I was never a small child. I stood half a head taller than my tallest classmates. I also had freakishly white-blond hair. My mother could always spot me in a crowd even when I was trying to hide from her.

One time at band camp…no I’m just kidding (anyone that hasn’t seen American Pie has no idea what I’m talking about here).  Anyway!  One time, when I had just started driving, but wasn’t old enough to be driving, I decided I could disguise myself by pulling down the visor.  Magically, that would make everyone assume I was my sister, who was old enough to drive.  I sort of forgot that my sister had dark hair and I had blazin’-freaky white hair.  I didn’t fool anyone, everyone spotted me right away.  I didn’t get in trouble for “borrowing” the car THAT time. I might of had a problem with taking the family vehicles and driving them around when I wasn’t supposed to, just sayin’.  It was a small town and I was bored, okay?! I could have been doing drugs or drinking, but my fascination was with driving.

Okay, back to being really tall as a kid and sticking out like a throbbing zit on the end of a large nose.

It seems my boys are starting to get a reputation as being a wee bit tall and also, not tiny.  Not that they’ve ever been tiny or short, but lately, they are shooting up like fireworks on the fourth of Jue-lie!

Clay did a little height calculator on our boys to guesstimate how tall they will be.  From oldest son to youngest the estimations were: 6’5″, 6’9″ and 6’7″.  Lord, seriously?  We will need to move into a larger house.  Now, I don’t know how far off those guesses will be, but I’m certain all the boys will surpass six feet without a problem.  Our oldest is about 6’2″ right now and he is just two months past his 15th birthday. He hears, “SETH!  I can’t believe how tall you have gotten!”  pretty much on a daily basis.

I’m thrilled that my boys will tower over me and make me look not quite so freakishly large in comparison to them.

So, can you pick out the Phillips boy in this class?  He’s taller than all the 1st graders and most of the 2nd graders…he’s in Kindergarten.

And how about the Phillips boy in this class?  He’s the tallest in his 3rd grade class and he’s taller than all the 4th graders and I suspect he might be taller than some of the 5th and 6th graders.

My boys are not hard to find in a crowd of their peers.  I don’t see that changing…well, ever.

My two oldest children recently participated in a production of Huckleberry Finn.  Seth played the part of Tom Sawyer. In this scene he’s telling his buddies the rules of the Tom Sawyer’s Gang.

I rehearsed lines with both my kids for their performance, but Seth refused to act out his scenes for me.  I would yell at him, “You have to act it!  You can’t just spout your lines!!!  Act!! ACT!!!!”  He would quietly, yet slightly irritatedly reply, “Mom.  I just want to say the lines.  I’ll act it later.”  Repeat that conversation about twenty times and you have a pretty good idea of how our evening would go every time we practiced for the play.

I think you can tell from these photos that he had no problem acting his part.  Next time I’ll just shut up and let him memorize his dadgum lines. He had me laughing so hard I was crying.

There weren’t enough kids to play all the parts, so some of the kids had multiple parts.  Ellen played four different characters. In this scene she’s Aunt Sally, it was one of  my favorite scenes.  It was really sweet to see my two kids acting on stage together.

Here’s another scene with Ellen as…uh…another old lady, but I can’t remember her name.  She also played a man and an angry lady chewing tobacco and throwing a shoe.  That girl is versatile to say the least.

This is when Tom gets shot and Aunt Sally is there to take care of him. Huck Finn was played by one of Seth’s good friends, he had an immense amount of lines to memorize, I think he only stalled one time through the entire play. I was so impressed by the entire cast.

Seth’s very last line came while he was recovering from a delirious fever caused by his gun shot wound. He was to say to Huck, “We had quite an adventure Huck.”  But instead he said, “We had quite an adventure Tom…..” then he paused for a second and said, “Huck.”  The audience cracked up.  Huck Finn played it off famously and said, “Your fever must be coming back…”

Taking their bow at the end.  They worked on the play for four months and you could tell. I was so proud of all of them and the audience loved it. Bravo!  Bravo!

I threw my camera at my 15yo son and told him to take photos of his little bothers hunting Easter eggs. I finally got them off my camera and was amazed at his approach behind the lens.

I should probably get him his own camera.  But, he has a history of losing things. He had a cell phone for less than a year before he lost it.  He keeps trying to convince me that having it for nine months was a loooooong time, like I should give him an award for keeping it that long. Before he lost it for good, he had lost is briefly more times than I can count. He also broke it.  So, unless I could get him a camera that has a tracking device on it and is indestructible, I probably won’t be buying him a camera.

But, he could buy himself a camera!  That is if he could find his wallet. For Christmas, two of his gifts were a wallet and a  belt.  Four months later for his birthday he received a wallet and a belt…..because he had lost his wallet and broke his belt.  Upon opening his birthday presents he said with a grin, “This is like Christmas all over again.”

You can probably imagine how I reply when he asks me if he can have a new phone or that he needs a new _____ because this ______ is broken and I lost _____.  Do you know that there is not one remote in my house with batteries in it?  Do you know why?  It’s because my younger sons keep breaking the back covers off the remotes and then the batteries won’t stay in.  We duct tape them close…they scrapes the tape off to get to the batteries to use in a different device. It’s maddening.  MADDENING.  I never watch TV, mostly because I can’t find a remote to work the darn thing!

I’m raising apes. Seriously, they dink with everything, break everything, lose EVERYTHING! And we are just getting started.  My oldest son is now 6’1″, he has no idea how big he is.  He’s like a baby that hits his head on everything after they start walking. I sympathetically tell him he has to be more careful when he’s moving through a crowd of people because he could really hurt someone if he bumps into them.  And watch the wing span…son, watch the wing span.

I have to admit he’s doing a good job of preparing me for the next two giant beastly boys that will be knocking down the walls of my house in a few years.  I should probably pack away all my breakable belongings now.

He sure took some neat photos though.  Maybe once he’s reached maximum height and learned how big he is in comparison to the world around him I can buy him a nice camera and stitch it to his hand.