On Sunday, we went down to my Uncle Mike's house in Holmes county to celebrate my cousin Allan's 18th birthday. It makes me feel so old! Allan is really the first person that I watched grow all the way up from being a tiny baby. He is about to graduate and start college in the fall. It seems crazy!

Max and Jake had a great time playing at the party. They especially loved going out on the farm and seeing horses and cows. I was surprised that the kids weren't more scared of the animals. Max walked right up to them and stuck out his hands.






Max is doing well. He likes to color a lot lately. I will have to send some of his creations your way. I still have older photos of him that I keep meaning to send. I don't know where all of the time goes each day. One of his cuter habits lately it to hold up his juice cup or bottle and say, "cheers!" He is not eating as well as he used to anymore. Now that he can run and play, he does not want to sit and eat. He does like pizza and chicken. The other night he really devoured a bunch of broccoli (aka "bockleeeee").

As usual, I have been pretty busy at school. There was an abstract deadline last week for a conference in August. We managed to submit it in time but my next stressful deadline is preparing for my departmental seminar presentation. I have to prepare a 45-ish minute presentation on my research for the department of biomedical sciences. As I am still collecting data, I am rushing to include more of my results. It will be nerve-inducing but nice to get one more graduation requirement out of the way.