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.

Crazy Man

James is keeping me running. Now he goes from room to room, looking for new things to get into. I think he is getting tired of toys in general, and wants ‘other’ stuff to play with. He’ll take anything he can get his grubby cute little paws on, as long it looks new and interesting. Right now he is pushing Jeff’s tool bins back and forth across the floor, grunting as he goes. I guess he wants everyone to know how much work it is to be pushing those things around. He is getting really animated and its quite funny. When we were at Marinda’s, he would talk to and yell at the cat and dogs. One of these days he’ll surprise us with a word or two! That’ll be the day I call everyone in the phonebook…’Guess what?! James just said ____!!!’ Can't wait to see what will be his first REAL word..........

Strange Story

Ahhh, the magic of Google. Out of curiosity, or maybe just plain boredom, I decided to see if I could find any information regarding the Prairie Dog vacuum guy I had heard about. Quite a while back, Jeff told me they hired him out at the farm to see if he could get rid of the evil hoard of rodents. Sure enough, there were quite a few articles on the net about this guy and his crazy idea. It’s a funny story. Apparently, the down-and-out wanna-be inventor prayed that God would provide him with a genius idea to earn himself some much-needed income. He dreamt very specifically of a yellow truck with a green hose, sucking prairie dogs from their homes. He told his significant other, and instead of sending him to the funny farm, she encouraged him to act on his dream. Now they have a very successful business called Dog Gone, making thousands of dollars to rid the world of varmints! For the full story, in all its strange glory, check out this link:
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Maisonneuve/2002/11/18/481210?extID=10037&oliID=229

Jeffrey's Masterpiece

For those of you who wonder what the heck Jeff actually does, here is a picture of one of his masterpieces. He designed this condenser for a power plant in Philly. As you can see it is quite large. He has been spending lots of time down there telling the workers what to do and then doing some of it himself! Ain't it nicest lookin' ACC you've ever seen? Makes me proud. Jeff, you rock!

James...the BIG boy?!

Ahhhh! James has upgraded himself to toddler status. I am soooooo not ready for this! Now that he has become more confident walking, he wants to walk….everywhere. Yesterday at church, he all but refused to be held, and insisted on walking up and down the ramp over and over again. He walked down the hall a bit. He climbed up the stairs. He walked just about everywhere. I am excited for this new phase but also sad. Sad that my little bean will want me to hold him less and less as he gains confidence in the world. I know he is only a year old and there is much more change and transition to come, but geeeeeez! Can’t things happen just a little more slowly?!?!

Sentimental Rant

During our visit, we went with the Roush’s for a ride out to the scene of most of our dating career: The Roush Farm. With memories swirling around, we drove past Hiline and up the hill toward the driveway. It still looks the same, only really run down. The John Deere-green mailbox is still there. Weeds have since grown and obscured the once neat driveway. The shop doors hang open, and it looks like nothing has been mowed for months. Jeff commented that apparently they hadn’t figured out how to use the brush-hog yet. Even the yard, which had always been kept so nice, was choked with weeds. We didn’t say much, just commented on how overgrown everything was. I think our heads were too full of all the memories associated with the old farm. I remember staring out at the stars with Jeff and squinting to find ‘our star.’ I remember Meg Folkestad and I taking the Linx on crazy rides no car was meant to take. I remember following coyotes on the 4-wheelers, just to see how far we could trail them. I remember swimming in the pond on a hot summer day. I remember the day we caught a giant catfish out of the pond. That was the same day we decided not to swim there anymore. I remember ice-skating around the hump of steer’s back, frozen in the pond. I remember driving around the center pivot countless times, shooting prairie dogs as we went along. There was the time that we saw a Golden Eagle land in front of us. It looked at us and then picked up the dinner we had just killed for it. That eagle picked up the prairie dog and off it went. I remember the sunsets and the harvest moons, and the clear night sky. So many memories are tied up with that place. It was through these experiences that Jeff and I fell in love. Hard to believe it has been 8 years since it all started. A lot has happened and its unbelievable how many things have been packed into those years. The good experiences and the bad have brought us closer together and we are coming up on six years of marriage. And who can forget, we have our sweet little son James to enjoy it all with us!

I’ll stop now before I get myself in any deeper! ha ha ha

We’re Back From Vacation…

Johnathan, Shelly and James

James with 'Big D'


Tyler and Shelly at the Butterfly Gardens


We're back, and now its time to catch up on some sleep. Isn’t that how vacation always goes? After spending a week in Colorado visiting family and friends we are settling back into our normal routine. Here are just a few highlights of our trip, in no particular order:

*We visited our friends at Loma church, as well as drove back to the old farm. Everything has changed so much! All these rich Californians are moving in and building huge houses. Loma is still a one-horse town, for now. The country store’s still running and that’s about it. No traffic lights…yet. Our little town’s growing up. Kind of sad, but what can you do?

*We drove over the Grand Mesa with Marinda and John. How beautiful!! There was a bit of snow on the ground, and the colors were fabulous!

*Jeff took me on a little tour of all the places he used to live. We finished up at Reed Park in Fruita, where we both remember playing as children. We took James to play in the park, his first real experience with playground equipment. He seemed to really have fun, and we did too. Later that week, we met Jeff’s childhood friend Rowdy, and his family at the park. It was really funny to see them both with their little babies, playing on the swings.

*Speaking of childhood friends, we got to see Meg Folkestad (Sears) and her family. That was pretty cool to see our kids playing together…who’d-a-thought???

*We enjoyed playing with our four nephews and our niece. They are growing up too fast! They spent a lot of time trying to entertain their cousin James.

*We visited with our friends Mike and Erin, enjoyed some great buffalo chili and took a gorgeous hike up to Devil’s Kitchen on the Monument.

Thanks everyone for a great time!! We enjoyed seeing everyone and wish we had more time to visit with everyone.

Picture Perfect

Mesa Lakes

Colorado National Monument


Here are a few pictures from our trip. We'll post
more pictures and stories soon!

Our Visit to the Philadelphia Zoo