Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

Wow! How does time get away so quickly? Last week was so busy, what with all the hearts and cupids and love notes floating around (it was kind of like dodging soccer balls with your head the way you do on Wii Fit!). I have several things that I've been meaning to post about. Bet all of you are in the same boat, huh? "No" you say? Hmmm.


Well, first off let me wish all of you a belated Happy Valentine's Day. We had reservations for dinner at Sakura Japanese Steak House. It was wonderful! We got to do one of our most favorite things and that is to have dinner with our godsons Bryce & Blake. And to make it even more festive, Megan, a very special friend, joined us. Oh yeah, their parents came, too. We were seated in a reasonable amount of time, even though the place was packed! Most of us decided on the special dinner that has chicken, steak, shrimp & lobster. This comes with the soup, salad, rice, plum wine (mmmmm....I'll take yours!) and pineapple sherbet. Since it was Valentine's Day they served a complimentary glass of wine before dinner. (I gave mine to Bob in exchange for his plum wine...score!) I also had a bottle of "Hana-Awaka" Sake - meaning Sparkling Flower. It is a sparkling sake that is slightly sweet with balanced tartness. I just called it good! And it came in a pink bottle! What's not to like about that, I ask you?


Our chef was most entertaining. He did all the requisite moves; shrimp tails tossed in his hat & pocket (wonder if they ever forget them and go home with crustaceans in their clothes?), and fire, and an onion volcano, etc. It's fun to see the kids' reactions. Blake wasn't too sure about the fire, but Meg and Bryce were loving it :-) There was way more food than we could eat and it was good enough to take home for lunch the next day. Note: the steak was superb.

After dinner we went back to the Byington's house and played Wii. It was my civic responsibility to kick some butt at bowling. Marilyn stunned and amazed us with her prowness at cow tossing. Bob rocked the house with his record setting ski jump of 115m! That's my Colorado dude ;-)

Clint still rules as the disco rabbid rabbit whacker...no other comes close! Virna is an amazing couch coach and Jerry? Well Jerry just looks cool (in a cool eyebrow kind of way) doing whatever he's doing. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there we let the kids play...we must have let them play. Didn't we let them play when we were filling our beer/wine glasses? Of course! I was sure we let them play.

When we got home, we exchanged cards and I had a little treat for Bob. *ALERT* This is a family blog so you can get your minds out of the gutter right now! The treat I got my honey was a gorgeous chocolate dipped strawberry that had been filled with sweetened mascarpone cheese. Just look at this beauty!

And it tasted every bit as good as it looked.

Note to self: We can do this as a light summer dessert!...with icewine!!!