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Upcoming Events
- Wasena Park Clean Up with Rke. Valley Co-op
Feb 5 1:00pm - Feb 5 2:30pmDay of Service
Wasena Park Cleanup: We need your help! Sunday February 5th Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op is cleaning Wasena Park from 1 to 2:30 pm. We will begin the Cleanup with a soup lunch provided by the Co-op. Sign up at the registers or call (540) 343-5652 today! - Hoodie-Hoo Day!
Feb 20 12:10am - Feb 20 11:10pmStep outside and give a yell! Hoodie-Hoo is how we will chase winter away! - The Great Cloth Diaper Change
Apr 21 10:00am - Apr 21 4:00pmThe event is being held on Saturday April 21st at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Main Street in Salem. Visit the facebook page (diaperchange.roanoke) for more information :)
- Cascades Garlic Mustard removal for 2012
Apr 28 10:00am - Apr 28 3:00pm2012 Garlic Mustard Challange at the Cascades
a fun day to help take care of the Cascades ecosystem
free parking, open to groups
More details, contact Eastern Divide Ranger Station
540-552-4641
- 2nd Annual Kids to Parks Day
May 19 9:00am - May 19 5:00pmSAVE THE DATE
2nd Annual National Kids to Parks Day
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Details at www.buddybison.org
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Admin
We are hoping that you have a wonderful weekend. There is no better place for a family that the Roanoke Valley! There seems to be a lot going on, including a Donahue family favorite - Art By Night in Downtown Roanoke.
Art By Night is a great, free way to check out the wonderful art that is going on in our lovely city. Art By Night is family friendly, we have always felt welcomed. You can move at your own pace. The gallery owners are always glad to have new visitors.
Speaking of art… a giant gorilla recently made Roanoke his temporary home. The statues’ creator, Mark Cline has an exhibit coming to the Taubman Museum of Art (http://www.taubmanmuseum.org) in February and the news has been buzzing! Make sure to look for it on your way into downtown!
Roanoke Times coverage at
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/304040
Info about Art By Night can be found at
http://www.roanokeartbynight.com/
Fever has set in at the Donahue house. Best if you stay away for a couple of days.
We’ll check back in on you when the danger has passed.
Another excellent report and a fantastic resource for families in the area comes from Mr. Ralph Berrier, Jr., a columnist for our area paper, The Roanoke Times. It is called The Dadline. Every other week, Mr. Berrier notes some links, stories and survival tips for our local parents. We look forward to it.
Check out his most recent addition at http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/dadline/wb/304082.
Survive this very strange “winter” weather (seen in the photo above… shorts in January, SHEESH!) we have been experiencing with his suggestions and event calendar. Thank, Ralph! You continue to keep us on our parental toes!
The Donahues returned late last night from a lovely vacation visiting Historic Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. We visited several National Parks and Virginia State Parks.
We’ll post more photos soon like the one here with our oldest holding Buddy Bison at Historic Yorktown National Park, but mostly we wanted to share info about Buddy Bison. Bussy Bison toured the National Parks with us. To learn more about the Buddy Bison project, please visit www.buddybison.org.
We left the computer at home, but I still managed to make a twit out of myself by tweeting along with our adventures. You can follow our KIVA tweets at https://twitter.com/#!/kidsinthevalley.
Hello Folks!
Ashley and I were just so pleased with the response for our request for making donations to Feeding America Southwest Virginia for our annual KIVA birthday bash last weekend! We set a goal of 400 lbs. of food for this year’s event. Families who visited the Mill Mountain Discovery Center last Saturday helped us to collect 116 pounds. Thank you so much!
The kind employees and owners of Walkabout Outfitter collected 127 additional pounds for our food drive! We are so thankful to those wonderful people. Make sure to stop by one of their three locations this week to tell them thank you.
That leaves us with a total of 243 pounds of food collected for families in our area! Mr. Robert Rogers, a representative of Feeding America was so pleased with the response and the interest of families who were willing to help. He shared with the group about the local need for food and how Feeding America Southwest Virginia 14 million pounds of food last year to our area.
You can read more about the efforts of Feeding America Southwest Virginia here:
http://www.faswva.org/Subnav/about-us.html
There is still time to donate toward our food drive. Feel free to contact us about a pick up or you can donate the items yourself on location in Salem, Virginia. Just let them know that your donation should be counted for the Kids In the Valley, Adventuring! collection drive.
Several KIVA folks asked about making monetary donations, as well. Knowing that each dollar collected by Feeding America Southwest Virginia can be turned into EIGHT dollars of food helped us to see that the Donahues could help this way, as well. If you would like to make a donation to Feeding America Southwest Virginia and help to make a change locally, please visit:
http://www.faswva.org/Subnav/donate.html
Again, mention that the donation is in honor of the Kids In the Valley, Adventuring! food drive.
Thanks so much for your time and efforts. We look forward to adventuring with you very soon.
We also need to thank the fine folks at Mill Mountain Discovery Center. They stayed open late to host our birthday bash. We are so proud to introduce families to this wonderful resource for families. It is so much more than a bathroom spot before you hit the Mill Mountain Zoo. They have that, of course, but they also host some really fantastic programs.
Here is a list of upcoming programs to be held at the Mill Mountain Discovery Center next month:
Mill Mountain Discovery Center Programs:
Winter Tree ID - February 4, 10-11:30am for ages 10+, $5
Family Winter Hike - February 11, 10am-12pm, for ages 6+, $5
Maple Tapping, February 18, 10am-12pm, for ages 4+, $5
Cave Critters, February 25, 10-11:30am, for ages 6-12, $5
Link: www.roanokeva.gov/playonline
Thanks again,
Chip and Ashley W. Donahue
The Donahues were so honored by the kind folks who visited with us during our KIVA Birthday Bash #4! Mill Mountain Discovery Center is such a wonderful place. We are always so proud to be able to share it with new families in the area.
We will have a running total update on food collected, but we are actually quite short of our goal of 400 lbs. of food to be collected for Feeding America Southwest Virginia.
If you are able to donate and were not able to do that on Saturday, please let us know - KIVAinfo@gmail.com. We would be happy to arrange a pick up. You can also drop your food donation off at Walkabout Outfitter at Valley View Mall. This needs to be dropped off by Wednesday January 25. The Donahues will be picking up their kind collection Wednesday afternoon.
Feeding America Southwest Virginia is specifically in need of the following:
■canned meats
■canned veggies
■canned fruits
■rice,
■beans
■peanut butter
■100% juice
After the final food weight has been tracked, we will send out one further request through our e-mail group if needed.
Thanks again for your support and very creative ideas for family adventures in the Roanoke Valley. Thanks especially to Mr. Jon Beard - who has so graciously offered his volunteer services to host our website, www.kidsadventuring.org and to come along to our KIVA events to photograph them for the KIVA event gallery. Check out the most recent photos at http://www.kidsadventuring.org/gallery/.
Please come along and join our happy throng!
We’d love for you to join us as we celebrate four years of outdoor fun with families all around the Roanoke Valley.
Here is a map to the Discovery Center in Roanoke, VA - atop the lovely Mill Mountain.
Rember, instead of gifts, please bring a canned food item for Feeding America Southwest Virginia. We have set a goal of collecting 400 lbs. Won’t you help us make a difference in our community?
Would you like to receive our e-mails? We usually send 3-4 each month, detailing upcoming family fun events in the Roanoke Valley. We’re happy to help you stay aware!
kivainfo @ gmail.com to sign up!
When we started KIVA in January of 2008, Ashley and I saw a chance to make a difference in our community by encouraging families to get out and explore together. Later that year, we were chosen by Family Fun Magazine as a family to receive $1,000 to give to the charity of our choice. There was no question that Feeding America, then Second Harvest Food Bank, was the only choice for our family.
Ashley owned a bakery in Downtown Roanoke for many years and we got a quick lesson in daily hunger in our community. Being a school teacher for the last 13 years has shown me that students don’t always get their day started off right with a warm, healthy meal.
We could use this as a chance to help the food bank. We took a tour of the facilities and learned just how much work goes on there. Since then we have continued to host a food drive for Feeding America Southwest Virginia during our annual birthday bash. We are always honored when people show up for our events, but to see them smiling as they walk up to the table to drop off a canned food as a donation, Ashley and I are always overwhelmed. Each family doing a small part (or often families who bring more tan their share…) turns out to be a lot of food.
Also, we are hoping to do our part through KIVA to bring attention to this very large issue for our community: Hunger. Families often go hungry. As we gather around the table each night, we try to remember those who do not have enough.
Help us make that difference. Join us THIS Saturday from 3 - 5 PM at the Mill Mountain Discovery Center atop the lovely Mill Mountain. We will gather for a walk and then return to celebrate another fine year of KIVA adventures, as well as collect food for Feeding America Southwest Virginia.
Our goal of 400 lbs. of food will add to our collective donation of food at over 1,000 pounds!
Here are some specific items that Feeding America is requesting at this particular time of the year.
canned meats, canned vegetables, canned fruits, rice, beans, peanut butter, 100% juice
Thank you for being a part of this adventure with us.
The Wild Donahues
It was an honor to be among the numbers in the walk for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. yesterday in Downtown Roanoke. Please take a few moments to read about our walk via The Roanoke Times article at
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/303590
That’s my head popping up in the back, along with our youngest little one. It was he who made my day so special yesterday, asking heart-felt questions about the purpose of the walk and questions about the life of Dr. King.
Want to learn a little bit more, then check out the video from WDBJ 7, our local station which covered the event here:
The above photo was taken from an Exploring Roanoke website. A great write up of this historical spot in Roanoke can be found at http://www.nokenews.com/2008/09/01/exploring-roanoke-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-memorial-bridge-and-statue/
We hope that you will take time with your family to make a difference by serving tomorrow.
Enjoy this video and be inspired.
After your day of service, please join us as we walk tomorrow afternoon for the
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Day Celebration
Beginning with a march at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge on First Street, the program will conclude at First Baptist Church (310 Jefferson St. N.W.) with guest speaker Dr. Nathaniel Bishop, president of Jefferson College of Health Sciences.
When: 3:00 p.m.
Where: Memorial Bridge, First Street, Roanoke
Cost: Free
Contact: 400-2459
For more information about this special bridge, honoring a world-changing man, please visit the Exploring Roanoke page for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge at http://www.nokenews.com/2008/09/01/exploring-roanoke-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-memorial-bridge-and-statue/
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