Today was one of the best breakfasts I think we have ever had this trip! We started breakfast at 7:45 am down in the cafeteria with the Sisters for about 30 minutes, having a great breakfast. After that great breakfast, we headed back upstairs to our rooms to make lunch for later and get stuff ready for later. Then we headed at 9:15 to the Daycare to work with younger kids and played games.  After playing games with the kids, we headed over to the other side of the Place to the Day Hab to hang out, do some fun singing, crafts, bingo, and bring some people to the Museum. After the 4 and a half hours of service we did that day, we headed home, and sadly, we had to cancel line dancing due to the bad weather in Iowa, but we did do something more fun: we did the 2026 ACE Olympics. First place was Ponyboy, Second place was Mudshovel, and third was the teachers.  The games were some mixes of thinking, which was trivia, some were physical, which was bowling, and lastly, there was the ability to work with your teammates, which was very important and something we have been trying to work on all week. After the very long day, we all settled down and relaxed.

Today was such a fun day for all of us! We started with breakfast, which was pancakes and sausage.  After a GREAT breakfast we headed out to go Bowling with our clients! We spent about 1 hour there and had so much fun hanging out with new clients and just getting to bowl! Then we headed home in the cars (The white car is PonyBoy and the Black Car is Mudshovel) to eat lunch and hang out with the sisters which was a huge highlight of the day.  Also a little fun thing that happened last night is that we played a prank on some of the teachers, which was so much fun! We headed out to go to the arcade for about 2 hours and all the kids had so much fun hanging out, playing fun games together and eating pizza and salad. After a very fun and long day, we headed home in the cool cars (Ponyboy was having some fire music on) and got home around 6:40pm. We met up as a group for some talking and going over some stuff for tomorrow. After we just went around playing games and we found some type of BUG on the ground, which wasn't to bad. Then we made some popcorn and just hung out doing random things till 10pm, then lights out hit. 

Today was a long day of many fun things! Today at 7am we woke up and ate breakfast together in our main hangout room, then we all got ready to head out for a day of fun at Hills and Dales!  We got to hills and dales at about 8:45am and got a quick tour of Hills and Dales before we went to the  activity room and set up everything for our clients to come in and have the time of their life! Our activities included, Reading room where we read to the clients, Painting/Art, and lastly BINGO! After so much fun with the clients, we headed back to Francis house to eat lunch in the Hangout spot. As we finished lunch, we all started to head out to go to the Mississippi River Museum for about 2 hours, Which was very fun! students got the chance to see many fish and pet sting rays and Starfish, which was a huge highlight of the day! We headed back to Hills and Dales right after we finished the Museum, going to work with our clients again. This time with the clients we set up another art room that also had some games! We also set up bowling and a Bouncy house! We spent about one hour with them before we had to head out and go back home. When we got home we started to make dinner which was Spaghetti!  After dinner we headed out to get some great ice cream! But something very sad happened today, The girls Showers Broke! Lucky we found another place to shower so all is well. As the day ended we got together and had our talk time and after that we headed to relax and lights out at 10pm. 

We started our morning a little later today because instead of heading to LifeWise, we went to Bridge Bread. Bridge Bread is bakery that hires people who are experiencing homelessness and gives them a job. They do so much more than just give them jobs, they also help them get apartments so they can become stable (sometimes they even pay up to half their rent).  They have incentives for their bakers such as if they show up to work every day on time, they would get an extra $50 on their paycheck.  This is a simple skill that is sometimes just assumed that people know.  This is an amazing thing that they do and one quote we really loved from our time at Bridge Bread was, "We don't help a lot of people a little, we help a few people a lot." Everyone at Bridge Bread was so nice from the owner to the bakers. They were amazing and what they do is so impactful. At Bridge Bread, they gave us a tour and showed us the entire process.  Afterwards, we fed everyone at Bridge Bread lunch, which was pulled pork.  After Bridge Bread we went to The City Museum, which was SOO much fun. There was so much to do! There were caves and you could go up into fake trees, crawl down into caves, go underneath the floor, and even go inside a fake whale too! We had so much fun and have learned so much in such a short time. Thank you to everyone we talked to and saw all through this week. We are sad that this is the last day we are here. Again, THANK YOU to everyone this was amazing and we are so glad we got to do this!

We started our morning like how we have all week before we headed to Lifewise for our service and learning experience for the day. At Lifewise, we started with our learning which was a Monopoly game where everyone was given different rules. This was to teach us about generational wealth/poverty and how if you grow up in poverty its really hard to get out of poverty. After our learning, we came home for lunch and a nap. When we went back to Lifewise, we organized , separated, and priced things for the bodega (it's like a cheaper thrift store with other products that are also new). We also priced things like clothes and toys for their holiday market and organized and sized things like socks and underwear for the bodega. We also reorganized their free bookstand. We were excited to share our donation of underwear with the bodega as well. After our service work at Lifewise, we got ready and went to Amp Up to go on there ropes course and play laser tag. Some of us even got to play in the arcade for a little while. When we got home, we did homework while the teachers made us grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner. We ended our night with a reflection and some chill time before bed.  

We started our morning early again today. Some of us set up for breakfast, and some of our group left for Walmart to pick up some stuff for donations. We left for LifeWise to be ready for the daycare students for 10am.  Our service activity for today was playing with children that attend the daycare connected to LifeWise. We all had lots of fun and so did the kids. We planned many activities like drawing, puzzles, a ball pit, obstacle course, shadow puppet show, and a parachute game. It was very fun to hangout with all the kids.

After the kids left, we had lunch which was the same as yesterday but with a twist! Mr. Berendes made some awesome quesadillas with leftover taco meat from last night. Then, we went back to LifeWise and had our learning session. We talked about food access in the St. Louis area and learned about food stamps (or SNAP). The conversations we had were heavy, but necessary to have us realize that food stamps really help the people who need it. This lead to us creating a meal plan for a week to try and stay within a $160 budget.  We then went to a grocery store and tried to find food to stay within our budget of $160.  Each group had different restrictions like gluten free/peanut free or your water isn't safe to drink (which led us to budget for buying extra water). This put it in perspective the struggle people in poverty struggle with when needing to feed their family. After our fun day at LifeWise we had a fun night going mini golfing, laughing and hanging out (Mr. B was very confident that he would win, but of course he lost). We came home and had pasta for dinner which was made by Lorelei, Sophia and Ahliyah. After dinner we had a reflection of our day and we had to answer some questions that the teachers gave us.  Every night the  teachers give us an hour to all hangout without them (they are obviously still in the house with us, they just give us our space) We tell stories, play games, and make shadow puppets. 

We started our morning at 7am . Some showered, while others ate. For a little bit we just hung out and got ready for the day. We left for LifeWise at 8:50am. It was just a short walk across the street! At LifeWise we went through what the plan would be for the day. We looked at some poverty statistics and played an online game called Spent to simulate living in poverty. One thing was having to make hard choices, for example, your dog gets sick but you have to make the choice of getting it treated which is a lot of money, getting it put down for not a lot of money, or letting it suffer. However, you also have to think about your monthly income and all of the other payments that you have to make in a month. You make tough decisions that could lead to you having no money and losing the game. For us it was just a game, for others it's real life everyday decisions that they have to make to keep themselves afloat. 

After that we went home for lunch. We had a mix of things, but most had sandwiches. After lunch we went back to LifeWise for our service. We spent the day setting up games and activities for tomorrows service, where we will spend the day with some younger kids, (3-5 years old). Then, we helped disinfect some classrooms. We cleaned tables, chairs, and the toys for the kids. After that, we went back to unwind before we headed to the arch. At the arch we walked through the museum and the shop. After a while we met up and made our way towards where you get up the arch. We got in these cool capsules that brought us up to the top. We made it to the top to an amazing view of Illinois and Missouri. After the arch we came home and some had showers while Carson, Liana, and Kalie made dinner, tacos. And that was our first real day of our ACE trip!

We have arrived!  We settled in quite nicely to  our home away from home for the next week- Rutgers House. We each got our room assignments and then met as a group to figure out who is on breakfast, lunch, and dinner duty for the week.  Some of us are a little unsure of our cooking abilities, so look forward to dinner updates.  We each have a job for a the week (blogger, dishwasher, errand runner, etc). We are all looking forward to starting our day at LifeWise tomorrow and then we will be adventuring to the Arch in the afternoon (a lot of us are looking forward to this).