Joseph & Audrey: It's a jungle out there...

Instead of attempting to make my first entry something noteworthy, witty, and beautifully written, I have decided to jump right in and talk about the fun "picnic" we had today. This is not because I wouldn't rather make it something noteworthy, witty, and beautifully written, but because I have been thinking of what to write that might fall into that category for days now and have come up completely blank. Thus, to overcome my timidity as a less than stellar writer and a significantly below par humorist, I have determined that if I write enough, perhaps something I write one day will have the potential of falling into the desired category, whereas, if I never write anything in my fear of failure, I never have the potential of succeeding.

That being said, I now begin my quasi-narrative of our day. This morning, feeling somewhat inspired to be more proactive in embracing life and living life to the fullest, I decided it might be fun for me and the boys to go visit Joseph at work for a "picnic" lunch. I say "picnic" because it was not out in a luscious forest (although we did encounter one of those later in the visit), or on a mountainside, or even in a local park, but rather at Bingham High School in the Biology/Agriculture Compound where Joseph teaches most of his classes. (As a note, Joseph is now a biology teacher at Bingham High School in South Jordan, Utah. He teaches 4 general biology classes, 1 biology/agriculture class, and 1 greenhouse class.) Joseph, Austin, and I sat at the student desks while Matthew crawled around on the floor playing with some Crayola markers (he is still young enough that he doesn't take the cap off and wreak havoc on everything within arm's length - including himself and his clothes).

Attached to the classroom in the Compound is a room attached to show animals in and then a fenced in "yard" behind it. In the "yard" (a cement area with sheds and rusty broken trailers and machinery) was a tractor. Now, it has become very clear to me in observing the blogs of friends with children of the female variety that there are some very fundamental differences between a boy-child and a girl-child. With a girl-child there are often pretty princess moments and dressing up and playing with dolls. However, my oldest boy-child makes every sharp pointy object a sword and he yells "Hi-yah!" as he thrusts them into the air. Additionally, cars and trucks are the objects of his affection as opposed to dolls or other such feminine accoutrements. Thus, when his eyes fell upon the rusty tractor, he was instantly shouting (he does a lot of shouting actually...) "I get on tractor!"

It may be difficult to see from this small picture, but to the right of the steering wheel, on the dash, there is a warning sticker that states very clearly: "Be Careful." This is undoubtedly a vital warning due to the rust and exposed sharp objects rather than any danger existing from the tractor actually running. Surely it has not run in many, many years from the look of things.

After Austin played on the tractor for a short time, we spent our last few minutes before Joseph's next class out at the greenhouse. This greenhouse was VERY dirty and somewhat dangerous itself as we found it several weeks ago. We cleaned it out pretty thoroughly and Joseph has been accumulating many plants in a very short amount of time. Due to his excellent bargaining abilities (Dave Ramsey would be proud!) he has about $4500 worth of beautiful and interesting plants that he bought for a mere $800 (of the school's money, no less)! It is so packed, one may think that there is no room for anymore plants - but Joseph would disagree. There are palm trees, banana plants, bromeliads, aloes, and many, many others. Here are some fun pictures of the jungle he has created, along with some fun pictures of Joseph and the boys.

Joseph and Matthew