Summer Gathering Party -- Details

Summer Gathering at Harkness Park 275 Great Neck Rd. Waterford, Ct. 06385 The Summer Gathering at Harkness Park will be Saturday, July 16th at 11:00am. Raindate will be the following Saturday, July 30 th The gathering is open to our entire message board family; those looking into weight loss surgery, pre-ops, post-ops and all of your family members and significant others. Harkness is a beautiful ocean side state park with a lovely mansion, miles of walking paths and European gardens. Harkness is also a dog friendly park but dogs must be leashed at all times and you must clean up after your dog. We are planning a volleyball game but there is plenty of room for other activities so encourage the family to bring whatever they enjoy doing. It is a popular place for kite flying and rollerblading. There is easy access to the beach but swimming is not permitted, though you often see children wading in the channel searching for crabs. If you are a fisherman you may want to bring your poles. What to Bring We ask that people bring their own chairs, blankets and picnic lunch. There are picnic tables and several charcoal grills on site if needed. We will have a small 10'x10' canopy but there is plenty of shade and a cool ocean breeze. We will have "WLS Gathering" signs posted. We are not setting an ending time to our party because people may choose to spend the whole day. The park is open till sun set. Photos We are planning a "getting to know you activity". Please bring a pre-surgery photo if you are post-op. We will be collecting photos. The photos will later be passed out to random individuals or two-person teams to find the person that matches the photo. That person will then be tagged and will wear their "before" picture. Please feel free to share other photos or albums. I know many of you are scrapbooking your journey and we would all love to see your creative memories. Everybody Please email ethier of us to provide more details about other things but this is just basic for us to get together Directions Harkness is fairly well marked. We recommend using MapQuest so that you can get directions from your home. If you have any questions please feel free to e-mail me Carolyn Stangle, at [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] or Kathy Krewsky at [email protected]

Hi, Kathy! Excuse me for correcting you, but isn't the raindate on the "following Saturday" July 23rd, not the 30th? It was good seeing you last night at support group and meeting your friend, Shirley. She's certainly a big fan of yours! Hugs, Debby

Hey Kathy, I will definately be there with Tom and Erin too. I may have family and friends coming to. Let me know what you have assigned for me to do and what time you want me there. I will be bringing portable chairs and maybe a folding table too. Unfortunately my tent is tied to our deck so I can not bring that. I will be bringing some blankets too for the grass, coolers filled with waters, juice and soda too. If you want I can make a themed basket for the raffle too. We just made 30 of them for our senior center fundraiser this week on Friday evening and I have alot of good ideas. Let me know if you might want to do something like that. I can fill you all in on what we are doing on email. Its a real great idea. We can raise alot of money from people buying raffle tickets for obesity help. I also thought of some activities we can have at a table for the kids to do too. Maybe face painting, arts & crafts or games too. Let me know Erin is going to bring a frizbee, a ball, maybe some other outside things too for her and Jessica to play with. I was thinking maybe the kids can have a kite flying contest too. Just things I have been thinking of. Let me know what you think I can send you a list of ideas I have and what we can do. I am so excited about this and I think its going to be great. So let me know what my responsibilities are for that day, what you need me to bring and to do too. Love ya Kim