Our hosting experience

Many people are asking us about our hosting experience. And I would like to share more, and if anyone has any questions will be happy to answer them.

Who been following our blog for at least a little while, knows that we were hosting Alisa, 15 year old Ukrainian beautiful girl over this summer.

We had many worries, we were praying hard, we were not sure and didn't know if all will go well or not.

As many of you know, we did our first adoption out of birth order, actually all our adopting are out of birth order. :) And still we were a little worried about how everything will turned out, and how our boys will react to having someone older than them at the house.
Especially our DJ(our oldest), was against it. He always reminded us that he is the oldest and want to stay this way. When we told him that God keep telling us and we have in our hearts to host a 15 year old girl, he was not happy. We were thinking and deciding between me and Serg, and when we already had Alisa in mind , we talked to all the kids, especially we had many talks with DJ.

We all sat down by our computer and had photo-listing open with all the kids on it. Then we asked DJ and our kids, "Can you just look and tell us which older girl you think will be a good fit/you like the most on this photo-listing?" All our kids looked through about 30-40 orphan faces, who were listed on that photo-list, and DJ pointed to Alisa. You should of see my and Serg faces :) It was one more confirmation and God's way of showing us that everything will be ok, and Alisa is the one.

We had many many more worries while preparing. I was  worry about everything, what she will be like? What kind of foods will she like? Will she enjoy her time with us? How will she react to small house packed with so many kids? Like I said, we had many many worries.

All our worries went away when she got here. We had awesome summer, and hoping to see her again. We were planning to adopt her, but she has a Ukrainian foster family, and she already living with them. Alisa has many relatives, and they all against her going to America. Alisa liked her time her, she liked our family and we all bonded well. We miss her so much, but believe that God had a plan. I am not sure who were blessed more our family or Alisa. She especially bonded well with our oldest DJ and our baby ElliAna.

We always will love her, and no matter where our life will take us, we always be her family.

Sweet girls

We are officially homeschooling this year!

Who been following us, and especially our friend on Facebook, they know that we are homeschooling all 7 children this year.

It was not very smooth and awesome in the beginning. We still have our "bad" days, but there is more good days now, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and I can clearly see it :) so it's all so worse it.

I don't have a degree in teaching, and English is not my first language, so we all struggling here.
Kids struggling-because they are not use to do everything and all their assignments, and they had many excuses at school to not do their assignments, and it's just not working with me :) I am not asking to do everything perfect, but I am asking to at least try and I know what my child is capable of learning and doing. So kids are working very hard and trying to complete most of their work during our lessons.

I am struggling also, and everything is completely new for me. I am good at math, so it's easy. Only one of my children is behind with math and rest of them learning quickly.

I am not so good with science, and history. But I am learning to love these subjects. I can honestly say, that after 5 weeks of homeschooling I am just starting to enjoy science and history. First 3 weeks of our homeschool, I barely touched science and history textbooks. It's not like I don't like these subjects, or textbooks, I just didn't know where to start. I wasn't comfortable teaching these subjects, because I never learned those materials myself. As of today we are behind with science  but I am hoping to catch up soon.

English is something that we are learning together also. When I move to US, I was almost 16, and did attend only my 11th and 12th grade in America. I never had a chance to learn all these nouns, pronouns, and proper grammar :) Now I have a chance to catch up :)

Overall I love homeschooling our children. I love to see my kids all day long, and spend my time with them. It's awesome opportunity, and I am thankful that we have this time together.

There is still so much to learn, and so much to work on, but with God's help we can do it! I am sure that we will not get things done on some days, and I am sure that we never be perfect homeschooling family, but it's not what is important now. Peace in our house, peace in our hearts, are more important! I see how our kids transform, I see how they grow spiritually, and I have more time to teach them about God! All our adopted kids enjoying being home, and staying closer to mom. In this short time since we started homeschooling our kids they are much calmer, and we see them grow emotionally and starting to make better choices in their actions.

I am thankful for many many friends who did help and still helping us, guiding us through all the steps of homeschooling.