Bragg Family South

I know that in Laurie's latest blog, she commented on how excited she was that Christmas break was approaching. She's not the only one happy for the season--check out our lil' cookie decorator Beth! We are preparing ourselves for the Christmas/New Year's holiday by decorating cookies, attending parties, and prepping our vehicle for the long drive northwards. After our last month, which was exceedingly busy, this next week will drag along for us--not much happening, but lots of anticipation and anxiety about the weather (driving conditions, really). I was able to spend yesterday (Saturday) up at that archeological dig I've been volunteering for this year. Our field season in this portion of the area is winding down--the Arkansas Archeological Survey had arranged to work on this site with the landowner (an industrial pipe maker) until the end of the calendar year, which is rapidly approaching. And, as is almost always the case in archeology, some of the best finds ar...

Here is a small portion of the shells we collected last week while on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. Note the cupcake in the upper corner for scale... Well, it's Saturday night, and we've survived yet another busy week. Hope and the kids are in the other room watching a movie, I'm popping some popcorn, and we're looking forward to a slow day tomorrow. I was gone from Wednesday to late Friday on a business trip to northwestern Arkansas, and while up there, I managed to catch a cold. Hope busied herself with running kids to their activities, such as Cub Scouts, CCD, and Beth's dance lessons. She also helped with getting the plants for the landscape around our new church. On Thursday, she accompanied Beth's preschool to a visit to the local fire station (that's Beth on the right in the light blue hat): On Friday afternoon, after she took her Cub Scout pack for a quick nature hike around a pond on the UAM campus, she then held a birthday party for Kenny, who didn...

Our Thanksgiving week for 2008 was as busy as ever. The week started on Monday with an Arbor Day program organized by the chairperson of the Monticello Tree Board--Hope Bragg! Hope volunteered a few weeks ago to help Monticello achieve its Tree City USA status with the Arbor Day Foundation, and one of their requirements is to officially recognize the program with an official declaration by the mayor. This presentation was done for Monticello Elementary School, who worked on setting things up: Hope led the students through a lively performance: which was capped off by a visit from Smokey the Bear: Here Hope is with the official decree signed by the mayor, along with a gentleman from the city's development council and an urban forester with the Arkansas Forestry Commission: The tree planting (that is a small black gum that they are standing by) had to wait for a drier day--the heavy rain we got that morning put a damper on having this ceremony outside. This ceremony was only one part...

Well, when you're in the South, you live, breathe, and eat football. This weekend we went to our first Monticello High School (the Billies, as in goats) football game. The Billies are in the state football playoffs, and Hope needed to take her Cub Scout den to a game to help them with their badges. What better excuse to hang outside watching football? Stephen thought so... We actually only watched the first quarter of the game--a cold front dropped in unexpectedly, and the kids weren't really dressed for how cool and breezy it got. Fortunately for us, Monticello easily defeated their opponent 42-13, and we got to see an action-filled quarter. High school football games are big social events in these southern towns--far more so that I remember them being in Rhinelander. Admission is relatively cheap, and there's plenty of excitement in the air. The Monticello Billies are the team in blue. The Monticello High School stadium is larger than the one at UAM, and nicer in ...

This was a relatively quiet week for us. Don't get me wrong--we had a lot going on, but less compared to the next few weeks, with the myriad of meetings and other events we are scheduled for... The picture above was taken at a class singing performance by the first grader's at Kenny's school. They had a number of patriotic songs, timed (presumably) to roughly coincide with election day. Unlike his kindergarten recital, he didn't have an active part, just one of the chorus: but he put his all into it, and we enjoyed the effort. We also attended a local archeology society chapter meeting in Hamburg, a small city about a half-hour south of Monticello. As local chapter president, I was called upon to run the meeting, which largely meant I introduced the speakers and acted as a host. This meeting was held in the home town of a couple now deceased members of the society--Ed and Patsy White. The Whites were actually founding members of this chapter, and they had been...

Happy Halloween everyone! We've had another busy week, most of which revolved around one of the kids' favorite days of the year... As I mentioned in the last post, Hope's mom and dad were coming down for another visit. They arrived on Wednesday, and helped Hope get various Halloween events put together. This included carving pumpkins the day before Halloween (you can see one of the products above), as well as picking out the pumpkin seeds for roasting: and even just acting as a distraction for the kids: With the beautiful weather we were having, Rich and I decided to make a canoe trip along the nearby Saline River. I've canoed this river with several of my siblings, so you may remember it... Anyhow, we put it off the Old Warren Road and headed downstream. The morning was clear and crisp, but not really cold, and the bright fall sun lit the limited fall colors we have, like these baldcypress just beginning to turn: Baldcypress are a deciduous conifer, kind of like th...

Doesn't Beth's face say it all? Little girls about to embark on a big adventure... Beth and her preschool class went to the local pumpkin patch for an exciting trip. They got to play on all sorts of things, took a hay ride, and picked out their own pumpkins: We were happy to see the nice weather for this day, because the trip had been postponed a week earlier due to rain. We also enjoyed beautiful weather this last weekend, which really helped make our camping much more enjoyable. We left Friday afternoon for Petit Jean State Park ( http://www.petitjeanstatepark.com/ ) in central Arkansas. We've done a blog posting on this park before--we visited it in August. The reason we were here was so that I could attend an archeology workshop (learning how to work in an indoor lab during a beautiful fall weekend). Fortunately, we did get to enjoy some of the outdoors, as you see with Kenny at this overlook: and here I am with the kids: Our goal for our first evening (Friday night) w...