ALLANTE’ ATLANTA WINTER DINNER 2009     On Saturday evening January 17, 25 members met at the Aqua Blue Restaurant in Roswell for our annual winter dinner. We enjoyed cocktails and being served excellent appetizers while catching up with each other since the holidays. The restaurant printed a special menu for us complete with the Cadillac emblem for our salad and entrée selections.  Dessert was an assortment of petit fours for us to share. Everyone agreed their meals were excellent.    After dinner, our President Norman Penfield presented Doug and Anna May Jackson with a gift for opening their home to the club for the tech session meeting in September and for Doug’s technical contributions to the newsletter. Next he presented Bernice Kniffen, our secretary-treasurer, with a gift for her hard work in handling finances and keeping up with our membership.  Norman recognized the Kniffens are celebrating their 62 wedding anniversary this month. Last but not least, our vice president and event organizer (Trip Queen) Paula Vopelak was given a gift for her timeless efforts in making sure we have interesting and fun events each month. It is a big job and she always comes up with excellent ideas. Paula presented Linda Penfield with a gift for writing the website stories following each event and a gift for Norman Penfield for serving as President once again. The members applauded each of these officers and contributors in appreciation for the enormous amount of time and effort they contribute to make our club so successful.   Our Tennessee couples, the Reeds and the Neidigs made the trek to join us for the winter dinner. New members Chuck and Susie Williams travelled from North Carolina for their first event with the club. As Norman said in his annual speech, “the people make the club, and we have a great bunch of people in ours”.   We concluded the evening with entertainment by Doug and Jean Reed singing some country favorites. Then it was “open microphone” for other members to sing.  Ken Gresham and Darr Neidig had time to perform for us before we had to shut down early due the weather conditions. Otherwise, we would have closed the place down singing!!   It was another memorable evening and winter dinner to kick off our New Year in 2009. We have a wonderful line up of events this year that you can preview with your new Allante’ calendars that list the events month by month. Keep these calendars handy so that you don’t miss out on any of the fun.  See you next month!