Picture of the whole group, I am in the back far left.
Me and Royce being all serious.
Yes, that is me, in my dads old wetsuit, scary!!!
Well, I guess that you can imagine that this is Josh by now. I have alot that I want to share with everyone. I find myself torn between writing about the academy, my wife, and my future baby. Maybe I will try to talk about all of them. The last couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy down here at the academy. We have done everything from swift water rescue to standardized field sobriety testing. I have some pictures from swift water that I will try to share with everyone. I have had a good time with the training lately but the weeks are getting longer and the loneliness of not having my wife is growing more intense every hour. As some of you know my dad made a surprise visit to the academy a couple of weeks ago. Let me lay out the scene for you. The Lt. Colonel Craig Hunter was talking to the whole class and all of a sudden says, "Hi Mokey." I froze as everyone turned around to look at the back. Although I already knew what stood at the back. I kept thinking, "who else could I know that is a game warden that is named Mokey?" I couldn't come up with another.....Yes it was my dad. It turned out to be a great experience. Dad addressed the class and stayed around for a little while to answer some questions. The next week dad returned to teach a class that he has taught for almost 20 years. SFST (standardized field sobriety testing) basically a class to be able to tell when someone is intoxicated. It entailed three days of classroom mixed with 25 wardens drinking to the point of intoxication and then all of us cadets testing these wardens to determine level of intoxication. Needless to say it was an interesting couple of days. For one I have never really discussed the whole drinking idea with my parents, and all of a sudden I am in the middle of multiple drunks with my father teaching me things that he has been doing for several decades. Every day that I am here at the academy I am learning more and more about the life that my father had that me and my sister new very little about. At the same time everyone that I talk to has nothing but deep respect for my father and all of the things he has done for game wardens. It is an interesting and very confounding thing to walk through on a daily basis. To look at people and think, "I think in some ways you knew him more than I did." I want to strive for my kids to know all of me all the time. Not that the way my father did it was wrong, just different.
Also most of you know that we sold our house. Actually, my wife did it all. She is an amazing woman and has taken on so much in my absence that I can't even begin to tell everyone what an amazing woman she is. All of this is so hard because I feel so strongly that there are certain things that I am required to provide to/for my wife and I feel totally incapable here in Hamilton. I find myself listening to my bunkmate Johnson talking to his little boy on the phone (although talking is a loose term for the gibberish they do, but still amazing) and I get kinda down in the fact that when I call my wife I don't have a son or daughter to talk to. I lay in bed at nights thinking, "maybe if we just hold out for a couple of more months we will get pregnate and it will be a little Josh or a little Lens." But at the same time I am terrified that if I keep doing that 20 years will pass by and me and lens will still be without a child to raise as our own. So the more I think about it the best decision that I could make it to go ahead and lay down my inability to provide a child and venture out onto the limb of adoption. It saddens me terribly to think of being "incapable" and I think this is a huge emotional hurdle that I am going to have to get past. But I want to be a daddy, and I want to see Lens hold her baby. This seems like a place that I would normally throw in a funny saying or something that would make me feel better, but I have nothing tonight. I am longing for a baby, I am longing for my wife, I am really ready to be done with this damn academy. I think of all of these things and I know how strongly I feel about them. And throughout my marriage I have learned that lindseys feelings and emotions (although not always on the surface) are so very intracate and delicate and deep. So, I know she is struggling and is hurting terribly for all of the same things and more. And Lindsey, I couldn't have picked a woman in this whole world that I would rather walk through all of this crap with other than you.
I am tired and have to be up early for ATV training.
