Thankfully our home and those of most of our family members were unharmed, but we did have two couples in our family dealing with major flooding. Our nephew and his wife made their way here after evacuating, and we enjoyed a week of houseguests, hearing their harrowing flood stories that will go down in family history! I was glued to Facebook all that week as so many friends were dealing with flooding, and many other local friends helping in the recovery efforts.
But, since our homeschool curriculum calendar was starting on Monday with online classes for the big girls, and since we were stuck inside with all the rain and little ones who kept us from being able to help much in flood recovery, we went ahead and started back to school on Monday, August 28th.
We started with a Back to Homeschool Breakfast early that morning. This was a tradition I started a few years ago, and now they all look forward to a special breakfast with decorations and treats on their first day. This year I also wrote out little notes to each child, and to myself. Here's mine!
This is our first year with a high schooler! Mary Clare is in 9th grade, and she's taking all of her classes online through Mother of Divine Grace School. Each class is just one hour, once a week, except Algebra which is twice a week. 9th grade with MODG is usually referred to as "boot camp," with all kinds of papers due each week. So far, we're in our 5th week and she's handling it all very well! We decided to clear our weekday schedule and take a break from both science museum classes and virtue clubs this year. It's allowing us more focused school time, as well as keeping me from so much daytime driving. We have enough evening drive time with ballet and baseball!
Ellie is in 7th grade. She's taking three online classes with MODG, two classes with an assigned grader, and so far that's going well. Steven Joseph is in 4th grade and Thomas is doing 2nd grade. Katie is starting to do some preschool work and is thrilled to have some special schoolbooks just for her. Peter is crawling, almost walking, and causing all kinds of ruckus as we attempt to complete our homeschool day!
Our Back to School Mass and Park Day were postponed a week due to the hurricane. We had a lovely morning with daily mass at St. Anthony where we all came forward for a special homeschool blessing. Then we had our Park Day at our neighborhood park, where we always celebrate the Blessed Mother's Birthday in September with a big cupcake rosary and praying a decade of the rosary together. It it a blessing to meet all the new families and see old ones.
2017-2018 is shaping up to be a wonderful school year!
