Early to Bed, Early to Rise.

This could be the motto for life in Joseph City. This is another picture we took for our postcard project. It quickly became our best seller. This picture was taken of my father-in-law, Gene & his brother Floyd out at Manila in front of the old feed truck that does actually run. We (Julie & I) had to pull them off the tractor out in the field to come pose for us. It was quite the photo shoot. Floyd was actually concerned about his shirt & had to take a minute to tuck it in right. I think they wondered why in the world we would want a picture of them & in front of the old feed truck. At one point Floyd told us we "should take the picture in front of the new tractor, we'd look more prosperous." The quote on the postcard came from Floyd. He's full of good one liners. It is a simple life we live here, but we're not sitting around on the porch swing sippin' lemonade. Well maybe on Sunday after church, but we don't sip lemonade, we prefer the hard stuff like popcorn & ice cream & occasionally a peach cobbler, another Hansen tradition. Around here we work. You could call it our recreation because we love it. We don't know what to do with ourselves if there's no work to do. My dear mother-in-law is famous for creating work out of thin air. My father-in-law (on the left of the photo above) is like a machine. I can look outside my window every morning & find him walking up to the corral heading to work & at the end of the day when the sun is about to set I see him walking down the road headed home. Working is a real way of life here. It started with our pioneer ancestors who built this town out of nothing but faith, hard work & pure stubborness. It is important to me that my children learn to appreciate hard work. I'm always reminding them of where & who they come from & that they need to work hard to be worthy of the sacrifices that were made for their future. I'm sure all they hear is "nag nag, blah, blah". So I always follow up with, "someday you'll appreciate how hard I work you." You know it's really scary when you start talking & realize you sound just like your mother. But I am ok with that now. My mother is one of the hardest workers I know. She taught me to work & through the "nag nag, blah blah" of it all I really appreciate how hard she worked me.