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Creating a Spooky Halloween Dinner

Local culinary experts offer ideas for turning an ordinary meal into a ghoulish adventure.

Halloween dinner in Christine Wisnewski’s Vienna home is often a balancing act between healthy and sugary. On the sweetest holiday of the year, for example, the mother and culinary instructor at Culinaria Cooking School, also in Vienna, prepares a wholesome dinner for her eager trick-or-treaters, managing candy-induced sugar highs and inevitable post-confection lows.

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20th Annual Goblin Gallop Is Oct. 27

Benefits families of children with cancer.

Jack-o-lanterns, pumpkin pie and colorful leaves signal that Halloween will soon be here. And that means it’s time for the Goblin Gallop. This year’s event is the 20th annual and it’s set for Sunday, Oct. 27, at the Fairfax Corner Shopping Center.

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Lake Anne Walks to School, PTA Plans to Make it Habit

The Lake Anne PTA sponsored a rally for Walk to School Day, last Wednesday, Oct. 9, at a local park before school. The international day dedicated to walking to school inspired the PTA to host a walk to school the first Friday of every month. Students received charms with a chain to put on their backpacks to commemorate the initiative. Parents, staff and students crossed streets with the help of guards and even Assistant Principal Melissa Goddin, to get everyone safely to school.

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Music, Dancing, Exercise Help Local Community

Zumbathon in Chantilly to raise money for WFCM.

Chantilly’s Kelly Joedicke-Lawrence is a certified Zumba instructor and, for the past few years, she’s held a Zumbathon fundraiser for breast-cancer research. But this year, her Zumba group voted to instead help a local charity.

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The Flu Vaccine; Its Time To give It a Shot

On the Job with Potomac's Rite Aid Pharmacy Staff

More than 200,000 people are hospitalized each year for complications stemming from influenza (“the flu”).

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Healthy Advice — Free

Alfred Street Baptist Church’s community fair offers screenings, immunizations and seminars.

More than 300 people turned out Sept. 28 for the 2013 Alfred Street Baptist Church Community Health Fair, where free health screenings, immunizations and seminars were offered as part of an effort to increase and promote health awareness.

VTV Family Outreach Given Grant Money

Funds will be used to make schools safer.

After the April, 16, 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, the families and survivors joined together and created a nonprofit foundation dedicated to making America’s schools safer and assisting victims of mass tragedies.

Boy Named ‘Honored Hero’

Billind Salhi, 8, will participate in Light The Night Walk.

Each year, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) holds Light The Night Walks to raise money for research and patient services. Locally, a walk will be held this Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Reston Town Center — and an 8-year-old Centreville boy will be one of the event’s Honored Heroes.

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Light the Night Walk on Oct. 5

Fundraiser for 4-year-old girl named 'Ava B,' a leukemia survivor.

“Ava B” of Fairfax Corner was a typical 2-year-old when she fell ill with leukemia on Dec. 9, 2011. After having a fever for four days, her mom “Jeannie B” took to a doctor and ran a few tests. A hematologist then confirmed that she had Pre-B Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. (The family asked that their last name not be used.)

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Teaching English By Eye

Volunteers sought to work with videos.

A Mount Vernon woman has found a way to teach the English language simultaneously to deaf and hearing students.

Senior Volunteers Stay Active

Fifty percent of Mount Vernon RECenter’s volunteers are senior citizens.

The Mount Vernon RECenter is known for its ice skating rink, massive indoor swimming pool and fitness center with spa and sauna. It has 46 volunteers who help greet guests, clean up the fitness room, landscape the grounds and assist people with adapted swimming and ice-skating. Exactly half of them are retired senior citizens over 50 who want to stay active while giving back to the community.

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Choosing a Home for the Golden Years

Many options for retirement communities in the region.

Jim Harkin, 81, and his wife, Phyllis, 80, have little free time these days. Jim spends his days protecting and photographing wildlife on the 60-acre campus at The Fairfax, a Sunrise Senior Living Community, in Fort Belvoir. He helped build, refurbish and maintain more than 20 birdhouses on the grounds, including homes for tree swallows and purple martins.

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Active Seniors Compete for Glory

fter 11 days of more than 50 events held Sept. 7-19, the Northern Virginia Senior Olympics finished with a golf event at Forest Greens Golf Course in Triangle, Va. Other events ranged from cycling, swimming and pickle ball to Mexican train dominos and Scrabble.

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Diverse Needs, Desires Drive Mobility Solutions

Seniors increasingly seek innovative plans that embrace both the present and the future.

Russ Glickman was a traditional full-service remodeler until the late 1990s when he abruptly added a host of accessibility certifications to a long list of building industry credentials. The service extension was less about opportunity than a personal call to apply what he’d learned from personal experience in helping his son, Michael, who was born with cerebral palsy.

Documentary Highlights Wounded Warriors Program

Documentary Highlights Wounded Warriors Program

Wounded Warrior J.D. Hartley credits a horse for changing his life. “I was scared at first, but I haven’t had a nightmare since I met Peanut, my horse.