It Takes Two to Tango!

"Slow, slow, quick, quick" -- various permutations of those words echo through my mind throughout the week. My beautiful bride and I are taking ballroom dancing lessons. We started in February and are now in our second month of Thursday night group lessons. Our instructor is a young lady from Bulgaria. Although she is no older than her thirties, if that, she will sometimes refer to us 50+ year olds as her children.

Foxtrot, waltz, tango, and a few others are the dances we've been learning. It is fun but definitely challenging. It is one thing to learn the sequence of steps in my mind, but quite another to get my "legs to remember" each step. It reminds me when I first learned to ride a bicycle; it was very unnatural at first. We need to practice more during the week, so sometimes we practice in our cramped spaces at home. We are looking forward to warmer weather to practice on our large patio.

A New Garden Closet

Last month we hired a friend to build a shed/closet/cupboard on the side of our house, specifically to store all the assorted yard equipment accumulating in our garage. Here it is, primed and ready to paint (Adie's job). But that will wait for warmer weather.

We have it filled with most of our equipment now, and hooks and hangers installed to organize it all. It was built on top of our newly-poured concrete pad inside the fenced area. A new sidewalk connects this area to the driveway. It makes it handy to drag the trash cans out to the curb: no more mud to contend with!

A Sweet Day

We had a very pink family celebration on Valentine's Day evening, our favorite way of celebrating the holiday. The girls put together a heart-filled menu and decorated the table with pink and red and hearts:

heart shaped meatloaf
pink mashed potatoes
red berry heart jello
green salad with heart shaped tomato slices

chocolate chip Bundt cake with pink glaze
and raspberry sauce
chocolate marshmallow truffles
a chocolate treat on every plate

That is Patrick's little candy box at the top of the photo; he isn't much of a sweet lover.

Celebrating

Happy Birthday, guys!

We celebrated the three February birthdays tonight with quite the menu for dinner:

steamed mussels
prime rib with horseradish sauce
marinaded yellowfin tuna
grilled shark
asparagus with Hollandaise sauce
Brussels sprouts
fresh fruit tray with raspberry sauce
twice-baked potatoes

chocolate mousse tort
chocolate mini cupcakes
pumpkin pie with whipped cream

Sisters

Lisa came to visit for a day when she joined John on a business trip. While John attended a conference by the airport, Lisa drove up to our house. We hung out for a while, then I took her to Mittie's, a lovely southern tea room and an Atlanta institution. Our waiter was very informative, very talkative. But maybe he had nothing better to do since we were almost the only ones in the restaurant at that late hour.

Next we visited the Roswell Mill ruins and the Chattahoochee River, where we saw a little of the remaining snow. We also tried to tour an antebellum mansion but we got there just a few minutes too late.

We went up the road to Out of the Box, where Greta works. It turns out she was on her way to work for the evening, so we waited until she arrived. She gave us a quick tour.

Thanks for coming to visit, Lisa!

A Helper on a Cold Day

The jammied vacuuming guy hard at work getting the nooks and crannies clean. He wanted the chair moved.

Snow Days

Even with a stomach bug raging through the house, some of us still had to go out to enjoy the unusually deep snow. We have been housebound for three days now.

Sunday night, as the snow began to fall