School Daze

We started our home schooling lessons yesterday. The kids were actually thrilled. I had no idea they could be so enthusiastic about getting back to work. We are probably not as organized as most full time homeschool families, but I am just getting the hang of it. My real goal is just to help them keep their skills up and maybe catch up on some areas where they needed a little remediation - my son's handwriting needs a lot of work! I have found many resources on the internet that we can use. They are happily using all the school supplies sent by Aunt J. Thanks so much!

Yesterday they joked a lot about having "recess" and kept raising their hands to go to the bathroom. When it was time to make lunch, they wanted to know if they had to eat yucky cafeteria food. When they had to make their own lunch, they pretended to be cafeteria workers. Today they worked much more seriously and got a lot more accomplished. I'm very proud of them.

Their first assignment was to write an essay about their experiences this week. According to his essay, Justin is practically on a vacation. Maddie's essy shows a lot of concern for others and great relief that our home was not severely damaged, but I think the whole idea of the evacuation has been very hard and scary for her. Morgan's essay was short and sweet but says it all. I especially like her first sentence. Here it is (remember, she is just starting 1st grade):

Hurricane Katrina

Our family survived.
We went to Aunt Toe's.
We shoved the dogs in the car.

She finished it with a lovely drawing of our minivan with a dog in it.

The news from our St. Tammany school system says that threir goal is to have schools reopened in a month. But, I just learned that this may not necessarily apply to the schools in Slidell, just the rest of the Parish. It's definitely a priority to get them up and running again soon though.

Hubby has been working on making arrangements for some of his grad students to work on their studies in other labs while Tulane is getting re-established.

It sounds like things are really starting to get going on the clean up and restoration in Slidell. Our community has a long way to go and it will be a while before things are running smoothly again, but people are really working hard. They love their home and community. I personally love how my neighbors and church friends have all come together through email and phone calls even though we are currently spread all over the South right now. It's amazing.

When the basics are restored to our community, we will probably try go home and start picking up our mess and figuring out what to do next. We heard that the power has come back on in some of the homes in our area today. I have several elderly neighbors that I will be helping too. I hope they don't rush back to live before other things are back online -- especially the drinking water, grocery stores, and gasoline! I imagine these things will be restored again quickly as the power comes back. I have no idea when mail delivery will resume there. I almost hate to go back at all without mail or internet. I will feel very cut off from everyone if that happens. Wandering around in limbo not knowing when we can return home is frustrating enough.

I want to thank everyone who has been thinking of us and who has sent things to us. And especially my friend Barb who sent us some fancy Chicago Pizzas by Fed Ex today. What a nice treat. My neice and nephew made some cute little cards for us, one of which says, "You still have your home!" and has a picture of big thunderbolts over our house. I also want to thank you for all your emails and blog comments. We are very blessed indeed.