Best Laid Plans

Cruz Bay Playground, Post-Earl

My son and I leave tomorrow, and we won't return to our little island home until the end of October. Imagining our homeschooling materials sitting neglected on their shelves in Parker's closet, gathering dust in our absence, I was determined to do as much homeschooling with my son as possible prior to our departure. I knew I'd miss our Montessori mornings, and I was pretty sure Parker was going to, too, regardless of the occasional "But I don't like school!" utterances. Well, best laid plans, and all that. Mother Nature decided to give us a practical life lesson all her own in the form of Hurricane Earl. We spent most of Sunday getting ready for Earl, all of Monday hunkered down and the majority of yesterday cleaning up after Earl (category 4 hurricanes leave behind quite a LOT of debris). This morning I was busy doing loads (upon loads upon loads) of laundry (our bed sheets were disgusting--you get really sweaty sleeping with no electricity and your house all shuttered up), and this afternoon I'll be packing, so our school stuff has already acquired a thin coat of dust and we haven't even left yet.

Not being able to do school aside, we were incredibly fortunate this week. We were without power for about 36 hours (an amazingly small amount of time--go WAPA!) and we were greeted with a big ol' mess on our deck when we opened up our hurricane doors yesterday morning. (And I wasn't actually upset about the mess! I'd just spent 24 hours stuck inside, and we couldn't leave the house once Earl had passed because there was a curfew in effect--not to mention most roads were impassable--so I took one look at the muddy, leafy pond that our deck had become and attacked all that debris with the vigor of one who has been sitting around, twiddling her thumbs, for hours and hours.) If all you have to complain about after a category 4 hurricane is a brief power outage and a muddy mess, then count yourself lucky. I went out walking this morning and saw dozens of downed power lines, huge trees uprooted and beautiful sailboats sadly washed up on shore. I came home humbled by the devastation I'd witnessed. Count us lucky, indeed.

Tomorrow we leave for Ohio, the first leg of our trip. We're actually flying into Detroit (cheaper airfare that way), and my in-laws plan on taking Parker and me to the Detroit Zoo after they pick us up, before the two-hour drive to Milan, Ohio. I'm sure my son and I will be doing some sensorial and language activities while we're in transit, as well as some "unschooling" at the zoo, and I'm sure I'll be blogging about it all soon.

Sailboats Washed Up

(from St. John Source)

Practical Life Activity: Helping with the Clean Up

Fun with Mops during Earl