State of the Family

I had planned to make a State of the Family address to coincide with President Obama’s State of the Union address, but I got tired. Kyllan says I should still make the post, so here it goes…

The last 12 months have been eventful for the Cody’s and Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to say, the state of the family is strong. I’ve been in Dallas for a little over 2 months and it feels like Kyllan and I were never apart. Kyllan is a few months into her not so new anymore job, which she continues to enjoy. I am a few weeks into my new job as a postdoctoral researcher, which seems to be everything I had hoped it would be.

The concerns we will face this next are familiar ones. We are focused on leading healthier lives. Kyllan hasn’t posted any recipes recently, but she has been cooking at least 5 days out of the week this entire month. Also, we are trying to visit the gym on a more frequent and regular basis. We have already lost few pounds each this month.

Okay, that is where I got tired and fell asleep. Sorry for the lack of post recently. The 2 hours I spend communing back and forth to work has absorbed a lot of my free time, but I am adjusting.

2010

Hello blogosphere!
I can’t believe how long it has been since we have made a post! 2010 got off to a busy start for William and me. William started his new job and is adjusting to going from a 4 mile commute to a 35 mile commute. His commute is only a few miles shorter than my 40 mile commute to work, but I don’t have to deal with as much traffic.  That means Audible.com is getting a lot of business from the Cody family 🙂 I have actually only listened to one audio book, but William has listened to quite a few. I listen to satellite radio about 99% of the time.
Anyway… my schedule has been pretty busy as well. Work has been busy (a good thing) and I have had Saturday work functions that have absorbed some of my weekend time, so I have been a little pooped lately. By the time I get home from work, make dinner, eat, go the the gym for 30 minutes a day of cardio (or my Wednesday night beating from my trainer), I haven’t had much energy to make a blog post. Today I was able to get in a tiny nap after my work function, so I decided I had enough energy to post.
You know William has been busy when he doesn’t immediately post photos to Flickr. We should hopefully have up pictures soon from New Year’s in Jacksonville. We had a nice time. Thursday night was the annual Cody New Year’s Eve party. Friday, William and his dad got to go to the Gator Bowl and watch Bobby Bowden win his last game as coach of the Florida State Seminoles (William is a huge Florida State fan). His mother, grandmother and I went shopping 🙂 On Saturday, we attended a wedding in Palm Beach of a childhood friend of William’s. It was very nice.
Other than that, William and I have just enjoyed seeing each other at the end of each day. It’s nice to talk to him on the phone on the way home from work and say “see you at home!”. It is starting to feel like we were never apart.
Well… that is the quick update. Hopefully you will see more frequent posts.

White Christmas

Well… we were not dreaming of a White Christmas in Dallas, but we certainly got one.  William and I had the pleasure of hosting the Cody parents and William’s grandmother for Christmas.  It was very enjoyable having them here and we thoroughly enjoyed each others company.  Although their flight was several hours delayed (and diverted to San Antonio) due to a very unusual snow/ice storm in Dallas on Christmas Eve, they finally made it to the house a bit a bit after 1am.

After sleeping in a bit on Christmas day, we finally awoke, enjoyed breakfast, and opened gifts.  I have to mention that William wanted to make sure everyone had a stocking on Christmas day, so he bought stocking stuffers for everyone… including himself.  Apparently he did not realize that I was buying stocking stuffers for him (or perhaps thought I don’t know my husband that well after 5 years of dating and 2 years of marriage) because the stocking gifts he bought for himself were the EXACT stocking gifts I bought for him.  So he ended up with two of the same Blu-Ray movies and more Twizzlers (his favorite candy) than he can eat.

My sister, brother-in-law, and our nephew Drew joined us for dinner and the whole gang feasted on turkey, ham, sweet potato casserole, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, chicken spaghetti, broccoli, rolls and cornbread.  Yes… it was quite a spread.  My sister helped by making the mashed potatoes, chicken spaghetti and broccoli, but I did not mind cooking.  I have come to learn that I really enjoy cooking, and William has learned that his wife actually can cook!

For the rest of the day, we mainly sat around chatting, watching portions of the 24 hour “A Christmas Story” marathon on TBS, watching football, and napping a bit too.  It was a very nice Christmas.

The next day, we took the time to expose the Cody parents and William’s grandmother to Pinkberry, which I raved about in a previous post about my visit to L.A.  Because I had raved about it so much, the Cody’s decided they wanted to try it.  I didn’t know until Christmas day that William had already had his first Pinkberry experience.  He bought me Pinkberry gift card for my stocking, so he didn’t want to reveal why he had been without me.  He was very impressed though and was happy to go back.   On this visit, I sampled the Pomegranate, Chocolate and Passion Fruit flavors, but I still think the original flavor is best.

Despite the bad weather on Christmas Eve, we still enjoyed a great Christmas and look forward to going to Jacksonville later this week for the 5th annual Cody Christmas Eve party.

As usual, William has posted pictures on his Flickr page.

We hope you and your family enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and pray God will give you abundant blessings in 2010!

Exhausted

I spent all day yesterday with my nephew Drew. We started off the morning by going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel. It got a little slow at times and in the middle of the movie Drew told me that he was ready to go. The pace picked back up, but I’m going to have to give it 2 1/2 stars. Don’t take any little kids to see this movie unless they ask several times to go. After the movie we spent over an hour in the Lego store, which was fine by me. Next we spent an hour walking around an extremely overpriced toy store which, again, was fine by me.  Drew could have taken serious advantage of me in that store, but he wasn’t interested in any of the toys I thought were cool. He refused to go down the Star Wars isle after proclaiming, “All the stuff down there is boring.” As if a 12″ Lando Cairissian action figure could be boring… After walking around the mall poking at every cactus in a planter and hanging out at the duck pond, we made our way to Dave & Busters. We mostly played Skee ball and other redemption games. Drew also really enjoyed a motorcycle game that featured a moving bike he could sit on, a pilot game with a panoramic screen which required me to operate the rudder and big rig truck racing game where he let me drive and focused on honking the horn. Later we stopped by the park by the house as we waited for Aunt Kyky to get home from work. Drew wanted to see her before I took him home. We had great time and we will definitely have to spend the day together again. Oh, and I am still exhausted. I don’t know how people keep up with little children for more than one day at a time.

Below is a clip of  Drew in his schools Christmas play. Below that is a picture slide show, all of which can be found on my flickr page. The entire play is too long to upload, so I will try and make a DVD later. Right now I need to get ready a go to the airport to pick up my parents and grandmother, who are coming down for Christmas.

Amazing

Okay… Not to get your expectations up or anything, but Avatar lived up to the hype. You need to go see this movie tonight. Right now. Pay the extra money and go see the IMAX 3D Experience version*. It was absolutely amazing. The limits of my imagination were shattered. A new benchmark in special effects has been set. This is what it must have felt like to grow up watching black and white TV and then see a color broadcast for the first time. And yes, Kyllan loved it too. It wasn’t just me.

If you see it, let us know what you think. Neal has already indicated that it is the best movie he has ever seen.

*As opposed to the “Digital 3D” or 2D versions. Theaters with the IMAX digital screen and not the traditional 65mm large format screen are fine. If you don’t know what I am talking about, don’t worry about it. Just go to a theater and showtime for Avatar: An IMAX 3D experience.

Avatar

Kyllan and I plan to see James Cameron’s Avatar today.  Industry watchers are predicting the film will be bigger than Cameron’s Titanic.  It’s supposed to represent a watershed moment in digital film making and 3D. Roger Ebert said, “Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977.” The hype machine is out of control and I’m trying to keep my expectations down.  We will let everyone know what we think. If, like Kyllan, you some how managed to miss the trailer the billions of times it has been shown on TV, it can be found here.If you see it too, let us know what you think.

Frog Princess

Kyllan and I had another movie night this past weekend. It was a little late, so we passed on the 2 1/2  hour long Transforms 2 and opted for Land of the Lost. It was bad. It was so bad that we had to call a redo. Sunday saw Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. I’m not really the demographic so it’s should come as no surprise that I have never really been a big fan of the Disney princess movies. This one, however, was pretty good. It was a cute story and the main character wasn’t a useless girl waiting for her prince to come save her. I also liked  the return to 2D animation. It made me feel a little nostalgic. Still, I need to watch a movie with explosions some time very soon.

We put up the Christmas tree a little while ago, but I never posted any pictures. The only one I took was of Kyllan putting the angel on the tree when we were done decorating. I will have to take some more photos later.

The Cody Family Christmas Tree
The Cody Family Christmas Tree

Movie Night

The 1st official Cody Family Movie Night took place over the weekend. Kyllan selected Disney’s “UP” over “Transfomers 2.” We both really enjoyed the movie and highly recommend it*. You can probably skip the special features though.

Unrelated info: Kyllan met Bobby Knight at a luncheon yesterday. Weird.

*Don’t worry. Unofficial movie night occurred earlier in the week after I finally got all my AV stuff up and running and was tested with a viewing of Star Trek on Blu-Ray.