Bragg Family South

Hope tells me I'm over due for a blog posting, and given that the last one was over two weeks ago, I guess she's right. In our defense, we were pretty busy. First, we were dealing with sick kids, including Beth's misery with an ear infection (the picture above was at the doctor's office). This was quickly followed by a number of Valentine's Day parties, including the group below, who are in Hope's CCD class: Beth also had a Valentine's party at her preschool (yes, that is Stephen on the left): Stephen is a regular in Beth's preschool class and Kenny's first grade class, as Hope volunteers to help out in both of these. Stephen loves interacting with the other kids, and definitely loves playing with some new toys: Kenny was a little disappointed that he didn't get to attend his class's Valentine's party, but we had other plans: we traveled to Petit Jean Mountain so I could attend another archeology workshop. This one was on the basics...

Before I get into our busy last couple of weeks, I thought I'd share some freshly blooming flowers from our yard for those of you still snowbound and freezing in da North, eh...? Our daffodils have just started blooming, as has the Callery pear in our front yard: Last I wrote, we were preparing for our big Super Bowl party. The event was a good success, with many a person having an enjoyable time watching a nicely competitive game. Unfortunately, right afterward, Stephen came down with a stomach bug that had the lil' guy spewing from both ends. Fortunately, the kids were healthy enough by the end of the week, when their Nahma and Bumpa (Ann and Rich Pruden) came down for a visit. They arrived on Thursday, and on Friday I took the day off and Rich and I went on another nice canoe trip on the Saline River: As the picture shows, the weather was fairly pleasant if somewhat windy. After a day of canoeing and hunting for petrified wood, we went out for Mexican that evening. The next...

I knew I made a mistake by titling my last blog posting "The January Lull"... That weekend, we (mostly Hope) ended up watching 7 kids (our three, plus four others) on Saturday night while their parents went to our church's International Dinner. We usually go to this dinner as well, but since Stephen doesn't handle sitters well (young kids are not allowed at the dinner), we decided to stay home instead. During this period, I was coming down with another cold, which I am still trying to completely shake. I had also gone to the dentist earlier in that week, in part for a regular cleaning, but also to get a tooth looked at that had been particularly temperature sensitive since we had returned from Christmas. Much to my dismay, the diagnosis was that a root canal was probably in my immediate future. I scheduled an appointment with a specialist in El Dorado , who confirmed the diagnosis, so last Monday I got my root canal. It actually wasn't as bad as I feared--there wa...