Bragg Family South

Time for another blog post from Bragg Family South!  First, we start with Beth's birthday in late October.  Her birthday this year was a more laid-back affair than most, with a simple cake (above) and a birthday gift surprise, below: Beth's lack of enthusiasm in the picture above is because we (namely, Hope and I) had been teasing her about getting her a book for her birthday, when she was convinced she was getting something much different.  I had quickly wrapped a convenient book ("How to build a dinosaur", a very interesting book given to me by my brother Bill), and she spent a few minutes trying to figure out the meaning of this gift before we sprung her real gift on her--a small tablet computer: Yes, you can note the much greater enthusiasm!  Stephen has also been busy this fall with his Cub Scout den/pack: As a part of the den's ceremony, he got to get his face painted up by mom: I was fortunate enough to get up to northeastern Arkansas...

October has been a month of travel for Bragg Family South (me more than most!).  At the beginning of the month, we drove to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for a long weekend at the Arkansas Archeological Society's annual meeting.  The picture above is of the kids about ready to dig into a breakfast at the War Eagle grist mill a few miles from Fayetteville.  Hope and the kids returned to Monticello on Sunday; I did not--they dropped me off at the Little Rock airport.  I had a business meeting the next week in Salt Lake City, Utah.  After a long and previously unplanned overnight stay in lower Michigan en route, I arrived for a week in Utah's biggest city.  Below is one of the more decorative structures at the Salt Palace, the enormous convention center that hosted the meetings I attended: Below is one of the high rises in Salt Lake City; I took the picture not for this particular building, but rather to try to give the sense of the beauty of this city nestl...

As promised, the picture above shows some of the damage we came home to from our western trip.  The drain coming out of our air conditioning unit, which is located in our attic, had plugged, and the water soon overflowed the pan designed to catch such overflows.  Given the warm and humid days during that stretch of August, a lot of water accumulated in the insulation and soaked the drywall in the ceiling.  To fix this, I reran the drain line with more slope (and to a different drain).  We also lowered the bathroom ceiling a few inches to be able to install a light fixture with a fan that keeps the bathroom from getting too humid following showers.  We also installed new floor tiles (Hope's specialty), a new, taller toilet, a new vanity, sink, medicine cabinet, and mirror.  Below are several pictures from different vantage points:   We painted the walls a different color, and all I've really got left to do is touch up the trim in a number...

After Oregon Caves, it was a quick drive to the Pacific coast of California, and of course, the next primary target for foresters--the redwoods!  As much as the sequoias impressed me, I think I found the redwood forests more compelling...They are more extensive and denser (more trees per acre), and the moister environment supports a lusher forest and understory--note the large ferns in the picture above (Star Wars fans should recognize the redwoods as the forested moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi).  Below, the kids really enjoyed playing in the complex redwood forests: Huge, tall redwoods were everywhere--the redwoods are impressive in diameter (but not as big as the biggest sequoias), but they are known to be the tallest trees on the planet: Such a pretty forest: The kids checking out the rings of a "small" redwood, only about five feet in diameter where they cut it across the trail: It was easy to get dizzy, looking up into the towering canopy: ...