January 2026 Wrap-Up

What a month to start off the year. I was still fighting off the flu or some sort of respiratory virus that kicked my ass during the first week. Through that I had two new employees start and I had a lot of grant related work to do. Thankfully I was back to 100% before we took the kids on their first trip to Disney World over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. I could probably write an entire post covering all the details but to sum it up: 

• We flew direct using Avelo Airlines out of Wilmington, which was the least painful airport experience ever. It also saved us a bunch of money both in airfare and parking.
• With the amazing help of my sister-in-law, we visited all four parks in 3 days. Ben and I did miss half of the day at Magic Kingdom because he was sick, but he bounced back for our last day at Animal Kingdom and Epcot.
• Rode a bunch of rides thanks to lighting lane passes. Grace and Ben are thrill ride seekers with Tron, Tower of Terror, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, and Expedition Everest among their favorite attractions.
• Saw many shows - James and Christine saw the most because he's not into rides but we all saw at least a couple each day that we enjoyed.

I visited the parks a few times as a kid, so this trip was all about our kids and they had an absolute blast. Taking the kids to Disney was actually a Bucket List item of mine, so I was happy to check that off. As I said, James doesn't love rides but he did very well even on a couple we sort of tricked him into agreeing to. Just days after our return, our area experience a snow and ice storm that kept the kids out of school for a couple of days and then doing virtual learning for the rest of the week. I even got a free day off out it. I don't think February will be as exciting but the Disney trip is certainly going to be one of, if not the highlight for this year.

Blah Blog Log

Didn't find time to write anything outside of the monthly Wrap-Up post.

• December 2025 Wrap-Up - Christmas cookies, Stranger Things, and board games galore.
  

Bored Board Games

It's a new year and I don't plan on having anywhere near the ridiculous 1877 plays I had in 2025, but I started off with a solid total in January. I played 18 games a total of 66 times. There was 1 addition to the 100 Games 100 Plays List: Castle Combo, a new favorite game of mine that I covered back in November. No other games have more than 80 plays, so it'll be a while before the list grows, unless of course I find something I love again. This month's highlighted game is Formaggio:

Formaggio is the standalone expansion for Fromage, a game that made my Top 10 New to Me Games of 2025 list. Like Fromage, Formaggio "is a simultaneous worker-placement game where players place Workers to make cheese and gather resources from the quadrant of the board facing them. Once all players have placed their Workers, the board rotates, aging any cheese that was made, and presenting each player with a new quadrant to place Workers into. Score Prestige Points by selling cheese to the four locations, and by efficiently managing and upgrading your creamery."

The different quadrants add new "mini-games" that can be played as it's own game or swapped in combination with quadrants from Fromage. It also add: platinum-tier cheeses, various rewards in each of the seasons, and all new abilities on the player boards and structure tiles. It's probably the best standalone expansion I've ever played and actually prefer it to the original game. I'm hoping the people in our board game group bring them both sometime so we can try mixing the two together.

Enjoyable Eats

I usually reserve this space for local/Delaware restaurants I want to highlight but we didn't go anywhere new and I really enjoyed the lunch I had at Satu'li Canteen at Pandora in Animal Kingdom while at Disney World. Just outside of the amazing Avatar Flight of Passage ride is one of many fast casual order ahead dining options. We primarily ate at places like this across the four parks but the meal I got was so good that I wish I could have it regularly.

I had the Chopped Wood-Grilled Chicken Bowl which is wood-grilled chicken thighs topped with crunchy vegetable slaw and Boba balls that I got over rice with charred green onion vinaigrette. I think the Boba balls were kind of unnecessary and were really more there for the Avatar theme but maybe to add some contrasting texture as well. The vinaigrette was bright and tangy and paired well with the smoky chicken. The slaw was good and added a nice crunch. I'm a sucker for rice bowls in general but this was the most memorable meal from just a food standpoint of the entire trip.

I'm Watching 👀

We started watching a couple of new shows in January, but since Christine and I are both suckers for anything Ryan Murphy does, I decided to highlight his new show The Beauty. It's a science fiction body horror television series based on the comic book of the same name. Staring one of our (and Ryan Murphy's) favorite actors, Evan Peters, The Beauty is about "A sexually transmitted treatment known as "the Beauty" spreads rapidly, granting users physical attractiveness through aesthetic-based genetic makeup while concealing lethal side effects that begin to overtake their lives. As deaths and public panic escalate, an FBI investigation and competing interests converge on the forces behind the drug and the epidemic it sparks." The first episode punches you right in the face from the beginning and it's kept on coming through the first three episodes that became available when the show launched. We're very much looking forward to seeing where the story takes us.

Reading Ramble

I'm not doing resolutions anymore, so I thought I'd replace that segment with something new. While my resolution for last year and a few times over previous years has been a reading goal, it's still important to me that I get away from the screens and even board games *gasp* to read. I decided this late into the month (honestly when I started working on this post on the second to last day of the month) so I've not finished anything but did pick back up a book that I started during our beach trip over the summer.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg "recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined." As a longtime listener of Spilled Milk, a podcast Molly does with her cohost Matthew Amster-Burton, I've learned about her life and food opinions but this is a more intimate look into her early life with recipes I would like to make.

Whatcha Snackin?

As a child, I would sometimes get a Snack Pack pudding in my lunch. I preferred the chocolate over vanilla but would obviously still eat the blended ones. My favorite was the layered one with chocolate fudge and milk chocolate. There were times where my mom would make Jello pudding on the stove and then there was the agonizing wait for it to cool in the fridge. I also have very vivid memories of eating a bowl of ice cold pudding from the Wendy's salad bar (I still miss that option). The point here is I like pudding.

Recently, I had a craving for pudding but didn't need to make a bunch from scratch (which I've done before) or even want to buy a box of Jello. Instead, I opted for the Aldi brand snack pack style pudding. They only had chocolate, which was fine with me, so I grabbed a package and put it in the fridge when I got home. As part of my bed snack (a nightly ritual we do around 7:30 each night) I enjoyed cold chocolate pudding for the first time in years. At only 100 calories, the 3.25oz serving is the perfect amount for when I want a sweet, cold chocolate treat.

Wrap It Up

Please comment below with any thoughts or comments on anything I've covered. Thanks for reading!