for the gift cards!

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The Arc of GW has some awesome events coming up, so save these dates: 

January 19th is the Family Health Fair at the Rec Center on Longhill Road.  Presented by The Arc of GW and JCC Parks and Rec, it's a morning not to be missed!  Come join us!




Sunday, January 27th will be the 2nd Annual  Film Screening & Community Conversation at the Kimball Theater.  This year the film is "Intelligent Lives."  It's about three young adults with intellectual disabilities who challenge the perceptions of intelligence.  The tease is:  "You never know what people can do!"  Tickets are free, with donations to The Arc of Greater Williamsburg accepted. Doors open at 1:30.   Follow this link for more information:  Intelligent Lives Film Screening

Hope to see you there!



Have a great weekend,

Lisa, Carol, and Nan