Keep on truckin'

I finally got back into the 4-wheel drive world today. After Kenny was born, and we knew we planned to have more kids, we realized that my old Ford Bronco was not a practical family vehicle (at least not for the next few years). So we sold that SUV and got the minivan (actually, I got the 2001 Ford Taurus that we bought before Kenny was born, and Hope got the Toyota minivan). This arrangement worked fine for a while, but I got the itchin' for 4-wheel drive and clearance to explore the back country and haul firewood, etc., and today we scratched that itch. We had gone up to Little Rock and I was going to work on that dig while Hope took the kids around to other events. Well, recent rains have made the fields too muddy to dig, so we went with our alternative plan--we started looking at used trucks. We looked at a number during the day that would have been okay, but at the last dealership we stopped at they had this 2004 Dodge 1500 full-sized (quad cab) pickup truck with a 4.7 L 8-cylinder engine and 4-wheel drive. For a truck with 70,000 miles, it was a good deal, and they were so eager to sell it to us that they gave me a $3500 trade-in on my Taurus, sight unseen, and let us take the truck home today! Monday, we'll drive the Taurus up to Little Rock and turn it in to the dealership. We're all excited about the possibilities this truck brings for Bragg Family South outdoor adventures, even if they do happen at worse gas mileage...

We had a nice visit with Mom, Dad, and brother Bill this last week. Here, Grandpa masters the art of getting Stephen to nap:

If Grandpa and Stephen look pretty comfortable, it was because we hit 80 degrees the first couple days they were here. This allowed the kids some time to run under the sprinkler:

Kenny and his fellow Cub Scouts had a special museum tour and lecture by Dr. Marvin Jeter, our local Arkansas Archeological Survey station archeologist:

and Beth had plenty of time to roll in spring beauties:

We also celebrated Mom's birthday with a birthday cake:

Mom showed of Bill's cool new shades:

Stephen was happy the cake had lots of frosting:

and Beth was proud of her piece of cake:

The day before our guests returned to Wisconsin, we drove up to Little Rock to play tourist. They started using a road grader on our archeological site as a means to greatly speed up our examination of the site (yes, we asked the county to do this):

Dad got a kick out of our "precision" archeology, how "delicate" we were on the site... The grader sure cleaned the site off quickly, but it is quite muddy now due to this recent rain, and we're going to have to let it dry out a bit before we can do much else.