Happy Birthday, America! Happy Beer Day, World!

We celebrated the 4th of July with Cousin Jordan and her parents with dinner here at the house.  Scarlett is enamored with sweet Baby J.  Can you blame her?  Just look at this little firecracker!

Kisses for Jordan.

Cousin-ly love!

Max observed the love fest from his new favorite vantage point -- standing up!  (With a little help from Daddy and the coffee table.)

And then just a little over one month later, we celebrated the Fifth of August with Cousin Jordan and her entourage (this time, her Grandma and Grandpa came along, as well as her parents, plus Scarlett and Max's Grandma and Paw were in town to boot).  So, maybe it's not a holiday, but it was fun to be together nonetheless.  

**Wait a minute, scratch that!  I just looked it up, and as it turns out, August 5th is International Beer Day!  And coincidentally, Max crawled for the first time that day ... after a beer bottle!  It was an empty beer bottle.  Does that make it less shameful?  I mean come on -- it was International Beer Day after all, what do you expect?  It was kismet, really.  I didn't get any photos of it, but Jeni did, so hopefully I'll be able to share the photographic evidence soon.**      

And what a difference a month makes ... here's Baby Jordan one month older looking so grown up.

Cousins!