Bragg Family South

My father recently celebrated a birthday, and if y'all know him well, you've seen him hard at work, tongue sticking out one side of his mouth as he concentrates...  Judging from the picture above, I guess that apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree!  Here I am, removing our previous counter top.  As you may recall from our last blog post, we've started a kitchen remodel project.  Kenny and Beth gave a token bit of help scraping the old linoleum flooring:   But my true queen of the flooring was Hope, here caught laying out new porcelain tile over a plastic membrane designed to keep the tiles and grout from cracking: It took us several weeks, but here is the more-or-less final result: Okay, you probably can't tell too much from this picture unless you've been to our house before, but here's a list of things that we did...we put in a new tile floor, new granite-like laminate counter top, a new window, a new microhood, new lights, new cover ...

For those of you who have followed this blog for several years, you know that this time of the year I like to post pictures of the daffodils flowering in our yard...Some would say this is to tease, but I disagree--for those of y'all in the snowbound north, this is an inspiration that spring is coming...  The other thing that comes with spring here in Arkansas is severe weather, as you can see from some of the tornado damage near a small town about an hour from Monticello: Not to worry, we have been safe from the worst weather--mostly heavy rain in a few instances that has left our backyard soggy: Given how dry we've been the last couple of years, a wet spring is a good thing for us.  Another good thing--Super Bowl parties!  We held our annual party that day.  The picture below is of a pot of brats boiling in beer and onions--the cool purple color is actually how my camera interpreted the lighting of our kitchen and adjusted for the heating elements from...

Does this look like the face of a little girl excited about opening Christmas presents?  In all fairness, Beth had just woken up...  All three of the kids started opening gifts with less enthusiasm than their mother expressed: But, of course, they got into the swing of things pretty quickly: We spent the first week of our northern Christmas visit with Hope's family.  Christmas day started with opening gifts at the grandparents house.  Here's Hope's parents, Rick and Ann Pruden, sharing a conversation at our stop later that day--the Pruden family Christmas and Hope's cousin Kevin's house: Below, Beth and Stephen share a goofy smile with their cousin Tatum: Here is the craziness that was the kids' table for the Christmas dinner: At a quieter moment, Hope's grandparents Don and Kay Pruden posed with their great-grandchildren who were at this party: And, of course, our little camera-lover Beth with her cousin Alexandria Prude...

Just so y'all didn't have to look at a forlorn Kenny until I got around to posting the post-Christmas pictures, here's a few we took of the events leading up to the holidays.  In the picture above, we had Kenny's birthday party the first Friday in December.  You can see that this was after he had broke his ankle--note the crutch by him.  In addition, now that it was officially December, I relented on the holiday activities, so that included cookie decorating.  Below, Stephen gives decorating his all: Beth also concentrated hard: Kenny and our neighbor friend Jessica also made a number of colorful cookies: Last week, Kenny's fourth grade class went to the Arkansas state capitol to learn how the government works.  Here is the capitol building itself: Hope and Stephen accompanied our still hobbling boy on this trip to help Kenny get around and to help supervise a bunch of excitable 10-year-olds.  Below is a sculpture dedicated to the...