Bragg Family South

Thanks for sharing, Stephen! Before I knew it, Easter has come and gone... Yet another year rocketing by... But first, a few pre -Easter comments... Ever wonder why your stereo quits working properly in your car? If you have young children, it's a good bet to think they may have played a role! This picture is of the factory installed car stereo from our minivan. The pile of coins is what Hope shook out of it the other day when we finally replaced this stereo with an after-market one! It appears our youngest learned he could slip change that we kept in a compartment near the dash into the CD player and/or tape deck. I'm sure it made a most satisfying clinking sound as it entered. We were replacing this stereo anyhow (the new one no longer has an obvious slot to put coins in!), and we've actually had to shake change out of this stereo before, so we weren't surprised at all... Well, maybe the sheer quantity was a surprise! This weekend, we traveled to Petit Jean Mountain...

Well, after a tense week culminated in an all-too-close game of political chicken, sanity finally popped back into a few peoples' heads in Washington DC, and they hashed out a budget compromise that should get us federal employees to the end of the fiscal year. I suspect we'll see tight budgets for some time now, but we've dealt with this before, and we'll survive it again... Speaking of bouts of near insanity, Hope put on an overnight camping trip for Monticello Cub Scout Pack 69 (she's the pack leader this year). Things went remarkably smoothly, all told--the weather was clear, if warm, muggy, and somewhat breezy... All the boys (and their parents) seemed to have survived the weekend alright (a few minor bumps and bruises, and plenty of ticks). Below, Hope instructs the boys on tying knots: This wasn't at a formal Boy Scout camp--we stayed at Cane Creek State Park, which is just about a half-hour north of here. As you can seen, the woods are greening up nicel...