david and goliath...colbys version

colby did fantastic at his first day of "school".
allen took him so i could finish getting myself ready; allen will take him pretty much every day (well, the days he goes) since he has to be at work 30 minutes later only 2 floors up.
my mom had to pick him up since we were in waco for the funeral. she said he had a great day and he stayed on green (the happy face on the chart). i called my friend shelly to see if she had any insight to the day. she works up there at the school and was actually in/near colbys room this morning assisting with traffic flow. she said she didn't see him much during the day, but that his teacher came up to the library where shelly was working and said "i'm taking colby home with me." so i take that as a good sign. :)
when we got home i asked colby what he learned at school and he told me that he learned about goliath, but he couldnt tell me the story because its too scary.
i tried again at bedtime...

me: "colby, tell me about goliath."
colby: "its too scary mommy."
me: "was he a giant?"
colby: "yes!! he was mean."
me: "what happened to him?"
colby: silence.....
me: "was there someone named david?"
colby: "yes!! david killed goliath because he was mean."
me: "did he hit him with something?"
colby: "with a bat."
me: "a bat?" (i didnt know they played baseball in biblical times)
colby: "yeah, david hit him with a bat and then cut his legs off." (hmm, not quite...)
me: "his legs?"
colby: "yeah, and his face. then he threw them in the water." (this was followed by a lot of big hand motions and loud sound effects)

i proceeded to "clear up" the story, turning the bat into a slingshot and a rock. i also gave goliath back his legs and face, and instead took his entire head from the neck up.
colby agreed that this was, in fact, the version that he heard. glad thats taken care of. i'll be interested to see what he does with the fire-y furnace....

oh, and to top off my last few days, i got a speeding ticket on the way to the funeral this morning, with allen in the car, so that made it that much worse. not that allen reacted badly at all, but i just hate disappointing my husband!! so now i have to take defensive driving, which i'm sure will be loads of fun.

.....aw, man, i should have told the officer i was "speeding for Jesus!!"

sigh...

it's just been one of those days.
one of those weeks actually....and its only tuesday.

i went to the american idol concert with haley sunday night. we left right after church to drive to houston, making a stop in brenham to antique (yes, it can be a verb) and have some ice cream. you can't stop in "the home of blue bell ice cream" without having a scoop...or two. :)
when we got to houston we parked about 2 or 3 blocks from the toyota center in an area with a lot of restaraunts. we figured we could eat and then walk to the concert. we had about an hour and a half before go time. too bad all the restaraunts, yes all of them, were closed. apparently that end of town is "pretty quiet" on sundays. i guess they didnt get the memo that we were going to be there!! actually there was an italian place open "in honor of the concert", but they were backed up and wouldnt have had the food out in time for us to eat and get out.
so haley and i headed over to the venue and split a $9 chicken finger basket. not exactly what we had in mind, but i guess you make due with what you're given.
the concert was, eh. good music. bad format. not worth blogging about.

i got a text from allen at midnight on our way home that his uncle james had passed away. we were expecting this, as he has been sick for awhile (cancer), but that doesnt make it any better.
allen was in waco all day yesterday to help with arrangements (he's 'the man in charge'), and went back this afternoon for the viewing. the funeral is at 2pm tomorrow. waco and back 3 days in a row! yikes.

i had a meeting this morning that i had already bailed on because i've been hosting a summer bible study on tuesday mornings at my house. i ended up cancelling on them too, because i had sooo much to do today that i didnt get done yesterday. the kids basically spent 2 days in the car running errands with me, and not fun errands either. the ones you hate doing, where you load the kids up, then unload them to stand in line at the post office, then load back up to go stand in line at the bank, then load back up to go....you get the picture. they were troopers. actually molly was a pill, but colby did pretty good. molly likes the word "no", even if she doesnt mean it. i'll ask her to hold something and she'll tell me "no", but then hold it anyway. and she's very independent and stubborn. it made for quite an afternoon.

to top it off, tomorrow is colbys first day of preschool. ahhh!! i'm actually doing ok with it.
he'll be at the academy at our church, in the same room he's been in for sunday school the past year, and i know his teacher. i honestly don't think it could be any better. i am bummed that i won't get to pick him up from his first day, though; we'll be at the funeral in waco. my mom is taking care of us as usual though, so grammie will be a nice surprise for him when he's done.
i've been going through my mental checklist of all the things i need to have to send him off tomorrow morning, and listening to the vince gill song that i've had about 24 hours to learn before i sing it at the funeral tomorrow.

i'm sure i'll have some colby "preschool stories" later this week.
keep us in your prayers.

deep thoughts with colby

we went to a wedding tonight of 2 former youth groupies. it was an outdoor wedding and the weather was great (before it started raining...i think. i left before that happened). we took a chance and decided to take the kids. i hate paying a babysitter for something we have to go to. not that we had to go to the wedding, but, well you know what i mean...hopefully. :)
anyway, the kids did pretty good i guess, considering they're just shy of 2 and 4. the ace in the hole was my parents (grammie and papaw) were there. dad was in the back running sound so molly hung out most of the time with him. colby lingered around the koi pond and i spent the evening praying he wouldn't fall in headfirst. or anythingfirst for that matter.
allen left right after the wedding for another "thing" he had planned to go to and i was going to stick around for another half hour, just long enough to hug the happy couple and get a piece of cake. not long after he left, i got a phone call from him, "it's pouring in round rock and it's headed your way." then i started to feel the occasional be it ever so small raindrop. that was my cue to leave. i did not want to be caught in a storm (in a white dress) with 2 small children. amen?

when i was putting colby to bed i said something about seeing grammie and pawpaw, and he quickly corrected me,
colby: "no, not pawpaw. papaw." (not that you can tell how they're pronounced by reading this, but they are different. pawpaw is my grandfather.)
me: "oh, i'm sorry."
colby: "pawpaw is the one with the stretched out neck, remember?"
me: "you're right."
colby: "papaw has a neck like mine. did you see two of us with the same neck there?"
me: "yes, i saw that you have the same neck as papaw."
colby: "yeah i do. that's great. you know what i'm thankful for?"
me: "what?"
colby: "i'm thankful for all the mean sharks and all the nice sharks." (i'm not sure how he got here from the neck thing, but whatever.)
me: "well, thats good. the mean ones are important too."
colby: "i'm thankful for all the important things."
me: "thats pretty much everything."
colby: "it is??"
me: "everything is important in its own way."
colby: "even bad things?"
me: "well, not directly, but sometimes indirectly bad things are important too." (it's too late for this kind of discussion!)
colby: "what?"
me: "the bible says that God works all things together for good for those that love Him, so even though something may be bad, God can use it for good. that would be indirectly."
colby: "like mean sharks?"
me: "exactly."


here are some pics from our vacation....

vacation part 2

we got back from the rest of our vacation this afternoon, and i've been trying to catch up. the downside of vacation is the stuff you have to do when you get home--sorting through mail, laundry, email, etc. i have to get my head screwed back on and get myself back into the daily grind.

i'm leaving in the morning to meet mimi and papa in giddings to pick up molly. we originally planned to drive through houston on our way home today and get her. we didn't realize houston was completely not on the way home and an extra 5 & 1/2 hours out of the way. wow! thanks to mimi and papa for being flexible and willing to bring molly back to us!

the second half of our vacation was i think better than the first half. a good way to wrap it all up. we got a phone call on the way down to corpus that we had a hotel room waiting for us at the omni bayfront and tickets to the corpus christi hooks game that night! wow!! we are so blessed and thankful for that!! we had a great time and all colby kept saying about the hotel was, "this is so great!" we were on the 17th floor with an ocean view and the softest bed i have ever slept in! tuesday morning we went to the texas state aquarium. it was amazing and i'm sooo glad we went there after the dallas aquarium. we saw the dolphin show and the bird show (at which i was an audience volunteer) and hit the beach for a few minutes afterwards, just so we can say we went. that afternoon we went to the backyardigans live tour. allen and i thought it was a little cheesy. colby loved it, but honestly nickelodeon, you can do better than that!

we met friends for dinner and then back to the hotel where i fell asleep the same time colby did (about 9pm). i guess i was tired.

now i'm trying to get my brain to not need something sweet after dinner, or at least before i go to bed. i have been conditioned in the last 6 days to need dessert. i stopped on the way to church tonight to get a vanilla cone from mcdonalds. i must be stopped.

i'll post pictures in the next...well honestly i dont know when i'll get them on here, but i will.

no significant conversations with colby in the last few days. although this evening at dinner he told me the difference between people and penguins is that penguins have feathers. in case you were wondering....

pics from our trip to seaworld a couple weeks ago....

feeding the lorikeets. the coolest thing we did that day by far. if you ever go to sea world you have to do this!!!

vacation part 1

we left thursday for our family (minus molly) vacation. it's more of a colby vacation and allen and i are along for the ride. we left molly with mimi because she's not quite old enough to be fun on these little adventures yet. nap time is a bummer when you're trying to cram as much as you can into one afternoon.
we got a cameron park season pass back in the spring from the waco zoo. this card allows us free access to the waco zoo, dallas zoo, dallas aquarium, among others around the state of texas, and half price at the san antonio zoo and texas state aquarium in corpus. we thought we'd get our money's worth from the pass and take advantage of the free and half price admission to a few of these places--especially with colby's current infatuation with marine animals.
so i planned, well semi-plan but more make it up as we go along, a trip to dallas followed by a trip to corpus; yes, two completely different directions, but we're trying to get it all in while sans molly.

we headed out late thursday morning, and after a brief stop in waco to leave molly with mimi, we were on our way to the metroplex. our plan was to stay with pollard (a good friend of allen's) thursday and friday night. when we got close we gave him a call and he gave us directions to brads house where we would be playing some odd game that i had never seen and probably never will see again. this game involved hours (3 to be exact, before we shut it down for lack of time) of conquering planets and fighting space pirates and trying to build space stations and whatnot. now, i enjoy games, but like word games and embarrasing humor games. spaceships and galaxies far far away? not so much. it actually ended up being pretty fun and colby sat quietly (mostly) on the floor and played until we were done. allen went on to the rangers game with pollard and colby and i found the nearest movie theatre and saw WALL-E.

friday we went to the fort worth zoo. not part of our season pass thingy but i think its common knowledge that the fort worth zoo makes the dallas zoo look like a pet store, and since we were about the same distance from both, we opted for the better. very cool zoo. the "shark tank", which didn't actually have a shark at all, and the penguin exhibit were pathetic, but other than that, it's a great place and i would go back. i kept having to tell colby to stop correcting people....

random person A: "hey, look at the cow!"
colby: "excuse me, thats a longhorn."

random person B: "is that a shark?"
colby: "its a spotted wobbegong."

me both times: "colby, shhh!"

for the record, he was right, but i don't want him to be that kid. he's too smart for his own good sometimes....

saturday we headed to the dallas aquarium. the list i received with my cameron park pass lists "dallas aquarium" as part of the deal. if you google dallas aquarium you will pull up many links to the Dallas World Aquarium which is not the aquarium the card gets you in to. i did not know this. i googled, i got directions, and that was that. we got up. we got ready. we put the address into our GPS and we drove 30 minutes to the dallas world aquarium. we paid $5 to park and walked the 2 blocks to the entrance where we waited in line for our turn to get in for free.......then i was given the bad news rather rudely from the window attendant...
rude aquarium lady: "we don't honor other passes."
me: "my list said this was good fo--" (thats me being interrupted)
rude aquarium lady: "this is for the dallas zoo and the dallas aquarium. this is the dallas WORLD aquarium. we don't accept this here."
then i see that its $20 per person to get in, and i thought, well we can't be that far from the right place. let's go there for free. i apologized to my son and my husband for taking us to the wrong place and they were very forgiving and not too upset about the $5 we had just stuffed into the parking meter.
then we went to the dallas aquarium. i love our GPS system. not sure what we would have done without that thing to tell us where the heck we were and where we needed to go.
however, the aquarium at fairpark (the right place) was $4 and probably not even worth that. my house is bigger, and there may be more fish in the tank at my dr's office than there were at this place. they advertised the piranah feeding at 2:30, giving them a chance for redemption. sadly, to the disappointment of the tens of people somewhat eagerly crowded around the tank, there were approximately 4 small dead fish thrown in and half-heartedly eaten by the obviously over-fed piranahs. one lady standing close by suggested they starve them a little bit so we could at least see a good fight. at the risk of PETA coming after me, i concur.
fortunately we were on the fairgrounds where any type of museum you would ever want to go to is located, so we paid our money to get into the natural history museum/science place/childrens museum; 1 price includes all. we spent the rest of the day there, taking a break between buildings for lunch, and topping the afternoon off letting colby get soaked to the bone in an outdoor fountain outside the aquarium (not the world aquarium). pretty fun, but we ended up saving a whopping $11 with our card. we tried to talk colby into the dallas zoo, but he told us he had already been to the zoo. who were we to argue? it's his vacation.
we stayed saturday night in rowlett with some friends of my family from about 18 years ago, and had dinner with them in addition to a handfull of people that my family used to "run around with" back in the day. it was great to reminisce and catch up.
on our way home today we listened to a sermon on allens ipod. he can't stand the weirdness of not being in chuch on sunday, so that was the compromise. my days all run together and i never know if i'm coming or going, so it doesnt bother me as much.
the pastor was talking about peter, and colby was listening along as much as his almost 4-year-old brain would let him...
colby: "is he talking about peter pan?"
me: "no, not peter pan. a different peter."
colby: "i know! he's talking about peter that turns into spiderman."
me: "no, not peter parker; peter the disciple."
colby: "peter pan was a disciple."
me: "no he wasn't."
allen: "peter pan was a flying boy."
me: "the disciples were the guys that followed Jesus around."
colby: "oh, ok."
so now we're home and we leave tomorrow morning for the second half of our trip.
we're going to the texas state aquarium and the backyardigans live tour in corpus, and will probably hit the beach for a couple of hours in there somewhere too.
i'll blog about the rest of our vacation (and post some pictures) when we get back!

but: the conjunction

i'm putting colby to bed night before last and he wants to hold my hand while he falls asleep.
very sweet, yes, but i had just put a topcoat on my nails and they were still a little tacky.
i didn't say anything, i figured i could just touch up later if i needed to. but he noticed that, fingers spread don't touch anything stiffness of my hand....

colby: "are your nails still wet, mommy?"

me: "yes, love. a little bit. just be careful."

colby: "but not your toenails?"

me: "no. my toenails are dry. i didn't paint them."

colby: "not the bottom but(t)."

me: "what?"

colby: "i said but, but it wasn't the bottom."

me: "i know. you said but the conjunction."

colby: "cunjkin?"

me: "conjunction. if you say but and it's not the bottom, it's a conjunction, and thats ok. like if i say 'i love chocolate milk, but i love you more,' thats a conjunction."

colby: "but if i say the bottom but(t), then i get in trouble."

me: "usually, yes."

colby: "and two things can happen if you get in trouble."

me: "what two things?"

colby: "time out, or you get swallowed by a whale. that's what happened to Jonah. he got swallowed by a whale because he didn't follow directions."

well, that about sums it up. out of the mouths of babes.

i've attached some recent pictures for your viewing pleasure.

i'll post our sea world trip sometime this week. haven't downloaded those yet.

baking brownies. they got to lick the beaters.

molly was beyond excited about the whole experience...

all decked out for our 80's-themed party.

yes, shelly is fully aware that you can see thru her sweater.

it's intentional (tsk tsk). ;-)

why can't i dress like this all the time???

speeding for Jesus

last saturday (yes it's taken me that long to get on here and blog about it) we had a one-day ladies retreat about love. it was actually a Retreat in a Box hosted by Beth Moore. i was one of the two ladies putting the event together and answering questions as the event approached. i had one lady ask "is beth moore actually coming to speak?!" and i said, "not for $15 a person she's not!" it was a fair question. the fliers posted around the church said Loving Well with Beth Moore...or something to that affect. so i guess i can see how someone might hopefully think that she might, for less than $1000 come here from Houston and speak on love....
i digress.

i was on my way home from an awesome day. the Lord really spoke to my heart about how to love others, not judging them, forgiveness, etc. and i was just in a really great place mentally, spiritually and emotionally at the days end.
so i'm on my way home and i'm in my car with the music off (how did i let that happen???) just thinking back over the day and what all i learned and heard and how great it was when i realize i'm doing about 55mph in a 35! have you ever been so completely focused on something other than driving when in fact thats exactly where your focus should be? i mean, the driving portion of my brain might as well not have even been in the car with me at that moment.
i do have somewhat of a heavy foot (you have a 5 to 10mph cushion, right dad?), but this particular road is one you absolutely do not want to speed on; especially in the spot where i realized i was truckin along a tad to briskly.
so i hit the breaks to take it down to a comfortable if not downright cautious 38ish.
then i start thinking, what if i had been pulled over? the police officer always asks "ma'am, where are you going in such a hurry?" or something like that. what would i say? "sorry officer. i was talking to God and driving 20 miles over the speed limit (which is actually only 10 miles over because you have that cushion i mentioned earlier). i'm not really in any hurry. i'm just not paying attention to what i'm doing." or i could just cut right to the chase and say, "sir, i was speeding for Jesus."
this is the thought process that ensued...

thought A: that would be perfect because then i could witness to him!

thought B: i could totally mention Jesus anytime i might possibly get pulled over and witness to all the police officers!

thought C: they might not want to hear it so then they'd stop pulling me over for fear of being witnessed to.....

thought of all thoughts for the day: i could drive as fast as i want because i would be 'that crazy frans lady that witnesses to you if you pull her over!' either that or i'll single handedly lead all the williamson county police officers to Christ! why have i never thought of this before?!?

yes, this is how my sick mind works.

i'll let you know how it turns out. :)

and for the record, i have never been pulled over for speeding; only running stop signs. there are so many of those things though! they can't mean it all the time!