my boys growing up!

we've had quite a bit of excitement around here the past couple of days.

i found out monday that i got a part in Cinderella (same theatre where i've done all my other shows). i will be one of the stepsisters and one of my very best friends is cinderella. we've never done a show together, so we're so excited to get this chance!! i'm pumped about the part. when i was grace farrell in annie, well, she's just so sweet and soft spoken. i'm looking forward to being rude and obnoxious. i'm even supposed to have a loud horrible laugh with a snort at the end. pretty awesome.

even more exciting news; colby lost his first tooth on monday (monday was a big day for us)!!! the tooth fairy of course came to visit him and left him some money which he promptly deposited in his bank. he's his fathers son. i would have had that money spent before the tooth fairy had a chance to leave it!

the tooth next to the one he lost is loose, too, so it wont be long before he has a large hole right in the bottom center of his mouth. i love his new smile, but it reminds me that he's growing up. bittersweet.

we were at target the other day and he saw a baby pool and said, "mommy, baby pools are lame."

i was impressed that he used 'lame' correctly (probably thanks to the teenagers he's around at church all the time), and once again reminded that he's not a baby anymore.

he also told me that he's "pretty into rap music".

Lord, help me.

dinner conversation

first of all, let me address the blog picture.
i changed it a few days ago to one of the kids going down an inflatable water slide. they ewre in their underwear, and one of my friends sent me a text about my blog picture being risque. i know he was kidding (love ya, buddy) because thats what he does, but i wasnt crazy about the picture anyway. it was kind of blurry and too big for the page, so i took it down. my kids just havent been very photogenic lately. i have a few of them individually, but i feel like i have to post a picture of both of them or i'm playing favorites. i have two kids, not one. is that dumb?
anyway, so i thought i would make all you ladies jealous and put this one up for now. yes thats beth moore in the middle. thats pam, my pastors wife, on the right. this was taken at the top of masada in israel.
i promise i'll work on getting an awesomely adorable and fitting picture of my kids, but in the meantime this is what you have to look at. :-)

tonight at the dinner table colby said
colby: "when i get big i want to dance like a mexican."
me: (so. many. questions.) "why do you have to wait till you get big?"
colby: "because i have to learn it."
me: "and how do they dance?"
colby: "well, i know one of their dance moves."
me: "and what is that?"
colby: "you twirl and then grab a flower in your teeth and say 'voila!'"
me: "you mean ole'?"
colby: "oh yeah. thats it. OLE'!!"

a week at camp

allen is camp director for two weeks at a camp down near corpus this year.
we usually take our youth group there, but this year we went somewhere else, so this is two extra weeks on top of youth camp and mission trip.
that being said, allen asked if the kids and i would come one of the weeks and hang out so we could still kind of be together.
the kids and i had our own room (allens was two doors down) and pretty much did our own thing most of the week. a couple of the "band wives" were there and one of them has a little boy whos four, so he's right between colby and molly. the three of them had a great time playing together. that was a blessing because it rained most of wednesday and thursday, so the kids were able to keep each other entertained indoors.
this place we were at had SO. MANY. BUGS. colby was in paradise!
i dont know if there were more this year than in years past or if i was noticing them because colby pointed them out constantly. constantly.
caterpillars (crazy looking ones!), cicadas, moths, ants, dung beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, earthworms, toads and frogs (not bugs, but still cool), bombardier beetles, click beetles, lady bugs, doodle bugs, wasps, hornets....and thats just off the top of my head. i'm sure i could think of more if i sat here long enough.
my mom (she was one of the Bible study leaders so she was there too) and colby came up with this idea of starting a bug show where colby would pick one bug each week and tell us all about it. i could film it and post it on a bug blog. he could become one of those people that gets discovered on youtube and gets his own show on discovery kids or something.
we'll see how that goes.....right now its still just an idea. we dont have very many exciting bugs here in round rock. not in our yard anyway.
on the way home (about a 3 & 1/2 hour drive) molly kept saying
molly: "mommy, are we still where we're at?"
me: "yes molly. we're still where we're at."
molly: [big sigh. full body pout.]
i loved that. it doesnt make any sense. she was basically asking if we were any closer to home. but thats the only way she knew how to phrase it.

the other day, well let me say this first...
sometimes, ok a lot of times, colby will irritate his sister. he wont necessarily start out trying to irritate her, but in the process of him playing or doing whatever it is he's doing, she'll get annoyed and do this screamy, screechy thing that absolutely unnerves me. (we're working on that by the way. the screaming.) however instead of stopping whatever it is that driving her to the potentially glass shattering noise, he keeps on and keeps on.
which makes me say something like
me: "colby! do you want to irritate your sister?
colby: "no."
me: "because thats what you're doing. do you like that noise she's making?"
colby: "no."
me: "then stop irritating her!"
...and back to where i started...the other day we're in the car and they're playing in the backseat (while securely fastened in their booster seats, mind you.) and i hear molly say
molly: "colby! do you want to irritate me? cause thats what you're doing."
except irritate was kind of jumbled, because that word is entirely too big for her three year old mouth.
that girl. i have no words.

so allens back at the camp again this week. then he's home for a week, then off to alaska for mission trip.
i have an audition in a week and a half for cinderella at the theatre. i'm looking forward to it. i think. i havent really thought about a whole lot to be honest. i should probably get on that.

thats whats been going on around these parts.

kid conversations

a friend and former youth is leaving for school in boston in a week, and today we went to a going away lunch for him.
colbys friend becca was there. i've mentioned her on here before. they were in the same mothers day out class almost 2 years ago now. they were 'boyfriend and girlfriend' at the time, but dont see each other much anymore, because shes a year older than he is, so shes in a different class at church and of course they arent in school together. so they've grown apart. yes i realize they're five (therein lies the humor), and yes i'm going somewhere.
so as i was saying, becca was there today, and she and colby found one another and picked up right where they left off. they're both like shrunk down mini adults in the way they talk to each other, and as i was sitting next to them at the table i was cracking up at their conversations.

becca: "how old is molly now, colby?"
colby: "she's three."
becca: "wow! three? and she's that big?!?"
(side note: molly is a perfectly normal sized three year old. just sayin.)
colby: "yeah, i know. and she doesnt even drink that much water."

later i heard this...
colby: "theres a wasp that injects its egg into a grub and when the egg hatches it eats the grub from the inside. i would love to see that in real life some time."
becca: "yeah. that would be pretty cool."

ah, young love.

bugs, bugs, bugs!!

i don't think i could possibly know any more about bugs than i do at this moment.
colby is freakishly obsessed with bugs. like, even more than he was with sea animals, and i thought that was pretty intense.
his room is decorated in bugs, he reads books about bugs, he watches documentaries about bugs, he looks for bugs, he talks about bugs, he shares bug facts with random strangers (the lady in the checkout line at HEB, or the cashier at the yogurt shop). i could keep going.
dont get me wrong. i think its funny, and hes truly passionate about it, but when we're eating in a restaraunt and he very loudly (because thats the only way he knows how to talk, just like his papaw) starts up about how bugs digest their prey, it can be a little much, if not for me, then for those sitting around us trying to enjoy their meal.

we were on our way to church sunday morning and he asked me
colby: "mommy, whats your favorite parasite?"
me: "uuummmm.....well. i've never really thought about it."
colby: "wanna know what mine is?"
me: "sure."
colby: "its the one that lives on the mosquito and when the mosquito bites you the parasite crawls into the wound and lives in your stomach. i cant remember what its called."
me: "wow, ok. why do you like that one?"
colby: "i just like the way it looks. its cute, like a little worm."
me: "you like the way it looks? did you see it on one of your bug shows?"
colby: "yep! on that one that you recorded for me on animal planet."
(yes, i DVR anything about bugs for him. ok, so i encourage it...a little.)
me: "well, i dont think i have a favorite parasite."
colby: "thats ok."
me: "thanks."

he's also told me that he wants to turn his room into a bug and parasite labratory. he wants to be an entomologist (study bugs) when he grows up, but he wants to work at home. Lord, help me.

on the other hand, i've been able to use his love for bugs to get him to pracitce his reading.
just today i told him
me: "colby, if you want to be a bug scientist, you have to be able to read."
colby: "but why? i dont like reading."
me: "you have to know what kind of bugs you're dealing with and you have to know how to take care of them. if you can read you wont be able to figure any of that out."
colby: "alright. lets read, then."

we also pray for the bugs at bedtime.
we thank God for the bugs (and sea animals too, still...for now), and he prays that molly will stop stepping on them and squishing them.

i may make that prayer list before too much longer. we are down to 2 hissing cockroaches. we started with 5 about a year ago. how i've managed to involuntarily kill cockroaches.....
well, maybe he wont want to keep his bug labratory here after all, once he knows i'm a bug murderer.

rest in peace, cockroaches. i'm sorry i failed you.

i'm siiiinging in the.....bathroom.

molly has this thing she does where she sings what shes doing. or while shes playing with her dolls, they dont talk to each other, they sing to each other. like opera...kind of.
she doesnt really care much for singing in general, as far as, like, actual songs. but the girl keeps a running musical dialogue between her toys. its awesome.
the other day she was using the bathroom, and asked to be left alone (implying she would be there for awhile). i went into the living room, or the kitchen or somewhere and got involved in doing something, when i hear her in the bathroom singing. LOUD.
i grabbed my camera and rushed in there to get it on tape.
excuse the slight shaking. i was trying to hold in my laugh, which has physical ramifications.
notice the 'air freshener microphone,' and the "bom, bom" at the end.
and no, i dont know what shes saying, but she means business, i do know that.

still there?

so it's been almost a month since i blogged and i am sooo sorry. sorry for those of you that check in to see what we've been up to and sorry for my kids in 20 years when they wonder what the heck happened from may 10th to june 5th in 2010. they probably wont care, but i like to think they might be just a little interested.

not much had been going on in the everyday lives of the frans clan. the kids had their last soccer games today. colby was not terribly into this season (no surprise to us), and molly had fun once she warmed up to it. until today, the last game, allen had to be on the field with her at all times. when the season started he had to literally carry her by her under arms around the field and kind of fling her feet at the ball hoping for some contact. she cried a lot and begged us not to make her play, but a) shes the one that wanted to play in the first place and b) we wanted her to learn that when you make a commitment, you keep it. after two or three games like that we told her she didnt have to play anymore if she didnt want to, but she would still wear her uniform and go support her teammates from the sidelines. once we told her that, it was like a little switch went off. we were no longer making her do something; she had a choice. her choice was to play, but while holding daddy's hand. every game she became a little less attached to him, and then today she didnt need him at all. she even almost scored a goal which was good enough for us to cause a small celebration from the spectator section. :-)

i doubt organized sports will be in colbys near future. it doesnt really seem to be his thing. we may try karate and next year, swim team. he loves swimming and is about to start private lessons. maybe by next summer he'll be ready to join a team. we'll give molly the option to do soccer again in the fall. her coach wants her back. i really want to look into dance for her, or gymnastics for both of them. but all that stuff costs money, so we'll see.

i returned monday from a trip to the holy land with a group of women from houston, led by beth moore. i mentioned it on here, well, about a month ago.
it was an amazing experience to say the very least. beth spoke at least once a day, and i recorded all but one of the sessions so i can listen to them again and again.
people have asked me what was my favorite part about the trip and i think the coolest and most impacting...impactful...thing is that now when i read my Bible, i can actually see the places it talks about. capernaum, sea of galilee, mount of olives, dead sea, ceasarea phillipi; i've been to all of them. pretty cool.

the kids are growing like crazy.
we finished up our first year of homeschooling a couple weeks ago, and i would call it a success. colbys reading at probably a first grade level and loves to learn about anything science-y. technically he's not even supposed to start kindergarten till this fall, but he has such an early birthday, that i started a year early. so we're head of the game. we found out that we got into a homeschool co-op here in round rock. 18 (i think) families applied and only 7 got in, so we're really excited about that. colby will be going to the co-op on fridays, where i'll be teaching K-2nd P.E., and molly will be doing preschool 3 days a week at the academy at our church.
we have a busy fall ahead of us, so we're really relaxing this summer. lots of swimming!

i will try not to be as absent anymore. i've been sitting here for two hours trying to get all my pictures uploaded to facebook, so i'm not going to upload them here right now, but i will post some soon. OR, you can friend me on FB and look at them there. amy hamontree frans.

have a blessed weekend!!!