Josie is officially three years old!!! It is hard to believe how fast time flies. She had about the best birthday she could have asked for. We spent the weekend at the lake and in Pittsburg where she saw a lot of family, including her hero cousin Lane:), and had two birthday parties. On her actually birthday, Henry and I took ice cream to her class at school and had a party with them. It was a lot of fun and Josie really enjoyed us meeting her new friends. It is so amazing to see her there. She is really in her element. 
It seems like both kids have really grown up a lot lately. Henry and I are spending pretty much every morning outside since the weather has been absolutely wonderful. He is definitely all boy, running around, climbing, going down the slide, and chasing the dogs. Most days he is barely making it through lunch awake:) We have several kindergarten and first grade boys in our neighborhood and Henry is following them around a lot. Sometimes I look at him and think what a great life he has. Plays all day and gets lots of loving.
Josie has made tremendous progress in her signing, particularly over the last two weeks. She is signing very fast and signing four to five sign sentences. She is also fingerspelling her name a lot, which is really cute (you will see her do this in the video below). I often find her signing away talking about what she did at school or outside. She is also signing "ok" more, which is fingerspelling "o" and "k". If I tell her she has to wait for something or we are going to do something later, she will sign "ok". It is really exciting to see her communicating so much. Chad and I are sometimes having trouble understanding her, but I think the teachers are too. They said this is common as she practices all the signs she is seeing at school and she will get more accurate with time. Chad has been taking a night class at Josie's school two evenings a week to learn more sign and he is bring home a lot of good lessons for both of us. It was a little intimidating at first because his teacher is deaf, so it really puts him on the spot to use sign and no voice. I'm really proud of how far he has come and that he is sticking it out. He doesn't necessarily look forward to sitting inside when the weather is so nice, but he is finding that he is enjoying it.
Chad recently redid our backyard to make the swing set more accessible for Josie and set up a sand/water table she got for her birthday. It has resulted in a lot of kids coming over to play. The first night I think we had nine kids over. Josie and Henry just love it. Initially, Josie was a little uncomfortable with all the activity, but she has really grown to like having all the kids around. She is always signing friends and there is a four year old next door that will walk around the yard holding Josie's hand. Josie just looks like she is in heaven:) Several of the kids are asking me about signing and Chad and I are teaching them some basic signs. Henry seems to be learning some advanced skills from the boys that I'm not quite ready for like sliding down head first from the fort, but he really enjoys playing with them.
This week Josie had Monday off for the Easter holiday so Nana came up and we took the kids to the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. They had a blast and it was so different from last year, since they are both walking. Henry got kissed by a pig and Josie went down the big slide, so overall it was a successful trip:)
