Even Stronger than the Ninja Turtles . . . and other random iPhone photos of the summer

One of Maya's favorite activities in our house is to splash or dump things in the dogs' water bowl - from toys to baby dolls, it's an open water container at her level just asking to make a mess.  So while we normally pick up their water in the morning as soon as Maya beelines for it, we leave their empty food bowls.  On this day, even the food bowls were tempting - 

Most of the time, she is a happy, exuberant girl.  But this is what happens when we tell her no.  Drama queen!

We lay out Collin's clothes on school days, but let him wear whatever he wants on Wednesdays when he's home with Grandma Libia.  I've come home to these outfits this summer - long sleeve sweaters and striped socks, too short shirts mixed with wool dress pants.  This is why we lay out his clothes when he goes out in public!

 

Of course he has to collect some sticks before he goes swimming -

Pre-swimming swing time -

When he wakes up in the morning, she rushes to him, on this day to sit in his lap.  Sweetness!

Our climber - we can't use the lego side of the table (since she pulls herself up with the center lego hole) until she learns not to fall!

A happy weeknight - dinner with B!

When in Austin for a girls weekend, I came upon my daughter's namesake boutique -

The first Saturday in August, our church participated in a family service project where we packed bags of food - rice, vitamins, dried vegetables and soy protein - to give to families in need across the world.  Collin and I attended and he did great.  By great I mean wherever he and I were positioned in the assembly line, we were always the bottleneck, he spilled his fair share of whatever he was packing, and he took several breaks.  But we packed food bags for 1 1/2 hours and he didn't complain, he didn't quit.  I was so proud of him and look forward to more service projects in the future!

In the weekend event, Houston volunteers packed over 1.25 million meals for families across the world.

Later that Saturday, we went to Lorenzo's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party.  Collin had been into the turtles for a few weeks before the party, and my mom tracked down my brother's old turtle toys that had been passed down to my cousins and were in my uncle's office.  They were dropped off at Aunt Debbie's house, which gave us an excuse to visit Debbie, Bryce and great grandma Jewell Rae. Maya had great fun -

And Collin was DELIGHTED by the new turtle action figures!

And speaking of Ninja Turtles, last Wednesday Grandma Libia noticed that a little gecko lizard snuck in the house when the door was open.  Collin was distraught at bedtime, so Collin's prayer ended like this:

"Dear God, we pray that You would fight the lizard.  You are the One, You are the strongest, You are even stronger than the Ninja Turtles, even stronger than Superman!"