Jeffro

Really...what can be said about this picture? Nothing, except that if you're wondering, that's one of those stretchy book covers he has on his head. Ahhh, Jeffrey....

Cool Website

Check out this cool website:

http://www.africam.com/#


OK, so maybe I am a nerd, but it seems pretty cool. You can see live video of a watering hole in Africa, as well as various other wildlife cams.

Four Generations

Here we are: four generations of the Cheyney family.
Dad, Grandpa, Meg and James (of course, with my
black eye) It sure was nice to have everyone together,
except Rach and Phil. (We missed you guys!!)

First Words!?

OK, so the whole 'first word' thing is much more complicated that it first appeared. What really counts as a first word, and who has to hear it? And, does it have to be properly enunciated??? At the ripe old age of 8 or 9 months, James started pointing and saying 'oooo' with a certain emphasis. Nate, you roll your eyes, but I SWEAR he was saying 'Look!' For the record, Jeff, Rach and Mom thought so too. But that doesn't count, for whatever reason. Then for a week or two he started calling 'mamamama' and then stopped, cold turkey. Once, he waved and said 'bye-bye' as Jeff was leaving for work. This time, I was the only one to hear it. So again, invalid as a first word. And so it has gone, waiting for James' actual first official word, hoping that it will somehow fulfill the right qualifications. Of course, it came when I was in the kitchen....argh!!! Grammy and Chappy were over, AKA Mom and Dad, and Dad was putting his coat on. As the story goes, James waved and said 'bye' clear-as-a-bell. Darn it! The first smile went to Auntie Rachel and the first official 'qualified' word goes to Chappy!?! Why????????????? OK, so I am done venting about that for now. Since the official utterance of the first word, he has started to say 'Daddy' pretty often, and 'ball' too. What happened to 'mama' is what I want to know???

2007 Already!???!!!

Happy New Year, peoples!!! Can't believe its already 2007. Jeff and I were just reminiscing about Y2K and the pranks we played on certain unsuspecting people. HeHeHe! Someday James will ask when we were born, and we will tell him, and he will think we are ancient, since we were born in the century previous to him. I just hope we don't acquire that funny, musty old person smell. (And don't worry, Gma and Gpa, you don't have that funny old person smell)
Anywho....hope ya'll are enjoying an extra day off and eating as many chocolates as possible before the diets start! haha

Random Pics

Here are a few pics from the last few weeks, in no particular order. Clockwise from top left: Chappy and James having a chat in James' new tent; James showing off his blueberry pancake goatee; James the gangsta; James and Mommy showing off their matching grins and hats. Wondering where Jeff is in all of this? Working! He has had to work late most nights in the recent past, trying to get a BIG project done by January 1st.

My Christmas Shiner

In keeping with the festivity of the season, I have obtained my very first shiner! Yes, a nice big black eye. Each day it has been kind enough to get more and more colorful, to accent my clothing choices. Yesterday, it was sort of bluish, which nicely complemented my blue and purple sweater. Today, it is nice and flaming RED!!! ...to go with the Christmas theme I suppose. Before you're imagination runs wild, I'll tell you how I got it. I wish I could give you some exciting story of how I got in some valliant fight to rescue someone, but alas! I got it from James, sort of. We were playing a game where he 'pushes' me off the bench. He thinks its hillarious! This time, though, I wasn't antipating the edge of the bench as it jumped out at me. Wham! I don't ever rememeber hitting myself that hard, EVER! So, there's the story of my very first shiner, and hopefully the last.

Holtec Party Animals

Finally....here are a few pics from the Holtec party. Blogger has been temperamental so I haven't been able to blog. The pictures above are of the guys in Jeff's division, the Fossil division. The last picture is of Jeff's coworker, Ram, trying to get the party started.

Party Animals

Phew! Our weekend of partying is finally over! Yes, we are getting old and cannot handle too much excitement. Mostly, I can't stand wearing pantyhose...EVER...not to mention three days in a row!!! Argh! OK, I'll explain. Friday night we had Jeff's Holtec Christmas party. The party was at a fancy-schmancy place, so we had to dress in 'evening attire.' We had fun and stuffed our faces with lots of good food. There were tons of appetizers; who knew that a pasta bar fell into the appetizer category?! I got a good chuckle that they served pigs-in-a-blanket right along with bacon wrapped scallops and flaky spinach pastries. For dessert there were about 25 or 30 options to chose from; we probably covered about half of that! ha! You could even get a little crem brulee thingy...flamed right in front of you! Thus began our weekend of partying. Saturday, we had the wedding our friends, Jenni and Danny. Again, a formal event. The wedding was nice and the reception was fun too. We ate lots more food, and Jeff even danced with me for a whole song! I think we had the most fun at our table, and we weren't even drunk! And then, alas, our night of partying was over and we decided we probably should get home to James, who had been babysitting Grammy and Chappy while we were out. In case you were wondering, Sunday we had to read the advent in front of church; thus the THIRD time I had to dress up in that many days. Now its monday and I am back to my comfy jeans and a t-shirt. We had lots of fun, but its sure nice to just stay home and relax too!

T-Day Festivities

Here we are with Aunt Mari Dogpile! Jeff, Meg, Rach and Nate

Shakespearean Compliment/Insult Finder

In need of a good complement or insult, but don't want anything run-of-the-mill? Here is condensed list of Shakespearean adjectives one of my old professors gave us. Choose one word from each grouping and voila! Instant insult/compliment.

Compliments
1. airy, amorous, bespiced, blazoning, bonny, celestial, honeysuckle, engilded, jovial, lusty, marbled, nonpareil, posied, silken, sturdy, tenderful
2. brother-love, ear-bussing, crow-flowered, burly-boned, fairy-gold, fertile-fresh, nimble-pinioned, proud-pied, thrice-crowned, young-eyed
3. bawcock, chuck, bully rook, dewberry, esquire, fondling, handy-dandy, homager, kicksy-wicksy, kid-fox, lambkin, minstrel, nymph, ringlet, sweet-meat, whiffler

Insults
1. beslubbering, bootless, dankish, gleeking, droning, goatish, loggerheaded, lumpish, mangled, mewling, reeky, spongy, tottering, unmuzzled, warped, yeasty
2. beet-witted, beetle-headed, clapper-clawed, clay-brained, doghearted, fat-kidneyed, flap-mouthed, hasty witted, guts-griping, pottle-deep, swag-bellied, tardy-gaited, tickle-brained
3. barnacle, canker-blossom, clotpole, flap-dragon, foot-licker, giglet, hedge-pig, jolthead, lout, maggot-pie, measle, pidgeon-eff, wagtail

I'll give you a rasberry...hahahah...

James has a new trick I don't think I've blogged about. Its not really that new, but it is noteworthy. Seriously, how many kids do you know who do this. James will crawl into our lap, lift our shirts to find our belly buttons and give us a rasberry. Now I wonder where he learned that from. Even if we have on a couple layers, he will patiently lift each one and then proudly give you a nice drooly rasberry and laugh. ("See, I can do that too!") Hopefully he keeps it just to family, and doesn't walk up to some random person and try to find their belly button. b

Thanksgiving Day Fun

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone...where does the time go? This is James' second Turkey Day, and this time around, he got to eat his fair share of turkey and fixins. This year, we had the added fun of having my Aunt Mari here from Minnesota. We made way too much food and tried a lot of new recipes. Rach made Cornmeal Poundcake...sounds weird but its so good. We had all the usual stuff, too, and then some. Basically, we had a good ol' Cheyney eat-fest all day long. Thanks to Dad's new digital scale, we could all weigh ourselves before and after to see how much we ate. Jeff topped it off at 2.8 pounds; thats a lot of turkey!
On Friday, us girls hauled ourselves out early for some Black Friday shopping; the general consensus is NOT AGAIN. Now that malls are opening insanely early, like 3am, by the time we went out at 6am it was chaos! Saturday we took a fun trip to the flea market and found lots of treasures to bring home. It all went too quickly and before we knew it, it was time for Aunt Mari to go home, and for all of us to return to normal. Its time now to look foward to Christmas...

Use Your Noodle

OK. Time for my not-so-weekly spat of blogging. I have been too busy eating turkey, and turkey, and more turkey to be writing on this blog. Now I'm back. Last night, Jeff regailed me with tales of the sport of noodling. Yes, noodling is a sport, and it does not involve noodles of any sort. Just people who don't use their noodle. Noodlers are sport catfisherman, but with a twist. Instead of the standard bait/pole technique, a noodler dives underwater and pokes around looking for catfish dens. When they find an opening, they stick their hand in and hope for the best. What they are wishing for is a giant catfish to chomp down on their hand and hold on for dear life. If this happens, they wrestle the catfish to the surface and show off their catch. If this sounds stoooooopid to you, it is! The trick here is to make sure you don't stick your hand where it doesn't belong, say, into an unhospitable snapping turtle's home-sweet-home. For this, the noodler may gain the title 'Nubbins' for obvious reasons. If this sounds like the sport for you, you must be a card carrin' redneck. Here is the link to a great article about noodling, complete with a redneck noodler's commentary on the sport.
http://www.cabelas.com/information/cabelas-field-guides/Catfish-Techniques/Noodling-for-Catfish-The-Ultimate-Thrill-in-Fishing.html

Nice Weather

Today was a beautiful day, with temperatures almost to 70 degrees! If I didn't know anybetter, I'd thing it was spring. In order to take advantage of the lovely weather, James and I spent quite a bit of time outside soaking it in. I pruned my hydranea bush while James shouted at passing dogs and tried to wander into mud puddles. It is funny how he goes straight for the mud puddles; he's such a boy! He also wandered around picking up rocks and inspecting the underside of the truck, as well as the exhaust pipe. Its so fun to watch him explore and see everything with fresh perspective. Seriously, who would think to stick their hand up the exhaust to see what's up there?!

On a different note, Jeff just returned from a 3 day trip to Ohio and saw a guy hiding in our neighbors' bushes. Creepy. So he called the cops but the guy just left so there goes our excitement for the night. And Jeff wonders why I lock the doors all the time.....

Zap!! Should've seen it coming....

Well, folks! I have been wondering when the moment would come when James would attempt to stick something into an outlet that shouldn't be there. It has happened, sooner rather than later. Yesterday, when I was talking to Mom on the phone, James stuck a plug into the phone jack. There was a strange buzz that came thru the phone and probably damaged whatever brain cells it reached. Actually, no damage appears to have been done, ut now the game is on: 'who can out-smart who.' We put all the little plastic thingies in the outlets thinking that would keep him out of electrical trouble but the little rascal has out-smarted us!! Is this a sign of things to come?!?

Better get back to watching James before he re-wires the whole house!

Mental Growth Spurt

James' curious mind is developing in leaps and bounds! He is learning new tricks everyday, and seems like such a little boy. Here are a few of the new things James is up to:

1. Paging the phone. He has figured out how to page the phone, which he does about 15 times a day. Then he looks around to try to figure out where the sound is coming from.
2. 'Talking' on the phone. He finds the phone, puts it right up to his ear and jabbers away.
3. 'Unlocking' the door. James takes his toy keys and tries to unlock the front door. (Speaking of keys, he also learned that pushing the panic button on our key fob is fun!)
4. Turning the radio on and off.
5. Sharing grubby little bits of his food. So cute when he reaches out to offer you a drool-laden blob of sweet potato.
6. Here's my favorite of his new games: When I put his shoes on, he walks right to the door and waits for me to open it. He knows we are going somewhere! When I open the door, he holds on to the screen, navigates the step and walks down the sidewalk to the truck. How cool is that?!

Anyway, as you can see...Life just keeps getting more and more fun, even though that doesn't seem possible!

Happy Halloween

Here is James in his Halloween costume...a tiger. He is being held by Sal, Jeff's coworker. Sal is sporting a Duct Tape suit. Pretty cool, huh? He made it himself by covering an entire suit in tape, in case you want to make one for yourself.