Andrew took yesterday off work, and aawhitewood and Tom came over last night to babysit so that we could go out and have dinner on our fifth anniversary.

Five years! It seems to have gone by extremely quickly -- probably because of the two Special Projects that have been taking up all our time recently.

Last night Andrew and I went out to dinner for our fourth anniversary. Technically our anniversary is tomorrow, but we're busy tomorrow with different things, so we celebrated early.

aawhitewood graciously agreed to babysit while we were gone, despite such minor inconveniences as the weather turning bizarrely cold, me not telling him what time to show up, and the very real danger that the hypermuffin would be a complete and total poopy mess. (A fear which, sadly, was more than realized.)

After much hesitation and many recommendations from friends, and much eyeing of the weather to see if we might want to walk around part of Greenlake beforehand (answer: No), we ended up at Kasbah Authentic Moroccan Restaurant. This is a smallish brick building with no windows. When you walk in, you see shimmering gauze veils draped from the ceiling beneath colorful pendant lights, ornately carved screens and "doo-hickeys" (it's a technical term), patterned hangings on the walls, and other pieces of ambience.

We were seated at a "table" which was really a very large round brass dish placed on a set of four wooden legs and flanked by a cushioned seat and a big poofy cylinder-shaped beanbag on the other side. Andrew tried the beanbag at first, but was quickly told that he would be more comfortable sitting next to me on the actual seat. :-)  It's definitely only big enough for two people if those two people are OK with eating the meal in close proximity to each other... which we were.

The waiters "took charge," telling us things like "Now we wash our hands" as they poured warm water out of a big brass water-pourer-out-of thingie into a smaller brass thingie. They also directed us to drape large towels over our laps, because eating with fingers would be messy.

We got to choose our entree, but the other four courses were pre-set...

Today is our third wedding anniversary. We're not doing anything special today, because I'm working 7:30 - 2 and then Andrew is working 4 - midnight. But we have a date set up for next Tuesday, and babysitting all lined up already. :-)

In other news, Vivian took a few hesitant steps yesterday! I made a big huge deal out of it, and she did it again -- but crawling is still her primary mode of transportation.

Andrew and I got married at a way-fancy restaurant back in 2003. I'm still on their e-mail list.

Check out their "Spring Tasting" menus! (boggle)