Bragg Family South

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 ou...

...but starting with one unrelated photo.  The picture above was taken during last Thanksgiving break; Hope's parents had come down to Arkansas for a visit, and we picked a rather cool, blustery, damp day to go up by Hot Springs to "mine" for quartz crystals.  A brisk day, for sure, but pretty fun--I think Stephen would agree that any day he gets to play in mud is a good day! Back to more recent events...What a busy March we've had!  Below are a few pictures of some very recent adventures.  It seems Hope and I can't shake the affiliation of weddings and baptisms.  Some of you may recall that on our wedding day we became the godparents of the daughter of some friends of ours...Well, the other weekend, we were getting ourselves ready to go to the wedding of some friends from church, when we got the call to come down to the local hospital to be the godparents of a baby boy of Joshua and Heidi Adams, friends of ours from work and church.  The little guy ha...

Those of you that follow the Bragg Family South blog know that I've already used my "spring is here" picture of daffodils in flower in southern Arkansas...Well, it should be pretty obvious then that the picture above isn't in southern Arkansas--rather, it is looking out a hotel room in my hometown of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, from last Saturday...Yes, that REALLY is how much snow they still had on the second Saturday of March!!  I made a very quick and sneaky trip to Rhinelander last weekend for a surprise 70th birthday for my Mom.  Below, my sisters Laurie (left) and Lisa (right), our family's "craft queens", put together a photo montage of Mom: Below is a picture of my sister Laurie, the conspirator-in-charge, with that clever look she sometimes gets when she's up to no good: Here's the completed photo board, with some of the other gifts at the pizza place we went to: Some months ago, my siblings and I began conspiring how to pu...

Just a quick note, given that it has been almost two months since our last blog post.  Now, I know I'm not going to get any sympathy from our northern friends and family, but winter has been more prominent this year in Arkansas than most, including temperatures here in southern Arkansas dropping to below 10 degrees (above, not below zero).  We are gradually moving towards spring here--I took the picture of the jonquils above just minutes ago.  Right now, the weather is rather balmy...temps in the 60s, somewhat muggy...but we're expecting a cold front to slide through later today, with freezing rain/sleet predicted for later today, and below freezing weather tomorrow. On a warmer day this past January, we took advantage of a nice afternoon to drive down to a small zoo in Monroe, Louisiana.  We all enjoyed the antics of the various animals on display, many of which also appeared to be embracing the warmer weather that afternoon: I haven't been doing a lot of ...

Wait...when did we get to 2014, let alone mid-January of 2014???  Now that things have slowed down a bit after the holidays, I see that I haven't done a blog post since the first day of December 2013.  In truth, it's not because we've quit doing things, it's just that I haven't been taking lots of pictures!  We had a good holiday season this year.  Above, Beth enjoyed decorating some Christmas cookies...Unlike last year's bad flu outbreak for Bragg Family South during the Christmas season, we seem to have < > gotten through this winter so far with only a few relatively minor illnesses.  Of course, Kenny and I managed to get sick on the trip up to Michigan, but that passed relatively quickly.  We got to open presents on Christmas morning and the Prudens in lower Michigan...Below, Kenny and Stephen try to figure out why they all got cans of cat food for Christmas gifts (hint:  it was a bit of a prank by us!): Rich Pruden, below, loves visit...