A history meeting and Easter

No, Kenny's not trying to hide behind his hand-held video game system; he's taking a picture of me taking a picture of him (and the big load of southern pine logs behind him).  As a reward for how well he had done on last year's benchmark tests at his school, the school gave him a Friday off ("Scholars' Day") the week before they started this year's benchmark tests.  Since I was already scheduled to be at a business meeting in the southwest corner of Arkansas, and this meeting had a Civil War history theme (Kenny's big into Civil War history), we thought it would be a great chance for him to learn...So we drove over to Historic Washington State Park (you may recall that we've participated in some archeological digs there in the past few years).  The Friday program opened up at the historic (circa 1870s) county courthouse in Washington:

The clear blue skies are somewhat misleading; a line of storms had blown through overnight, and knocked out power across the park.  So, for most of the first day, none of the speakers had power for their presentations!  The meeting still worked out very well; when I gave my talk the following day, power had been restored, and I think Kenny had a good time (and probably learned a thing or two!).  Hope has also stayed busy over the last week, putting on a 4-H event for her county.  Below, Hope directs traffic for the youth, their parents, and the other helpers:

Hope got me as a volunteer (for better or worse), and our kids joined those from Desha County.  Below, Stephen and I mug it up for a "selfie":

The next day, we went up to Little Rock.  I volunteered for an archeological project, and Hope took our kids to the zoo to see some new tiger cubs recently born in Little Rock.  Below, Kenny shows his impression of life as a penguin:

Note in the picture below there are 4 kids:

The girl on the left is the daughter of one of the archeologists I was working with that morning...Hope offered to bring her along to the zoo, rather than having her just hang out where we were working.  She, of course, jumped at the chance!  My volunteer work wrapped up that afternoon, and we went into Little Rock, and to kill some time rode the trolley around the downtown.  We were waiting for the main entertainment that evening--a minor league baseball game.  Below, Hope and the kids are digging into the ballpark food we had for supper:

It was a LOT easier to enjoy the game this early in the year, with game time temperature of about 70 degrees, as opposed to late summer, when it is 90+ well into the evening.  Now, the blurry picture below is really a sign that I need to learn how to take better pictures at night:

What it is supposed to show is the recent lunar eclipse we had, which was really cool to see, even if it doesn't show in this picture.  This week, we got Easter visitors--Hope's parents drove down for a quick visit to continue what has become a bit of a traditional--coloring Easter eggs:

Rich and Ann Pruden really enjoy doing this with their grand kids; now we have to find a way to eat up 3 dozen eggs!

In addition to coloring eggs, we found the time to head out to our hunting lease and check out this creek bottom for agates, petrified wood, and other fossils:

We managed to find quite a number of "treasures" and Rich and I kept the kids out of Hope's hair while she and Ann prepared a big and tasty Easter dinner for us...We also spent time working in our yard, planting some shrubs, and visiting--a wonderfully calm Easter weekend!

The Prudens headed back this morning, and the kids played for a while in the sprinkler and while washing my truck.  Take heart, family and friends in northern Wisconsin who recently got 10+ inches of snow--spring is on its way!!