easter 2012

we celebrated easter at church and then at mimi and poppy's house.  it ended up raining out our traditional outdoors easter egg hunt so we hunted inside instead this year.  these are a few of my favorite shots from the day.

their very own bibles for easter

already reading their bibles

happy easter!

Christ the Lord is risen today, alleluia!

christmas 2011 digest

christmas 2011 was wonderful.  it was just what we like for the holidays.  not too busy but fully engaged in celebrating the greatest gift we've ever received, Jesus.

christmas eve we celebrated with john's family via skype.  technology is simply amazing!  we set up the laptop so that they could watch the boys open their presents from them live!  it went smoothly and the boys were thankful for their gifts. 

talking on skype

noodle with a new school jacket

checking out a lego book

 we also baked and snacked on a birthday cake for Jesus.  we've never done this before and this was yet another attempt to remind burrito and noodle to not only think about the presents they were opening, but to also think about the gift of Jesus.  we had fun baking red and green layers for the cake, singing happy birthday to Jesus and then enjoying the afternoon snack.

mixing up the red and green cake batter

the finished product

singing and blowing out the candle

the inside view

 we headed out to the church john attended before we were married for their christmas eve service.  it is a large church and i wanted the boys (really all of us) to hear christmas carols on the pipe organ.  we set in the balcony because it was quite crowded and because burrito thought this was the most awesome thing ever!  we ended the evening by driving around an affluent neighborhood in dallas looking at christmas lights.

then came christmas morning!  we arose early and john read the christmas story from luke 2 and we hung the final ornament on our advent tree.  then we let the boys open their presents from us.  they each received a new pair of running shoes, a remote control car, and a lego set.  they were thrilled!

love this picture of my man

our advent trees

the long-awaited new zig shoes!

crazy remote control cars

burrito with his lego set

noodle with his lego set

 then we loaded up the car and headed down to mimi and poppy's house.  we opened presents with them, ate some breakfast, welcomed more family later that morning and then ate mexican food for lunch.  the boys enjoyed playing with their cousin porkchop, my cousins and each other.  it was a great relaxing day of food, family and fun.

the cousins!  love these 3 boys!!!

burrito with boxers on his head!

porkchop sporting the new baylor hat

as always, it seems to go by so quickly but we really enjoyed spending time together this year celebrating the birth of our Savior! 

happy thanksgiving

thanksgiving blessings from our family to yours!

halloween 2011

halloween 2011 brought a new tradition to the rutherford household:  carving pumpkins.  neither john nor i could recall ever having done this as a kid and so we felt pretty uneducated and inexperienced.  however, with a little online research, we had a great time!

we bought two really great, big pumpkins.  they were so cute i hated to cut them up!  noodle's class had carved a pumpkin a few days earlier so he was our go-to expert!  after sawing off the tops, the boys were so excited to reach in and remove the guts!  noodle was totally obsessed with removing all the seeds so that we could roast them later.

love these two!

the perfect pumpkins

john and noodle

burrito

the finished products

this is their scary pumpkin faces!

aren't they cute?

and here's their spooky side!

the trick-or-treating crew

 and we had a blast on october 31 with our friends from church.  we made an interesting group:  a knight, a snow princess, a football player and a parrot!  nonetheless, we all had a blast and have 10 pounds of candy to prove it!

thanks friends for hosting us that night and letting us raid your neighborhood!

and for some regular traditions, the boys participated in a reformation day party at school.  they are asked to come dressed as either an animal from God's creation or a bible character.  we've been a frog and a lion, a penguin, and as abraham and titus from the bible.

noodle as a parrot

this is what he looked like when he actually wore the bird head part!

 

burrito as a roman soldier.  i know it looks more like a knight but use your imagination! :)

all in all, we had a great time dressing up and being with friends and having lots of fun!