This is the second helper party at our place and I think it is going to become tradition to move all our furniture, blast the salsa music and dance the night away. The Dance-All-Night Award would probably go to John Radke and Emely Tapar – I don’t think I saw them stop dancing which is a good thing because the food and dessert tables were overflowing.

We also surprised Alfred for his 35th birthday. Nina dropped off a huge cake and decorations the day before and all the helpers hid upstairs and shocked poor Alfred. It was Alfred’ first surprise party and hopefully we didn’t scar him for life. Happy birthday Alfred!

Our next helper get-together is on March 15th. I am treating all the helpers to a snowtubing and dinner experience at Horseshoe Resort. Should be a blast – photos to come!

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Emely and Michel taught the absolute beginners lesson. Rob and Velina taught the level 1 class and Evan and I taught the intermediate class. As usual everyone rose to the occasion regardless of the difficulty of the turn pattern.

The highlight of the evening was the Helper Performance Group’s choreographed routine. Caryl held a class in the fall for helpers only which focused on learning an intricate choreographed routine with the end goal of performing the routine. 5 couples debuted the performance in the iFreestyle Holiday Party on Dec 9th with great success. The other couples (6 in total) performed at Plaza at 11pm during the outing and it was a great performance. The choreography was excellent (gooooo Caryl!) and you can see the work put in by the performers. Here is a list of the couples that performed on both evenings:

iFreestyle Holiday Party
Nina and Tyrone
Velina and Alfred
Anna-Marie and John
Ildi and Manuel
Stella and Barry

Plaza Flamingo Holiday Party
Carolina and Mark
Kelly and Khemara
Stella and George
Pansy and Alex
Karina and Barry
David and Katie

We were very lucky to have plenty of photographers in the house. Shawn Jamali is a professional photographer and was interested in capturing dancers in motion. Avijit Bandyopadhyay who is a former TDS student, also wanted to capture the event. Caryl video-taped the performance and took plenty of photos. As soon as we get them all we will post them for you all to view.

Evan and I wanted to thank Caryl and everyone who participated in our Wedding Dance. Evan and I were married in St. Thomas 3 weeks ago and Caryl surprised us with a wedding dance after the performance…very similar to a birthday dance except both of us got a chance to dance with other partners. It was a lot of fun so thank you again for thinking of us and participating!

All the couples will be performing again at our first Montana’s outing at the end of Jan/beginning of Feb. We will announce the date soon!

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We met at Bevermead Beach in the Kawartha’s – it is about 1.15hrs drive from Toronto. To my surprise people were early and assisted us in setting up the volleyball net on the beach. By 11:30am over 25 helpers were in attendance playing some seriously competitive beach volleyball, frisbee, kiteflying, and relaxing by the water. We even had some brave souls jump in the lake for a dip.

2 hours later we jumped in our cars and made a 9 vehicle driving line to Evan’s parents Lakehouse. It is an unbelievable home right on Lake Shemong with all the toys (hot tub, boat, tubes, floating toys, etc). We had an amazing BBQ lunch there with home made hamburgers, BBQ chicken, salads and corn and then wasted no time in taking turns boat riding, trying to dunk the passengers behind us on the inflatable hotdog, dipping in the jacuzzi, swimming in the lake and much more.

By 6pm everyone gathered around the karioke machine and proceeded to sing to the oldies and John Radke took out his guitar and serenaded us with some cool tunes. Annamarie (Evan’s mother and the hostest with the mostest) made everyone shakers and we were able to sing and rattle our shakers to the music.

We followed this off by a BBQ dinner of Italian Sausages, salads and an ice cream sundae bar. During dinner we had some Toronto Dance Salsa trivia and after dinner we retired to the bunkey which is a great area overlooking the lake for some games.

There was a huge amount of laughs and it was a very exciting day. I am so happy and proud to have such an amazing group of helpers and I thank everyone for their energy, enthusiasm and participation. Photos to be posted very soon!

Final huge thanks go to Annamarie, David and Evan for making the day unforgettable.

Oh no, the pressure is on to beat this outing…what to do next???

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