You've Gotta Start Somewhere!

Of course every parent believes their child is destined for greatness. We are no exceptions. We, of course, strongly believe that Max is the smartest, wittiest, most charming, funniest little guy on Earth and we are certain that he will do great things one day, resulting in his inevitable fame and fortune.

But, everyone has to start somewhere. And Max's start came in the form of a Barbecue festival in good ole Greenwood, SC. On July 12th, we packed up and headed to Greenwood in hopes of accomplishing 2 things: catching up with Chris's "American family", the Bosarges, who live in Greenwood; and checking out the SC Festival of Discovery, where Chris hoped to see some bigwig barbecue king (sorry, Chris, I don't remember the guy's name...epic failure on my part).

Task #1 was a success. We got to spend some time at the Bosarges' house, catching up with Fed and Bev, as well as their daughter and her family. Max had a grand time playing with her boys and with all the toys Bev hauled downstairs for him.

Task #2 was semi-successful. It was about 4:30 or so by the time we got to the downtown location where the festival was being held. I quickly realized that I had been living with the misconception that Columbia, SC was the "armpit of the state" (ie, the hottest and muggiest place on Earth). Oh how wrong I was. Downtown Greenwood, SC in mid July is hotter than the surface of the Sun. It was so hot that I literally felt as if the backs of my legs were frying as we walked from booth to booth. I had NO interest in eating any barbecue; and in fact, it was so bad that I didn't even have any interest in stopping at a ice cream booth! (That's bad!)

Chris was dismayed to discover that most of the booths were closing up shop for the day already; and we could not locate the guy he really wanted to check out. However, we did find this cute guy, and Max made a friend:

There also happened to be a newspaper photographer hanging out under the awning at this booth, and he took some shots of Max and asked if Max would like to be in the newspaper. Max said yes and the photog told us to check out the Greenwood paper the next day because Max might be in there. I mean, look at Max Hollywood here: of course you would put that sweet face in the paper!

Shortly thereafter, we headed on out of Greenwood without having tasted so much as a shred of pork (get it? probably not). We did stop at the McDonald's on the way out of town for some blizzards, however. Day complete.

Thanks to the Bosarges and a coworker of Chris's, we did manage to find out that Max made the paper! A star is born! Watch out world! Oh, you've never heard of the Greenwood Index-Journal? That's ok, everyone's gotta start somewhere.