38 years young

Here's the next contingent of big-time Packer fans getting ready to watch last week's Monday night win over the Vikings...

Last Friday, I hit the big 3-8. Hard to believe how fast the time has gone, and it seems we've hit a new high gear with the arrival of the kids. As a child, I remember how the years seemed to drag on--now they fly by at light speed. Nothing like age to give you perspective...

Here's a new perspective on cleanliness-- a baby with a birthday cupcake:


Stephen and his siblings helped me celebrate my birthday on Friday with a tasty grilled tuna dinner prepared by my blushing bride, followed by frosting-laden cupcakes. We didn't do much on my birthday, just a quite evening home. On Saturday, we drove to Little Rock. Hope took the kids to the zoo and a museum while I returned to help on that archeological dig. I've made quite a few visits to help out on this dig, in part because of the urgency of the need--the company developing the land wants to have us finish up before the end of the year. This has been a fascinating site to me--it seems to date to from at least 1300 or 1400 A.D. to probably the 1600s, and has shown evidence of several phases of culture, with an abundance of often highly decorated pottery sherds:

The sherd shown above was "pinched" into the patterns that appear as roughness on the surface, a decorating technique I hadn't seen yet. In addition to plenty of pottery, we have also found some evidence of home sites and plenty of food remains, primarily in the form of animal bones:

This bone is probably a deer leg bone (my fairly small 3" trowel gives you a feel for scale). We have also uncovered a lot of other animal remains, including parts of turtle shells. I hope to revisit this site several more times this fall--each time I go, it seems we find new and interesting things.

Oh, and ol' Hurricane Ike had little impact on us here in southeastern Arkansas. Western and northern parts of Arkansas received a lot more wind and rain than we did. Yesterday after we returned from our Little Rock trip, we went to a friend's house for a "surprise" birthday party for several other friends. It was outside, and we had quite a time trying to keep things from blowing away in the gusty, warm, humid winds we had. We had a few heavy showers during the night, but probably got less than an inch of rain. Hope's parents in lower Michigan will probably get more tropical moisture out of Ike than we did...

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