Bragg Family South

Nothing like a snow day to get caught up on some home projects, including blog updates...The several inches of snow that fell overnight wouldn't amount to much in the Northwoods, but here it means Bragg Family South stays home today.  So, I start this continuation of the 2017-18 holiday season adventure with the beginning of the trip--a performance of the Nutcracker by the Moscow Ballet in Little Rock.  We drove from Monticello and checked into a hotel right next to the concert hall, after which we joined the crowd for an entertaining performance: Believe it or not, this was the first time I've ever sat through the entire Nutcracker (live performance or movie version)!  I enjoyed it, as did most of the rest of the family (with exception of Kenny; more on that later).  We left the hotel very early the next morning to drive all the way to Madison, Wisconsin.  En route, we stopped just outside of St. Louis, Missouri, to visit an antique mall that always int...

Before I get into the pictures from the holiday season, I figured I should catch up on the weeks leading up to this season's adventures.  Hope is pictured above in her anniversary/birthday/Christmas gift...a new Nissan Versa.  This is a bare-bones car to supplement our building fleet; it gets very good gas mileage and will accumulate the daily miles Hope drives to and from work, rather than our minivan, which is only a few years old but has almost 190,000 miles on it!  We got it for a song on a "Black Friday" weekend sale, and figured it was too good of a deal to pass up on. Needless to say, we didn't use it to pull the float pictured below, which is packed with kids from our church (St. Mark) in Monticello: One of the great things about small town living in the South is they love parades; Monticello alone does 3-4 per year.  Good family fun!  As was the 16th birthday of our eldest, Kenny: (Yes, we've got mismatched candles!).  Kenny's birthd...