my haitian Einstein

over the years I have shared a *bit* of some of the issues I have dealt with in my Hans. Love the boy dearly,of course,he is my child.but boy oh boy,God had more confidence in me than I in myself when He entrusted this soul to my care.He has brought me to my knees more than any of my other 11 children and he is only 6.

Never quite exactly sure of what his issues exactly are,I mean,besides abandonment issues for sure,and along with those emotional immaturity issues. Like, he started his terrible two's at 4. It is hard enough handling a 2 yr old who acts like a 2 yr old, but they are cute and small. It is harder when it is a BIG 4 yr old tantruming and emotional and making no sense of their emotions and draining every ounce of a mamas patience.

I also figured he had some sort of ADD symptoms going on.And the sin he has always struggled the most with is, *impulsiveness* . The inability to resist something he wanted. This has been a struggle for us over the yrs. Altho VASTLY improving with age and consistent discipline.

But he is and always has been sweet, sensitive and caring. He is touchy lovey and cuddly and tender.Along with his fine points he also has ALWAYS shown extreme, EXTREME~ artistry. I am POSITIVE that his father was a Haitian artist. And his handwriting, ,,my oh my,,you would be shocked. PERFECT PERFECT. Looks computer printed. Even at 5,,,it was perfect.

So I have him in first gr public school, mostly bcz I cant keep him busy and entertained at home to homeschool him as I do Seth (9) and Lia (10). He has ZERO imagination and is always bored. He needs to constantly be following the other children around as he cant imagine his own games.

My good friend is his teacher this year and next.She told me
"Jill, Hans is going to need some special classes."
I at first thought she meant like "special ed" (not surprising. totally prepared for that day to come)NO,she said that within the next year or so we will need to seek out some kind of accelerated gifted program for him because he is SO BEYOND ALL the 1st and 2nd graders in her class. She can NOT give him enough work and keep him busy. He understands everything immediately and is done with all work perfectly in 2 secs and then his boredom takes over and he cant sit still.

So,that is Hansies problem.
He is NOT delayed,rather,he is a genius.
How could I not see that?

God has such a HUGE plan for my little Haitian manchild,God gave him to me to help him get there.
My son WILL succeed and be a STRONG man in this world.I just know. the teachers words have affirmed that to my inner being.
tears,,,,,,, ,

my cozy orchard house

it is POURING rain outside my windows right now,,and so dark I have to have lights on in the house. The autumn leaves are still radiant and gorgeous out my windows tho. The rainwater on them seems to bring out the colors even more so. Just so so gorgeous from the windows of my confines, that I feel like exploding!
I have my apples bubblin up in pots on my stove to strain for a big batch of apple pancake syrup later today, and I can smell the aroma of cooking apples permeating the walls of this warm little farmhouse,
I also have boxes of raw apples all over the kitchen,,jars of home canned apple produce filling the counters waiting to move downstairs,,
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh,,,life is *so* good!! What an enjoyable day to be stuck inside warming the house with the old fashioned smell of apples......

flavored apple sauce

is everyone else in the country knee deep in apples and tomatoes right now? I try to do one batch a day of apples in my biggest stainless pot. I have larger pots that are aluminum but that wont work for apples as they burn on the bottom. So it turms out to be about 5 qts a day of cooked down apple. Yesterday I had the idea that I would add(frozen) strawberries to the with the apples and make different flavored sauces. Well if I had done it past yrs and forgotten I think I figured out why we generally dont add other fruit to the apple sauce. After putting it thru the mill I turned it back to the pot and cooked and cooked it but it wouldnt thicken totally. Seems the strawberries must do somthing to the pectin in the apples??? It, of course, has a great flavor tho, so I added a bit more sugar to the pot to sweeten it more and canned it thinking it will be wonderful pancake syrup ie still a bit watery for "sauce" to eat off a spoon but certainly much thicken than plain water so it should slide off the pancakes wonderfully. One jar didnt seal so I will probably make pancakes for lunch and try it out . If it is as luscious as I am anticipating I think I will try adding some blackberries or raspberries to my apples today for another flavored syrup.It is so hard to get *everything* put by at this time of year, so many ideas and so little time! It is so gorgeous and colorful autumn outside now too that a person hates to spend ALL day inside canning. Sometimes tricky to balance
.Oh,,,and I did a batch of 25 pints of hot salsa two days ago and ,WOW! I was SO Happy w/ the results. I can never seem to get my salsa hot enough with the peppers we grow up north here. But this year I grew "habenero" peppers and "WHEW DOGGY"
those lil babies are hot hot!!! The salsa I made was so good~ perfect thickness and super hot hot just how Michael always has wanted me to make it but I have never acheived it:)) Doesnt it make you soooooo satisfied when you make something to can and it EXCEEDS your expectations?? :)) Now next time I am going to add even a few less hot peppers and do a medium sauce for those of us who do not care to clean our sinus' out as the "hot mama" salsa does.A friend of my 18 yr old dd's is Latino and his parents make a home canned salsa that they sell commercially at all the stores in this area and plus I know they ship it somewhat around somewhere in the states. Now we dont purchase salsa, but a friends of Riahs has brought this salsa into our kitchen for Mike and I to try bcz he thinks it is the best salsa in the universe or whatever. So I think that the salsa I made two days ago is just as good :) (like I say~ satisfaction~ high fives~ not bragging, just so pleased:) They sell this authentic mexican salsa for $5 a pint at the local stores. Going by that the 25 pints I made are worth $125~ wow! and that is just one tiny batch of food on the canning shelves. Just think how much our canning shelves are worth!!!
ahhhhhh harvest time,life is good ........
UPDATE: 1:34 PM
made pancakes for lunch and tried the strawberry apple sauce for syrup. Guess what? It was not watery after cooling in the jar but rather a *nice* apple sauce texture and actually too thick for perfect syrup. So scratch all those thoughts above on flavored applesauce! It DOES work to put different fruit in and to still acheive a nice apple sauce texture.
Just now finished the next batch and put raspberries in this batch. Oh my, it is to die for! Absolute yum and perfect apple sauce texture.
So we will not be using these flavored sauces for pancake syrup but instead eat them ala carte as special tantalizingly tastey treats.
Tomorrow we will try some blackberry apple sauce,
now doesnt that sound exotic?
We are so blessed here on the farm.

Is Doug Phillips a racist? and warning on Henty books and "Elsie Dinsmore" series

directly quoted from:
http://racistchurches.wordpress.com/category/doug-phillips/

"Doug Phillips
March 16, 2007
Doug Phillips has made a name for himself among Christian homeschoolers by selling “old-fashioned” books and hosting “historical” conferences and events. In actuality, the words “old-fashioned” and “historical” mean “thoroughly white.” The Vision Forum catalog is full of books by racists. Their books and tape sets glorify men who believed and wrote that black people are inferior to white people. They sell no books by any of the people of color who contributed to American history. Doug uses code words like “cultural syncretism” to decry the “blackening” of American society.

G.A. Henty
June 13, 2007
For many years, Doug Phillips and Vision Forum have sold books by G.A. Henty and hosted an essay contest in his honor. You can see how often Henty is praised there.

One of the books included in the 40-volume set for sale at Vision Forum is By Sheer Pluck. Here is Henty’s opinion of black people, which any young child may find in its pages:

They are just like children. They are always either laughing or quarrelling. They are good-natured and passionate, indolent, but will work hard for a time; clever up to a certain point, densely stupid beyond. The intelligence of an average negro is about equal to that of a European child of ten years old. A few, a very few, go beyond this, but these are exceptions, just as Shakespeare was an exception to the ordinary intellect of an Englishman. They are fluent talkers, but their ideas are borrowed. They are absolutely without originality, absolutely without inventive power. Living among white men, their imitative facilities enable them to attain a considerable amount of civilisation. Left alone to their own devices they retrograde into a state little above their native savagery.

White superiority is the theme that runs through all of Henty’s books. He once wrote of “the utter incapacity of the Negro race to evolve, or even maintain, civilisation without the example and the curb of a white population.”

Note: Doug Phillips is selling the original, unexpurgated (racist) versions of these books, not the versions edited by Mantle Ministries and Preston Speed.

It’s astounding that racist books are being sold to impressionable youths under the guise of Christianity, but Henty is just the beginning. For example, Vision Forum also sells Elsie Dinsmore, which contains the “n-word” and borderline pederasty. Elsie even tells her slaves that “they wouldn’t be Negroes in heaven.”

the food crisis in haiti

I need to share with you all,I am just really feeling so much sorrow for the food crisis and thehungry people in Haiti.I mean,all we hear about is the expensive food and fuel in the US andhow that is affecting *us*,but gosh,we just have sooo much more than these poor souls. I mean when was the last time your belly was truly empty because you had no food in your house and you had no means to buy *anything* to fill your empty stomach?
Last night, dh and I went out to an "all you can eat" seafood buffet.This place was packed,,oh maybe ???? 400 people could be held in the restaraunt at one time. And it was FULL to capacity the whole time wewere there. people just streaming in to eat. And everyone,,I mean my husband and I and everyone in this restaraunt, were definitely pigging out. Iam talking full heaping plates, again and again full of crab legs.It was weird for me to sit there and people watch. I dont get out all that much around crowds of adults as I spend most of my life sheltered in my house that I share with many children. But last night I spent a lonnng time just sitting and watching people bcz I was done eating long before Michael. I had time to just sit and do nothing but watch people eat.Now I truly do not mean to offend anyone who has a weight problem,but I have to say how I was so struck by the amount of obese people and even "morbidly obese" people that were eating at this restaraunt last night. Seriously, I saw a *few* people that were obviously so overweight that they couldnt even walk ,being pushed into this all you could eat bufffet in wheelchairs.As I sat in the center of the hustle and bustle of glutonous Americans GORGING ourselves,I couldnt help but reflect on our sisters and brothers hustling andbustling trying to find a meal of rice for supper last night in Haiti

Food crisis sends Haitian boat people to U.S.

Refugees risk crossings in unsafe vessels to escape hunger and poverty

MONTROUIS, Haiti - Acute hunger and the rising cost of living could send a new wave of boat people to the U.S. from Haiti, where rising food prices set off deadly riots two weeks ago and drove the prime minister from office, officials and analysts say.
In the small town of Montrouis, about 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince, desperate Haitians say they will seize the first opportunity to take a boat toward the U.S. coast to escape the misery that plagues Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.
"I will leave with the next boat going to Miami because I can no longer resist this hunger," Marcel Jonassaint, 34, told Reuters on Tuesday as he sat barefoot near the dock in Montrouis, throwing a handful of small rocks into the ocean.

"I have four children and I don't have a job and everything is expensive, even for those who are working," Jonassaint said. "So what do you want me to do?"
Montrouis is a coastal village, overlooking the island of La Gonave, reputed as a key launching point for migrant boats.
'I will try again'"I left earlier this year. Our boat was intercepted in the high seas, but I will try again," said 29-year-old Rachel Chavanne. "I know some people, like a cousin of mine, who had a successful trip there.
"My turn will also come one day," she said in her blue dress, with a smile on her face.
Haitian lawmakers fired Prime Minister Jacques Eduard Alexis earlier this month to quell anger over rising food prices that sparked violent protests in Haiti. At least six people died in a week of protests and looting.

(Click for related content
Aid agency warns of 'silent tsunami' of hunger20 migrants found dead near BahamasAs Haiti goes hungry, food rotsHaiti's poor resort to eating dirt )

The director for the country's national migration office, Jeanne Bernard Pierre, said since the food crisis, her agency has received more repatriated Haitian boat people in a week than it used to receive in a month or more.
"We have received 212 repatriated last week, we have just received 227 and we are receiving 114 tomorrow," Pierre told Reuters on Tuesday.
"It is clear that more boat people have been leaving the country and you should expect even more if they cannot find an alternative," said Pierre, who urged the government and the international community to set up programs to ease the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable.
Interceptions more than doubleThe U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted 972 Haitian migrants at sea since October 1, compared with 376 during the same period last year. But the numbers typically fluctuate and it's impossible to link any spike in the numbers to any one event such as the recent food riots, Coast Guard Petty Officer Barry Bena said.
"It peaks at certain points and there's months on end when we get no Haitian vessels at all," he said.
Pierre said her office is doing its best to persuade suffering Haitians to stay home, but "they believe the only alternative left for them is to leave."
Migration office employees have been sent to poor, seaside neighborhoods to warn people how

risky it is to take to the sea in rustic vessels, but they reply by giving examples of friends and relatives they knew made it to Miami.
'Sharks eating people'"We even show them pictures of sharks eating people, but they would tell us they know many others who reached U.S soil and who are now sending money to relatives left in Haiti," said Pierre.
There are frequent reports of drownings when unsafe and overloaded migrant vessels capsize or break apart while trying to reach the United States and the Bahamas. A suspected migrant smuggling boat capsized off the Bahamas during the weekend and rescue crews recovered three survivors and 15 bodies, many of them Haitians.
Human rights activist Renan Hedouville said Haitians are leaving because the government and the rest of the world have turned a blind eye to the hungry.
"The universal right to have access to food has been neglected and denied to so many people," Hedouville said. "That's why people in desperate straits are taking to the sea, risking their lives and seeking a solution which is not really one."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24272407/

Grandchild "Civeah Shae" born 4/14/08

Here she is!!!! 7lbs 4oz, 19 inches long . Tons of BLACK hair. gramma holding her for the first time and exclaiming "She looks JUST like you, Bre"
love at first sight. Civeah owns a piece of my heart already
she owns a piece of 2 grammas hearts already:)
Breinn did soooooooooooooo wonderfully! She stayed at home in the bathtub until contractions were starting to feel "pushy". When they got to the hospital Bre was dilated to 9cm! Civeah came into the world at 8:04 pm totally naturally. I am SO PROUD of my strong daughter Breinn and her valiant husband , Wes!

now move aside, mama and daddy. Civeah has AUNTIES galore to hold her. Here is Civeah and Kailyn

The happiest family on earth. Our brand new sweet granddaughter with her proud mama and daddy.