Spring Has Sprung

We are enjoying the spring-like days.  The little boys are outside constantly which has them sleeping a bit longer in the morning.  Finally I'm actually having a quiet time that's actually quiet!  I'm so thankful for quiet early mornings in the Word and prayer.  It really makes a difference in my day.  

Jordan 

 My husband is a dirt bike guy from way back.  He rode go-carts, 3 wheelers (when there was such a thing), mini-bikes, dirt bikes etc. when he was a kid.  So, it's a pretty typical day around here when the kids are riding some type of motorized vehicle.  With the warmer weather the boys have been begging to ride dirt bikes everyday.  Jordan has graduated up to a 70cc.  I actually caught him the other day jumping our driveway.  I felt really bad putting an end to the jumping - but with metal rods in that bony little body I had to play the big meanie and forbid it.  But in the words of my mom, "It's better you cry than we cry."  Sorry Jordy.

Slava on the 50.

Slava is learning how to ride too.  He's riding the 50cc that was actually Wayne Jr.'s about 19 years ago.  Wayne put training wheels on so Slava can get the feel of it.  I'm pretty sure jumping the driveway will be in his future too.  Riding is a great way for him to burn off energy, improve balance and coordination, and it's great sensory input also.  He's also riding his bicycle all day everyday too.  Oh how I live warm weather.  

 Chef Anna

 Anna can make a pretty tasty BLT.  Since I'm busy doing school with the little boys, the bigger kids take care of their own lunch.  They usually have something cooking up on the stove.  I'm thinking it's a great way to learn some life skills.  Now if I could just get them to make my lunch!

A Game of 4 Square

 With the warmer days the kids are outside all the time.  Here they're playing a game of 4 Square with a couple neighbor friends.

Jordan in X-Ray

 Wednesday Jordan had an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon.  Here he is in x-ray making shadow puppets while we wait for the technician to check the x-ray.  This kid is way too comfortable in the hospital setting.  He even figured out how to use the buttons to raise and lower the machine.  I warned Jordan to not break it.  I really didn't want to by a new machine!  Typically this routine visit would include scheduling Jordan for his next rod-lengthening surgery in July.  He's been on a routine of surgery in January and July.  It's been so routine that I was shocked when his doctor said that he didn't think surgery in July would be necessary.  Jordy's curvature measured 22-24 degrees - the smallest ever.  The frequency for surgery will decrease as he grows.  When his torso stops growing (typically around pre-puberty) then the growing rods will be removed and permanent rods will be put in.  Then we're done.  Jordan will be 10 in August.  I'm really praying he will grow much more before his torso stops, but we're getting to the end of this long term project.  I give all the glory to the Lord.  It really was an unexpected miracle.

Jordan & Slava at Karate

 I am still so pleased with Karate For Christ.  It has been so good for the little boys.  They are improving on strength, coordination, and paying attention.  They still have a long way to go, but they are making progress.

Slava showing initiative.

 Our character training is going well.  A couple weeks ago we learned "Initiative:  Seeing a job that needs to be done and doing it without being asked."  Jordan's job is to put away the clean silverware from the dishwasher.  I set it out and called for him to do it.  Slava said, "I'll do it."  And he did.  That's initiative!  We've also learned "Diligence:  Doing my very best at every job because Jesus is watching."  And this week is "Kindness:  Treating others as we would want to be treated."  We keep reviewing each concept (we've also learned obedience, honesty, patience, respect, and responsibility).  Throughout each day we talk about these things and I'm always praising them when I see them doing it.  It even seems to have a positive influence on the bigger kids.  Win-win!

Curtis the Fisherman!

 It's that time of year again - Striper Season on the Ole Mighty Hudson River.  At least that's what Sierra calls it.  My husband loves fishing for striped bass.  They come up the Hudson River from the Atlantic to spawn this time every year.  They are in our area in May.  We'd heard they were a little early this year, so Wayne and Curtis have been men on a mission trying to get ready.  Last night Curtis went with a friend (Wayne and I were out to dinner celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary, thank you).  He got the first bass of the year for team Flach.  Yay Curt!

Quadruple Trouble

Sierra is on her way to another Karate tournament this weekend in Canada.  She's in the backseat on the right.  With her in this pic is her best friend Luci, and Luci's sister Ruth.  Driving is Sensei Mick who has his own dojo in Canada.  Last Saturday Sierra competed in New Paltz, NY.  She had to fight a brown belt (she's only an orange with green stripe).  She held her own but didn't bring home a trophy for the first time.  Hope the girls make an excellent show of it in Canada!

On Wednesday I leave for the Orphan Summit in Nashville!  I can't wait!  I'm so excited.  I can't wait to experience all that the Lord has for us and our ministry at the Summit.  My next post will include the details.  Our Justice For Orphans website will be up and running by May 1st.  I'll post the address next week!  Mary and I have our JFO business cards and we're ready to go!  Keep us in your prayers!

A Good Week

And here it is!  Our official, very own, original, logo for our orphan ministry:

I love it!  It wasn't as easy as Mary and I thought it would be.  We hired a professional to design our logo and website.  The website is almost finished and we hope to have it up and running by May 1st.  Another thing that was more difficult than we thought.  Mainly because Mary and I really aren't all that computer savvy.  But thankfully, Peter, Mary's adult son is.  He works in computers as a profession, and he was adopted by the Slagers from the foster care system when he was a kid.  We brought Peter on board at our first meeting with the web design girl.  It was clear that they spoke the same "language"!  A computer language that neither Mary nor I speak or understand!  I can't wait to reveal the website in the next couple of weeks.  It will be just in time too.  Mary and I will be leaving on May 1st for Nashville for CAFO's annual Orphan Summit, then we will be attending a conference right in Albany on May 10th presented by NYSCCC (NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children).  It's a foster care & adoption conference right in our own back yard.  We'd never heard of NYSCCC until Suzanne d'Aversa (Slava's social worker) told me about this event and that Dr. Karyn Purvis (The Connected Child author and instructor we traveled to Nashville to hear back in September) will be the key note speaker.  We want JFO to have a presence at this conference in the future.  On May 9th we will be sharing with a group of pastors at an FCA meeting our church will be hosting.  Then we have John Moritz of Hearts of the Father Outreach coming on May 19th to speak at 7pm at Gospel Community Church in Coxsackie.  John and his wife Libby founded their ministry after experiencing personal tragedy.  In 1992 they lost their 3 biological children in a horrific car accident.  As the Lord was walking with them through this devastating loss, He gave them a vision for their future:  As parents without children, they would ease the pain of children without parents.  They went on to establish Hearts of the Father Outreach which ministers in India, Ghana, and Uganda.  The Lord has been opening the doors for us, and we are excited to step through them with Him!  

On the home front it's been a pretty good week.  It was my "no appointment week" which I love.  And the weather was warmer so we were all outside for some much needed fresh air and exercise.  Saturday Sierra had a Karate tournament which Wayne took her to along with the little boys.  I was blessed to go to a women's conference at a local church.  It was an excellent meeting with a gifted speaker and a great Word.  I especially enjoyed reconnecting with my friend Jay (hi Jay!).  We used to attend the same church many years ago, and now only see each other on occasion in the grocery store!  I was blessed to be able to catch up with her.  

 Slava Banana

Me & Slava riding bikes!

 Yes, that's me on a bike!  Now that Slava rides a 2-wheeler without training wheels, he is on that bike constantly.  He even got on Jordan's bigger bike and now refuses to ride his smaller one.  It's been an excellent way for him to burn off energy and work on balance and coordination.  Win, win, win!  I hopped on my (very old) bike and the kids got the biggest kick out of mom on a bike.  Now Slava asks me to ride with him all the time.  Finally I'm getting in some exercise!

Anna beating me at Yahtzee!

Anna is the luckiest Yahtzee player I know.  We love to play games, especially this one.  When I got home from the conference on Saturday, Anna was the only one home.  We enjoyed the quiet and spent some time together playing games.  I suppose I should have cleaned something, but opted to play games instead.  Recently I had this amazing revelation........I need an "Alice"!  You remember the tv show the Brady Bunch?  They had an Alice.  She was always there.  Cleaning, cooking, running errands for Mrs. B.  Well, if I can't have another me then I'll settle for an Alice.  Or even a Rosy from the Jetsons!  I shared my dream with my husband.  He said, "What are you saying?"  Oh never mind, I'm just dreaming.  A girl has got to have a dream!  Back to reality.  Character training is going well.  This week I taught Jordan and Slava "Initiative":  See something that needs to be done and doing it without being asked.  They really caught on to it and even Slava was informing me when he showed initiative.  Ahhhh progress!

Character Training

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I really wanted to share about this character training curriculum we're using with the little boys.  Character is something we've always focused on with all of our kids and homeschooling is the perfect environment to teach it.  How else can one walk in obedience to Deuteronomy 6:5-9 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these command I am giving you today.  Repeat them again and again to your children.  Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again.  Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  

Ok, so it's easier said then done, I admit.  Sometimes I get sidetracked.  Sometimes I'm in such a hurry to just get school done.  I get caught up in "we have to finish this text book, this worksheet, this whatever."  I don't really worry about how my kids will do over-all since we have graduated 3 kids, two of which have college degrees.  We have one who will be graduating from high school early with an Associates' Degree in Psychology from Liberty University.  But I do start buying into the mind set that we have get every page of every book done.  This was our 12th year of homeschooling, so you'd think I'd know what I'm doing by now!  But our homeschool, our family, and our kids are much different then they were back in the beginning.  Presently we are home educating 5 kids (Slava, Jordan, Anna, Andrii, and Sierra).  I did have to start making some changes after we brought the kids home from Ukraine knowing all kids are different and learn differently, and knowing these kids would have to learn English first.  It all just worked out though.  Homeschooling was and is the best way to educate our kids.  But with a larger family came a busier life, especially after we added Slava 2 years ago.  He has many needs which include weekly visits to the local public school for physical therapy & occupational therapy. This has the tendency for me to feel stress that I have to do it all in case the school discovers some huge gap in his schooling.  Does it sound like fear was creeping in?  Yup.  But I've experienced great freedom as of late which really started a year ago, but I need to be reminded of it often.  

When I'm feeling behind with our schooling, which happens almost daily, I become grumpy and take the fun out of it.  Last year at our annual homeschool convention I sat in on Marilyn Boyer's message about homeschool burn-out.  I've never forgotten what she said, "If your homeschooling isn't fun, change what you're doing."   That stuck with me, and I've tried to keep it in mind this year.  But then I put that pressure on myself again.  The Boyer's have 14 biological kids (and several grandkids now) and are homeschooling pioneers since they've been doing it since 1980.  They developed Character Concepts curriculum from the tried and true methods they used with their own kids and now grandkids.  I've been using "Character Concepts For Preschoolers" with our little boys.  Though they are not really preschoolers, it was a great place to start.  We've been focusing on concepts such as obedience, patience, honesty, respect, etc.  We practice the meaning of each concept and the Bible verse that goes with it every night before bed.  There are also stories and other activities to go along with it that we used throughout the week.  Sometimes I'm more on top of it than others, but lately I've kicked it up a notch or two.  Back in February when Slava saw the developmental pediatrician, Dr. Malone said that with kids like Slava (FASD, ADHD, and Sensory Processing) there is hope and he can make progress, but we need to focus on life skills and character training.  It doesn't matter how intelligent a person is if they can't function well in society.  The doctor even said that there are highly intelligent people in the world who have no skills and don't function well in society.  Though Slava is doing very well in Kindergarten and is even reading now, I realize that life skills and character training are even more important than the academics.  Not that we're throwing out the text books, but I no longer feel bound to them as much as before.  In addition to all of that I've learned about the new State mandated "Common Core Curriculum" that the public schools must adhere to.  I've heard from both teachers and parents that they do not like this mandate.  Basically the teachers have to teach the kids so they can pass a test so the school will achieve a high enough rating to get their State aid.  I'm sure it's more complicated then that, but that is what it boils down to.  As homeschoolers we do have to adhere to the State education laws for homeschoolers, but this new mandate does not apply to us.  I do not have to teach my kids so they can pass some test.  I have the freedom to educate them for life!  

So now our daily focus is on character training, behavior management, and life skills.  We still do some academics, but with less pressure and more fun.  I can honestly say that this week I loosened up on phonics and language with Jordan so that we could start a study on the 50 States.  This year I'd planned to study each of the 50 States with the little boys, but never got to it because I always felt like we had to get to the "reading, writing, and arithmetic" which didn't leave time for the fun stuff.  Since we're taking a family vacation to Virginia this summer, I realized it might be a life skill to learn what and where Virginia is.  

In future posts I hope to share more of the fun things we will be doing for school.  Maybe I posted this to motivate myself, but I hope it motivates others too.  Since this is my 2nd post in the same day, I'd better get going and accomplish something.  Maybe I'll go teach the little boys how the washer/dryer works!  Sounds like a life skill to me!

The Derpstein Chronicles

We have Sierra to thank for the title of this post.  I walked away from the computer and she, being a derp herself, typed in the title.  "Derp" is sort of a word she uses often.  She calls the little kids "derpies" and sometimes "big derps" or "McDerpsteins".  She's sooo creative.  And a bit crazy!  At least she makes me laugh!  Sometimes I'm a bit envious of her, like the other day when it was rainy and she spent most of it curled up in a blanket reading Gone With The Wind.  Oh to be a teenager!

Happy Birthday, Andrii!

 Last Sunday we had a family birthday party for Curtis (now 21) and Andrii (now 16)!  I took Andrii to get his permit on Wednesday and he passed!  We now have 2 drives with permits in our house - and on the road!  The official ages of all the kids at home are:  7, 9, 13, 16, 16, and 21.  And they are all great kids!
Andrii's eyes have been healed!  For a long time now Andrii has been wanting to wear contacts instead of glasses, and really he'd like to not have to wear any corrective lenses at all.  He could frequently be seen at the altar at church receiving prayer for his eyes.  Last fall while the youth were on retreat they had a powerful prayer time.  Kerri prayed specifically for Andrii's eyes to be healed.  By the time he got home from the retreat he could no longer wear his glasses because his vision would blur with them on.  Me (of little faith) kept watching him while he did his school work without his glasses, to see if he could really see without them.  Andrii had crossed eyes when we adopted him at age 9 and the pediatric optometrist said he wasn't a candidate for surgery and that he should never wear contacts.  The sight in his one eye was so poor that if anything ever happened to the better eye, he'd never be able to get a drivers' license.  I hadn't taken him back to the doctor (dreading she would yell at me for him not wearing his glasses - she's like that).  But since he would be getting his learners' permit, I figure I'd better get his eyes tested first.  The miracle is confirmed!  Andrii's eyes have "significantly" improved - as in more than 50% improved!!!!  He still has corrective lenses, but his prescription has vastly improved - and the boy has contact lenses now too!  We give God all the glory!

Foster Parent Training Complete!

 Yes, I said "foster parent training"!  Justice For Orphans hosted the training provided by Northeast Parent & Child Society.  Wayne & I took the classes for a few reasons:  (1)  His brother Aaron and his wife Becky also took the classes and we want to be able to babysit and/or do respite for them.  (2) Since JFO advocates for Christian families to do foster care, we wanted to know how the process works.  (3) In the near future, we would like to foster.  Right now we do not have an open bed and Slava needs to make some more progress too.  But we are always open to what ever the Lord calls us to do for the fatherless.  The MAPP classes were very informative and we learned a lot.  It was worth the 10 week commitment.

Anna & Slava

 The warmer weather actually got me out of the house for a walk.  Anna and the little boys joined me and we went all the way up the road.  Slava complained of being tired (yes, the kid who goes non-stop all day everyday...go figure).  He got a piggy-back-ride on the way back.

 We even discovered this wooly-bear crossing the road on the way.  After some careful inspection, we assisted him to the other side safely.

Officer Flach

 Daddy got this set of 4 walkie-talkie radios that look like what real policemen wear on their belt.  The little boys have been having a blast with them.  Jordan really wants to be a policeman, so he's in his glory playing with them.

Plain-Clothes Officer Flach

I really wanted to take a minute to share about a curriculum I'm using with the little boys.  It's called "Character Concepts" and I love it.  I think it would be an entire blog post on it's own, so I'll do it separately in a day or two.  Until then, my fellow derps, have a blessed day!

Easter Week Happenings

I am so thankful it's April!  We've even enjoyed a couple warmer weather days this week.  And I'm pretty sure I spotted the sun a few times too!  We don't typically take the week off of school though many homeschooling families do.  I try to use this time to do a little school, annual testing, and just try to keep it low key but productive.  Tuesday I enjoyed the annual (26th annual to be exact) homeschooling moms' luncheon.  For the first time I actually brought some of our used curriculum to sell figuring I'd donate whatever money it generated to our orphan ministry.  I was thrilled to bring home an empty bin and $84 for Justice For Orphans.  And the Lord is always at work behind the scenes.  I was introduced to a mom who is in the midst of adoption paperwork!  Her family is adopting from Ukraine!  As it turns out, she was sitting at the table just behind me.   We had a wonderful time talking about Ukrainian adoption.  And now that we've exchanged emails and phone #s - the conversation and friendship continues!  

Anna Promoted!

 Last week Anna took the promotion test in Karate and Thursday night she learned that she passed!  She now has a yellow belt with an orange stripe - that's half way to an orange belt!  Great job, Anna!

Lunch by the river.

 After Anna's promotion test we got Subway for lunch and Sierra suggested we eat it down by the river since the weather was nice.  Sierra, Andrii, Jordan, and Slava are pictured here.  Anna and I opted to eat ours in the car where it was warmer.

Christ Has Risen!

Here is Slava on Easter morning eating his Ukrainian Easter bread.  This is the traditional bread that the babushkas bake in coffee cans and bring to the priest at the Orthodox church for him to bless.  Then they bring it home to eat it on Sunday morning.  

Death In His Grave

On Easter morning Curtis, John H., and Sierra performed this song.  They did a great job for only 2 practices.  This week my boy Curtis turned 21 years old!  Where did the time go???  It seems like another lifetime that my bio kids were little.  I guess it was another lifetime ago, or at least a different season.  It's bittersweet.  We are very proud and excited that Curtis just got accepted to RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)!  This is quite the accomplishment for any student, not to mention a homeschool graduate!  He is on his way to becoming a civil engineer.  Way to go, Curt!

Andrii will turn 16 this week also.  He's still counting down the minutes to his permit.  Then we will have 2 permitted drivers in the house...or should I say on the road.  Yikes!  So tomorrow we will have a  family party after church to celebrate both birthdays.  And now I'm off to take the little boys to a birthday party for a friend.  May you all have a blessed week.