checking in...catching up...and a new video...

We are so enjoying our summer!  I think we have had a perfect balance of days with plans and thing to do and lazy days without plans and playing outside with friends.  However, when I turned the page to August on Monday (I know I was a few days late) I realized that we only had 3 more weeks until school started and I panicked.  My immediate reaction was, 'Oh no, I only have 3 weeks of summer left'.  The boys were also sad to learn summer was almost over.  So I'm taking that as a sign that we've done a good job with our summer so far.

We have taken 3 trips, which I will blog about separately, and crossed off a lot of activities on our summer fun list.  So August will have a slower pace than June and July, but I think it will be great for our family.  I'm also working on my annual update post about Grace, you can read last year's update here.  It is amazing to see how much she has changed and grown in the past year.  I say grown lightly, because at a recent doctors appointment they told us she is in the 2% for height.  Which totally cracks me up because everyone (and I do mean everyone) comments on how tall she looks.  I think it may be because she is crazy skinny for her age or maybe it's because she is so developmentally delayed that she acts like a toddler but is really 7 years old.  Any way whatever the reason, it cracks me up.

Speaking of Grace.  Last year we came across a video that Grace really liked and we watched it a lot.  We like to think that we were a large part of why this video was viewed over 2 million times.  As I've mentioned before, Grace is completely non-verbal but really musical and keeps a beat better than most.  She also has begun to 'sing' to songs by making the intonation of words, so we like to say she sings along to songs now.  Here she is watching the video and 'singing' along to Happy while she eats breakfast.

Well, Chris Rice released another tap dance video this week and it was just as good if not better.  We have watched this video almost constantly since it came out (and that's no joke).  The boys have decided that John is Chris and Luke is Clay Thomson and they make up dance steps to all kinds of songs now.  We all tried to do a handstand today, based on Clay's walking handstand at the end of the video, and I have to say that mama still has it.  I'm sure Mr. Noble, my first gymnastics coach, would be proud that I can still do handstands and cartwheels at my advanced age.  I didn't take pictures of that but here are all 3 kids watching last years video, which we still watch all the time.

The boys then decided that they wanted to help fund Chris's next project (and yes, my family is a little obsessed with Chris and Clay), so we clicked over to kickstarter and gave a little something.  John wanted to give $2,500 so we could be in his next video and get a dance lesson but that was a little out of our budget.  They are so proud that we are now patrons of the arts and still want to visit Chris and Clay in NYC (my boys act like we actually know these guys instead of just creeping  following them on line).  I'm sorry to say that neither one of my boys wants to sign up for dance lessons, no matter how much I beg them to sign up.  So it looks like we will have to continue watching Chris's videos.  Check it out, I think you'll enjoy it.  However, now the kids all walk around signing Happy and I can't get it out of my head, no matter how much 80's grunge rock I listen to).

Hope you like this video as much as we do!  #Tappy