Happy 2013!

We dance less Tango during the holidays, but that doesn't mean we stayed at home for two weeks and did nothing but wave a string at a handful of playing cats (sorry kitties!)

We put on our chicken and rabbit toques and cozy parkas and went out walking in the park almost every day.  We weren't deterred at all by the snow!:

A beautiful, sunny - COLD day at the park. 

 All our Argentinian Facebook friends shivered when they looked at these photos

All that walking meant we worked up quite an appetite - and there were plenty of opportunities to get together with friends for delicious hot lunches at our favourite Chinese restaurant:

Two different types of boiling hot congee, roasted squab with prawn crackers, 

and Szechuan shrimp fried noodles

When we did stay home, we stuffed ourselves with massive amounts of chocolate and gained 20 pounds each:

Just kidding!  We had a very disciplined approach to eating chocolate.  Once a day, we would each select one chocolate from the box.  Then we would cut the chocolate into half - and we would get to each eat two different halves - double the taste but with the calories of one chocolate.  

We can still fit into our pre-Christmas pants!

I made progress with my Alice Starmore Eriskay Fisherman's Sweater:

Almost finished - just half a sleeve to go.  I started knitting Eriskay on October 8, 2010.  

Thank god it is a timeless, classic design - because if it wasn't, it would have been out of fashion at least twice by now!  If you are curious, the yarn I used is from Frangipani in the UK - I love knitting with their high quality guernsey yarns and I have been their happy customer for many years.

And when we went out dancing, we Tango-Crashed a New Year's Eve ballroom party at Mad for Dance studios:

Admiring the New Year's Eve decorations at Mad for Dance studios

Even though Michael and Raija of Mad for Dance studios have not hosted a milonga for many years now, the very first milonga we ever attended was held at their studio, and we still practice at their studio once every week.  We still support them and look forward and enjoy going to their special dances throughout the year.  They put a lot of time and effort into decorating their studio for these special events - and they always had delicious treats and drinks at all their parties, even when they organized a weekly milonga (and we didn't have to pay extra for the food!)  The special dances they have these days have more ballroom music than Tango music as they hold the dances for their ballroom dancing students and friends, but we still have a blast at their parties.  We only know one kind of dancing (actually two - we kind of know the basic Chacarera but how on earth can we do that to "Black Magic Woman"?), so we just do that kind of dancing to all of the music.  Yes, we are such dorks! We're pretty sure that we must seem quite weird to all the ballroom dancing people because we don't know any "quick-quick-slow" or "left-right-left-right"!

We murder "The Foxtrot" and "The Rumba" with "The Tango".  Don't try this at home!

Hope that everyone had a relaxing and joyful holiday season and all the best for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2013!