I Suck At Wedding Anniversaries

Today is my wedding anniversary. Too bad I suck at wedding anniversaries. It was nine years ago today that I duped Karen into marrying me. And still, the joke is on her.

In the past, when we were young and wild whippersnappers, we used to celebrate our anniversary by exchanging presents based on the traditional anniversary gift list. Sadly we stopped that practice as those traditional gifts became increasingly difficult to plan around, like iron for the sixth anniversary. As much as I enjoy a little ferrous, I can't for the life of me imagine wanting anything made of iron. (Bueller... Bueller... Bueller...)

Needless to say, we ditched that idea. For the past few years, however, Karen and I have been dining out at the same restaurant on our anniversary. That restaurant: the Square Cafe, located in Hingham. A few years ago, my favorite sister-in-law's BFF (Gretchen) had recommended the place to us when we were deciding on where to go out for dinner on our anniversary. Always up for something new, we gave the restaurant a try and we've gone back ever since on our anniversary. (Thanks Gretchen!) We enjoy the food that much.

This year, however, there was a slight twist with our anniversary as we decided to bring our children with us for dinner. In years past, Karen and I had offers from family to watch our kids while we celebrated our anniversary. For our ninth anniversary, no one outside of my friend (Andrea) offered to watch our kids. (Thanks Andrea!) And as much as we appreciated Andrea's offer, we felt bad sticking her with a two year old and a two month old. So the kids came with us to dinner, which is always a daunting task because it could either go very well... or very badly.

Luckily for us, today our two year old (Briana) was very good. In fact, I would say that Briana enjoyed the food at the Square Cafe too because she ate practically everything on her plate. In case anyone is curious, I had the ribeye steak with jumbo shrimp and scallion mashed potatoes and asparagus. Yum! I had no problem being part of the clean plate club today.

Karen and I actually did something we hardly ever do when we dine out. We ordered an appetizer and a dessert. Generally, if we are to order something besides our main dish, it is usually appetizer or dessert, hardly ever both. But since the food was so good, we had to indulge. We had the crispy hot and sour calamari (made with grapefruits and mango) and the strawberry rhubarb crisp. It was so good.

Needless to say, it was a delightful dinner. I enjoyed it immensely. And as a side note, we ran into one of the librarians from our library. She was out walking her dog when we ran into her. It was good to see her... and her huge labrador retriever, Jasper.

All in all, it was a good anniversary. I can't believe it has been nine years.