Bragg Family South

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy new year--Bragg Family South certainly did!  The picture of the kids (and Bella, our cantankerous tabby) actually was taken just a few days back, right before Kenny returned to Michigan Tech to start his next semester. As always, we had a busy holiday season, full of music and events--such as the Monticello Christmas parade, pictured below (Stephen's high school marching band was in this parade, but I didn't get a good picture of him): We also helped with an educational/cultural program hosted by Preserve Arkansas (they are a statewide non-profit focused on preserving the cultural history of Arkansas), which was hosting a "Behind the Big House" program to recognize some of the contributions of the enslaved persons and their descendent communities who helped to build, maintain, and work behind the scenes of some of the big plantations operations in this state (see their webpage on this program for more details).  This...

Wow!  Hard to believe how fast fall of 2022 has gone by!  Seems like we only just started the summer, and then school was upon us...and now the Thanksgiving holiday week has come and gone and December's knocking on the door!  As always, a lot has happened this fall, much of which revolved around band for Stephen (marching band during the football season), as well as some marching in local parades: Stephen was also involved in a number of archeology-related activities, including practicing with his friends using an atlatl (spear thrower): This practice was a prelude to a competition he and his friends participated in...which I'll get to later.  Stephen and I also took advantage of having the Columbus Day federal holiday off to climb to the top of a peak called Pinnacle Mountain just outside of Little Rock: A tiring hike, for sure, but a spectacular view!  (And some pretty cool looking shortleaf pine, like the one growing out of the rocks by Stephen).  Stephe...

So what does the title of this blog post refer to?  The fact that Hope and I now have been blissfully wed for 26 years?  Or the wonderful bread pudding we indulged in when celebrating this event?  Both, really!  Hope and I took an evening off, let the kids get their fast food dinners, and then drove out to a local steakhouse named Taylors, in the middle of the boonies near Dumas, Arkansas, for some "dead cow" (as Hope so elegantly puts it!) and their renowned bread pudding...You can't imagine from this kinda blurry picture how good that dessert was!!! This fall has included some archeology, including some rather warm time manning a booth at a local fair to help promote our local archeological society chapter, to a later lab day or two, such as the one pictured below: to some site survey work on a historical cemetery and then the state-level Arkansas Archeological Society meeting...but more on that later!  Stephen has been heavily involved in marching band this f...