Gearing Up

Sarabelle is getting ready to fly back to Australia next week with her father. After much debate we've agreed to let her finish Grade 11 down there. Jorge is going to get her settled in with the first of the two families she will be boarding with, looking after some other business down there, and then returning to Florida in a few weeks. We will all travel down together at Christmastime, the end of their school year, for a vacation and to bring Sarabelle back home. She was very keen on going initially and still is eager to see her friends again, but now realizes how far away it is and how much she will miss us... As she will finish up the year with a fourth quarter report card, on paper at least, she will have completed four full years of high school. In reality she has many more credits than necessary for graduation in Florida, but we will take one more full year for her to beef up her portfolio and insure she has enough volunteer hours logged to qualify for the Florida Bright Futures scholarship.

Grice is wrapping up her summer reading assignments and will be attending a student orientation August 6 and beginning school on the 10th. With an early start to the school day plus an hour bus ride, she will be getting up at the crack of dawn. Big adjustments there. We've already begun logging her volunteer hours, participating in turtle patrol with her best friend's mother, marking new sea turtle nests and excavating hatched nests to count eggs.

Elle is staying with me. She is the first student enrolled in Schola Classical Academy, now officially open for business, and will be resuming her studies right where we left off, in the midst of the Renaissance.