Bragg Family South

 It's been a quiet, if still eventful January...Sorry for dereliction in my blogging duties, but I've been occupied with things that usually find me without a good camera...  Above, Beth proudly received a certificate for getting all A's.  Below, Stephen's Cub Scout pack got a tour of a local museum, including a chance to see a real live alligator up close: We also traveled to Ruston, Louisiana, about 2 hours away, to attend the birthday party of our godson, John Mark Adams, pictured below with his mother and Stephen: On the way back, just before dusk, we stopped at a small monument to a former Arkansas politician right on the Louisiana-Arkansas border: We've had some really nice weather for the last couple weekends.  This included the particular Saturday afternoon we went out to our hunting lease and spent a very pleasant afternoon hiking up one of the small stream channels, looking for fossils, petrified wood, and agates--and finding quite a bit!...

Another Christmas season has come and gone; the kids have one more day off before they restart school, and Hope will be back at her job tomorrow (I'm taking the day off to watch the kids, and use up a last bit of use-or-lose leave I have).  I'll start this seasonal blog post with some pictures from a very cool light display they do at a place called Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Garvan (https://www.garvangardens.org/) is actually operated by the School of Architecture of the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, and Hope has free admission to it as an employee of the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension program (her 4-H job).  They have strung thousands of lights in very attractive displays over quite an area that you can walk through after dark: Our Christmas trip first took us up through Wisconsin, where we visited a number of my siblings and my parents.  Our first stop in Wisconsin, of course, was one of our favorite cheese facto...

This has got to be one of the hardest blog postings I've ever had to do...As some of you are aware, on November 12, we lost Ann Pruden suddenly.  She is pictured above with Kenny from a visit to the Monroe (Louisiana) Zoo in about 2008.  Ann was an infinitely kind and compassionate person who doted on her family, and she will be sorely missed!  The day after she passed away, we drove up to Michigan to be with Rick and the rest of the family and friends.  On Sunday, we had a memorial open house at the Pruden family home in Whitmore Lake.  As the picture shows below, the day was warm and sunny, just like Ann: My brother Bob (pictured with Stephen below) also joined us: Bob had gotten to know Rick and Ann pretty well through a number of visits he'd made to the area over the years, plus the holiday visits Rick and Ann often made with the Bragg Family in Wisconsin.  The house was a hub of activity most of the day, with many different family members ...

Above, Kenny plays with the rest of the 8th grade "marching" band for one of the local football games. I put "marching" in quotes because, well, they really don't do any marching yet...at least not while they're playing.  They go out onto the field in formation, play a couple songs at half time, and then return to their bleachers to periodically play during the game.  Good practice for the future, though!  Below, Stephen and his best buddy Logan McAlpine also enjoyed this game: Beth turned 11 a couple weeks ago, and had several friends over for a "Dr. Who"-themed birthday party.  For those of y'all who don't know, Dr. Who is a British sci-fi series that has been on for what seems to be an eternity (since the mid-1960s, actually), and that Hope and the kids love (and I pretty much can't stand).  But I indulge my family...  Below, Beth and her friends (and Stephen) enjoyed a dinner based on food references from this show: ...

Well, we're not quite to her birthday, but in just a few days Beth will turn 11, so I figured I'd give y'all a "throw-back" picture of her birthday in 2007...You can see how 3-year-old Beth was giddy about her birthday cake! Yesterday, we participated in a really neat event--a "ghost walk" through history at Arkansas Post National Memorial.  We have taken many of you here when you visit us...Arkansas Post is about an hour from our home, and is the site of the first European settlement in Arkansas (an early version dated back to the late 1600s).  Most of you may be familiar with this location for other reasons--we usually take a spring picnic trip here, and this is where we photograph the alligators! To our pleasant surprise, the slough where we usually see the gators was chock-full of flowers...I'm not sure what species these are, but the yellow ones were everywhere, and there were also some very pretty purple ones, too!  In the picture ...