- Visit with Santa
- Roast marshmallows over a fire pit
- Dunbar Saxophone Quartet at Town Hall
- Holiday carols with the Woodbridge Community Choir
- Children’s activities
- S’more fixings and caramel apples at The Pretentious Gourmet
- Roasted chestnuts at Gift & Gather
- Hot chocolate at Tastefully Yours
- Art Open House at The Artists’ Undertaking Gallery
Ridge region. WinterFest begins on December 8, with Santa’s Lake Ridge Parade on Harbor Drive in Lake Ridge at 11:00 a.m., followed by a holiday arts market at Tackett’s Mill until 2 p.m., Occoquan’s holiday activities from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., and the Workhouse Arts Center’s Second Saturday Art Walk from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The day’s events will conclude with a spectacular firework display approximately 8:00 p.m., courtesy of Prince William Marina, with viewing areas in the Town of Occoquan, Occoquan Regional Park, and Hoffmaster’s Marina.
O.W.L. V.F.D members visited more than 55 homes this weekend in the River Ridge community to test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and change batteries. Residents were ready, with new batteries in hand and open doors to welcome the fire fighters.
Occoquan-Woodbridge-Lorton Volunteer Fire Department reminds residents that one easy step can help save their lives and the lives of those around them. Twice a year change the batteries in their smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, test the alarms and remind friends, family, neighbors and fellow community members to do the same.
Communities nationwide witness tragic home fire deaths each year, but, everyone can work together to help reduce the number of home fire fatalities. Approximately every three hours a home fire death occurs somewhere in the nation and 66 percent of those occur in homes without working smoke alarms. Non-working smoke alarms rob residents of the protective benefits home fire safety devices were designed to provide. The most commonly cited cause of non-working smoke alarms: worn or missing batteries.
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Hylton pounds out steady beat in win over Battlefield
A sigh of relief undoubtedly filled the air in Hylton's locker room after Friday's 16-13 win against Battlefield in a Virginia high school football matchup at C.D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge.
The Bulldogs’s train of momentum chugged along the final-quarter tracks with a 7-0 point differential.
The Bobcats moved ahead of the Bulldogs 13-9 to start the fourth quarter.
Battlefield got the better of the action throughout the first half, owning a 7-3 margin over Hylton at halftime.
The Bulldogs opened with a 3-0 advantage over the Bobcats through the first quarter.
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WOODBRIDGE — Ten brand new buses are parked in Woodbridge waiting for their new colors.
The new commuter coaches built by Motor Coach Industries today are a bright white, but soon they will don the new colors of a rebranded OmniRide.
Gone will be the teal color scheme of the old buses. Instead, these new coaches will display the transit agency’s new logo with royal blue and bright green colors.
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PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY - (Press Release) Free training on the management of universal wastes and hazardous waste disposal will be held on Monday, October29 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Fairfax County I-66 Transfer Station/Recycling Center. Northern Virginia facility managers, property managers and apartment managers that deal with disposal of fluorescent light bulbs, batteries, thermostats, or electronics should attend this training sponsored by AERC.
A complimentary lunch and snacks are included. Space is limited. Register online at www.knowtoxics.com.
Attendees will learn about:
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Kathy Baxter’s cancer diagnosis has been a journey.
Like many journeys, there have been twists, turns, peaks and valleys along the way.
Kathy and her husband of 43 years, Bruce, were longtime Northern Virginia residents who had moved to Puerto Rico.
It was there, she first detected the symptoms which lead to her breast cancer diagnosis.
“I noticed some retraction and I felt a lump right underneath my nipple” said Kathy. “I called my doctor and we scheduled an ultrasound. It came out fine. The doctor said it was because I have fibrocystic breasts.”
That was in December 2016. The decision was made to follow up with another scan in six months.
Kathy soon found things had drastically changed during that period. In July 2017, she received results from her Puerto Rican lab the test was “probably malignant” and she was referred to a surgeon.Â
Kathy says over the next few months a combination of events lead to obstacles in her care — everything from a language barrier in her doctor’s office to Hurricane Maria and then Hurricane Irma, which devastated the island causing major power outages and nearly brought air travel to a halt.
The decision was made; Kathy would come to the states. After a turn of lucky events that Kathy credits as a “miracle,” she finally arrived in Northern Virginia in October 2017.
“When I got here in October, I was shell-shocked,” explains Kathy. “My sister lives in Stafford and she gave me the name of her oncologist.”
Kathy’s multi-disciplinary team of Sentara doctors helped her through the difficult transition. Dr. Hamed Khosravi, Medical Oncologist, Dr. Robert Cohen, Breast Surgical Oncologist and Dr. Susan Boylan, Radiation Oncologist worked together to develop a plan of attack after her diagnosis of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma which had gone to the lymph nodes. In addition to that diagnosis, her doctors discovered Kathy also had Triple Positive breast cancer.
Dr. Susan Boylan, a Radiation Oncologist for Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center and Medical Director of Potomac Radiation, explains, “This type of breast cancer tends to grow and spread faster than others. It is particularly aggressive and requires additional treatment.”
With that knowledge in hand, the team created a treatment plan. It was decided Kathy would do six cycles of chemotherapy, take several weeks off, get a lumpectomy and then proceed to radiation.
“Each tumor is unique. Each woman’s tumor has its own biology,” explains Dr. Boylan. “We try to personalize an individual’s treatment based on the biology of their tumor. Everybody’s treatment is going to be unique to them. It’s very personalized medicine. It’s not cookie cutter.”
Baxter, a former nurse, admits it was a lot to take in.
“I like to be able to process things. On top of that, I don’t like pain and I don’t like needles,” she said.
While her family has been by her side through it all, Kathy credits Oncology Nurse Navigator Deana Henry with helping her work through the process.
“Deana is such a delightful person. She would make her rounds through the infusion center and really seemed to care about me and my health,” she said. “She’s very friendly, she’s a very positive person and she was very sympathetic. She’s been a tremendous support.”
After chemotherapy, Kathy had her lumpectomy. She spent the summer recovering and is now working through radiation. As she nears the end of her treatment, she’s looking to the future and returning to Puerto Rico.
She offers this advice:
“Take each moment as it comes. Live for the moment!” she says smiling. For any woman who finds a lump, her advice is more serious: “If anyone shared they had any sort of lump, I would insist on a biopsy, because I can’t help but think had they biopsied my lump in Puerto Rico in December, they would have found my cancer. That would have changed everything, that would have put me a year ahead of it. But I’ve just been so pleased with my care here at Sentara. They were responsive when I called and just so professional, it made a hard time a little easier.”
To learn more about the Sentara Cancer Network and find the care team for you or your loved one, call 1-800-SENTARA or visit Sentara.com.
Manassas - (Press Release) Olivia Hajioff and Marc Ramirez, the Marcolivia Duo, join Music Director James Villani as the featured viola and violin soloists for Symphonic Journey, the Manassas Symphony's season-opening concert at 7:30 pm on October 27, 2018 at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. They are playing Max Bruch's Double Concerto in E minor, Op. 88.
Marcolivia -- featured many times on NPR's "Performance Today" and “Front Row Washington” -- is an award-winning violin and violin/viola duo who performs music from all styles and periods from Baroque artists to works by 20th-century composers, including folk music, virtuoso works, and their own arrangements.
The MSO concert program also includes Gioachino Rossini’s famous William Tell Overture, as well as the not often performed, but very beautiful Orchestral Suite No. 1 in D minor by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.Â
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MANASSAS, Va. – (Press Release) Write by the Rails (WbtR), the Prince William Chapter of the Virginia Writers Club, is pleased to announce a half-day writing workshop to be held Saturday, October 27, 2018 at Trinity Episcopal in Historic Manassas from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The “Back on the Tracks: Fall Writers' Workshop and Social Campaign Kickoff” will feature a panel on marketing books and writing, along with breakout sessions on writing novels, memoir and poetry. The event will include networking, book sales, a book exchange and live-writing exercises.
The date also marks the live launch of the #WbtR #BackOnTrackNow social media campaign. Attendees will have the chance to write and submit Twitter-friendly lines to be published through social media and in an anthology.
