Bragg Family South

Here's Beth and some of her compatriots at the beginning of preschool this year. Beth did so well in preschool last year that we knew we'd have to get her in it again this year. Because she's in the older class, she now goes three days a week during the mornings. We've gradually worked back into our late summer routine, with both kids going to school and Hope and I trying to get used to a new routine. Another end of summer happening is the appearance of these garden spiders, or orb-weaver spiders: This large, beautiful spider has taken up residence on our shed in the backyard, and we hope she catches a whole bunch of bugs... Here's Stephen's megawatt smile: And here's Kenny's, which is a few watts shorter... Note the missing tooth... As proud as he is about now having lost it, it was a BEAR to get out. It dangled loose in his mouth for a couple weeks and no amount of persuading or our attempting to turn it out did much good. It finally got so ...

This colorful birthday cake artistically made by Hope celebrates 2 years with our youngest, Stephen. (For those of you still guessing, it's a train...). We had a small party for Stephen on Wednesday (his actual birthday), with some of his little friends (and their parents) joining us: The picture above shows Hope piling up more sugary goodies for the kids... The cake was very moist and delicious, and the little cups of ice cream were perfect for the kids--especially Stephen, who as birthday boy got special privileges to get messy: The gift opening was a big hit with all the kids, especially the somewhat older ones: Stephen has yet to quite get fully psyched up over opening gifts. He (and his siblings) have made good use of them, and are quite grateful for them. This weekend has been a busy one (of sorts) for Hope. Friday and Saturday afternoon she manned a booth at Monticello's "Rhythm and Roots" festival for the Monticello Tree Board, for which she is president...

DON'T FIRE!! At least not while Beth and Stephen are playing a game of yelling "Hello!" into the ends of these cannon. Not much risk of them firing, actually, as this picture was taken at Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi, a couple hours drive from Monticello. We made a trip here yesterday, in part because Hope and Kenny wanted to revisit this site (we've taken a number of our visitors here, but mostly before Beth and Stephen were born, when Kenny was small) and in part to do some shopping... More on that later... The picture below is of Beth and Stephen inside the dome of the Illinois memorial: The picture below is of the Wisconsin memorial at Vicksburg: Just about every state that participated in the Union and Confederate armies in this critical Civil War battle have put up elaborate memorials to their soldiers, living and dead. The heat and humidity kept us from spending too much time at Vicksburg on this trip, but we did swing dow...

Stephen enjoys the sand during our camping trip in Vilas County, Wisconsin, during our bigger northwoods vacation this July/August... We arrived safely in Monticello last Sunday evening after about 16.5 hours on the road. We departed from a brief visit in lower Michigan with Hope's family about 6 a.m. on Sunday, and drove straight through to Monticello. The 16.5 hours included a few stops to use the bathroom, get gas, and eat, but otherwise we aimed to make time--and we did! Here are some more shots from our camping trip to Firefly Lake in Vilas County: The picture above is a view of the sand beach from along where our lakefront campsite was--the picture below is of Stephen looking back up from the beach through the pines to our campsite perhaps 100 feet off of the lake shore: Here's Hope diligently finishing up setting up the tent--she fixed the camp while I watched the kids: Here's Beth enjoy the cool, clear waters of Firefly Lake: and Kenny's view of the world...

What does the above head pot have to do with our Northwoods trip? We finally took the time to visit Hampson Archeological Museum State Park ( http://arkansasstateparks.com/hampsonmuseum/ ) in northeastern Arkansas. For years, we have driven past this spot and thought to stop by, knowing that this was an important archeological museum. After a quick visit to our friend and my co-worker Dr. Michael Shelton in Memphis, we headed northward. Rain in the Memphis area that day canceled our original plan of going to the Memphis Zoo, so finding that we had some more time on our hands, we finally decided to stop at Hampson . This small museum was established around a local doctor (Dr. Hampson ) who decades ago had been an amateur archeologist and had extensively excavated a large Mississippian-period village area, digging up a LOT of very impressive artifacts, including the head pot above. Dr. Hampson donated most of his collection to the state of Arkansas, which made a museum out o...