Happy Turkey Day...gobble, gobble

Hello our family and friends!

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are sad that we couldn't be with all of you on such a family oriented holiday.

John, unfortunately, had to work at the station that day. It was fine though, it still worked out well. We rotate families, so it worked out that he didn't have to miss our year at his familie's house. Tyler and I went to my grandma's (Nanny's) around 11 and had our turkey lunch there with our small family that lives near. Then we played our traditional game of Trivial Pursuit while Tyler napped. It was different this year as my Auntie Donalee was not there...the first year I can remember her not being here. She did, however, get to spend the holiday with family, as she is in San Diego doing a traveling nurse thing. She does take fun to a great level though.

Tyler had a great day. He loves to eat, and since the whole basis of Thanksgiving is to EAT, he thought it was great. He also got to help his Nanny make the rolls. He thought the bread machine was the coolest thing ever, and he got to push the buttons. Then when it was time to roll out the dough, he loved it. Although, he was trying to eat the raw dough before she could get the rolls out on the pan.

After our turkey lunch, Tyler and I headed to the fire station where John and his engineer (our friend Dave) had made a grand and delicious dinner. They made turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, jello salad, rolls, mashed potatoes and a pumpkin pie. And yes, they made it all themselves. John even made delicious giblet gravy. I've never had it before, but it was awesome!! They cooked the turkey, boiled the potatoes and baked the pie all themselves. It was all so delicious!

Helping ball up the rolls for dinner, he is such a good helper

Tyler is so in love with his Nanny

This is such serious business, he has to stick out his tounge to concentrate!


Very important job of helping hold the jar...I don't think she could have done it without him. (at least that's probably what he's thinking)

Hangin' out with my Buddy!

A couple weeks ago, Tyler had his buddy Logan come hang out for awhile. He and Tyler see each other every so often, and get along pretty well. Most of our friends with kids have girls, so it's nice for Tyler to have a boy to hang out with that's close to his age. He has three boy cousins here who are 8, 6 and 3. Logan is only about 10 months older than Tyler, so he is not so old he wants to boss him around, and not so close to the same age that they fight. I do have a feeling though, that they could cause some trouble as they get older and have brilliant ideas to bounce off each other.

While Logan was here, we made some cookies. Nothing major, as I am not Betty Crocker. I just bought a couple of those pre-cut Pillsbury with snowmen and Christmas trees on them. They didn't care though. They were excited to think they were really helping make cookies. They took turns placing them on the cookie sheet. Although, there was no rhyme or reason to their placement, and I had to go back through and space them out so that we didn't end up with one big cookie.

We had fun and can't wait for the next time we get to hang out with Logan!

We are getting ready to make the most delicious cookies ever!

Yeah! Cookies, these will be soooo yummy!!

Cousin Jordan, the "Actress"

I know this is a Blunt family blog, but we are also very close to my nieces who live nearby. I wanted to post a couple pictures from my oldest niece’s debut in her high school play. She was very cute and the play was good. It was fun to see her up there, even though she didn’t have a speaking part. By the way, this is somewhat abnormal behavior for somebody in the Johnston family so we are still trying to figure out where she came from. I can’t remember anybody in my immediate family who would have even wanted to be an extra in a play. Good for her though. I must say too that she is turning out to be quite an awesome young lady. She constantly amazes me with her insight. I can see she’s going to do something special with her life and I can’t wait to find out what it’s going to be.

Jordan and a couple of her friends that were in the play. For those of you who don't know Jordan, she is the one on the far right.

Our little tomboy, tennis star NEVER wears dresses. We had to get a picture of her in a dress, that is...a REAL dress. Not one of her skort things that she plays tennis in.

Jordan is the one in the middle in the black dress

Jordan is in the yellow dress.

This was during the opening credits of the play. Jordan dropped all her stuff so the other girls rushed to pick it up and helped her off the stage. She was so convincing we thought it was an accident and that the embarrassed look she got was real.

Our Monkey

First, thank you to Auntie Angie who sent this costume for Tyler this year.

We didn't go trick-or-treating this year. Tyler is way too shy at this point to even say "trick-or-treat" when a stranger opens the door so I didn't even attempt it. Plus, his daddy was on shift at the fire station, so we would have had to go it alone. We did get him in the monkey suit again and went to visit his daddy at the station. (I'll post those pictures later)

We did take Tyler to Boo at the Zoo a couple weekends ago. As you can see from the pictures he was most interested in sitting in the wagon. I snapped these pictures while we were waiting in one of the long lines for candy. I guess he’s going to like looking at maps like his daddy does.

Happy Halloween

I know it’s just a bit late, but I did take Tyler to a pumpkin...well, let’s just call it a “bin”. I didn’t want to pay the entrance fee for a pumpkin patch because he really doesn’t get it yet, but I wanted pictures with him by pumpkins, so I took him to the bin at King Soopers. I probably shouldn’t give away my secret because I don’t think it’s too obvious where these were taken, but then again, if anyone wants to do that next year with your kids rather than traveling miles and miles to pay an outrageous amount to sit them in a mound of pumpkins for 5 minutes and then go home.

Daddy's bestest buddy

I guess when a boy has an awesome daddy, he wants to be just like him. The next picture speaks for itself. If you could see the rest of the picture they have their legs crossed at the ankles, same leg on top...imagine that!

Home Depot did a safety day and they had kits where you could build fire trucks. John was on shift that day, so he picked one up and brought it home for him and Tyler to build together. It was really cute. John would pound the nails in the truck then give it to Tyler so he could use his hammer and “finish” the job. They had a great time and the pictures and quality time they spent together is priceless.

You know he's working hard...see the tounge sticking out.

Riding the Tractor

Cousin Shauncey is helping drive the tractor at Grandma Blunt's house

Tyler's favoriet thing to do at Grandma's house

My closest family will appreciate these pictures. For those of you who do not know much about my childhood, I’ll give you a bit of background.

One of my fondest memories growing up was driving my Pompo’s (our nickname for my grandpa) John Deere riding lawnmower. In fact, I would bet that is a fond memory of pretty much all my cousins as well. When we were all there, we would take turns riding up and down the dirt road or all around the “East 40” as we called it. It was good quality time with our most wonderful Pompo.

I had often wished my son could have the same childhood memories as I did. Well, something miraculous has happened...he gets to have similar memories. His grandma Blunt (John’s mom) has a John Deere riding lawnmower that all her grandkids get to drive around. Tyler loves it! It might not be the exact same thing since I would have hoped he could hang out with Pompo and drive the tractor, but this is close enough. And Tyler has so much fun, just as my cousins and I did when we were little. I’ll bet my grandma has a picture of all of her grandkids on that tractor. Now I get to some of Tyler too. The best part is that he's riding up the same dirt road that we did and through the same "East 40" that we did.

For those that might be wondering, John's parents bought my grandma's house that I have all my best childhood memories in. That's how I know I was meant to be with my John, because they bought that house about 2 years before John and I even started dating...crazy huh??