Sushi and hors d'oeuvres

Last Friday, Vivian and I celebrated our Sushi Anniversary, commemorating five years since we first started dating, and four years since I proposed to her. Since our relationship officially started shortly after eating at Sakura Bana in 2007, we've picked a different place for sushi every year since then (including a trip to the seafood buffet at the Rio in Las Vegas a year ago). Our sushi venue of choice this year was the all-you-can-eat insanity of Wasabi on West Maple. Vivian and I came hungry and devoured two plates of raw fish and rice together and washed it down with a glass of plum wine.

Afterward, we burned off what we could at Jitterbugs Night Out. Grammy and Grumpy were kind enough to take Hannah for the evening so Vivian and I were able to dance until midnight with our friends, just like old times.

On Saturday night, Vivian and I upheld our new annual tradition of Doing Something in January to break up the post-holiday monotony the month of January usually brings. Our idea this time was to have an hors d'oeuvre party, challenging our friends to make tasty bacon-wrapped things impaled on toothpicks and other bite-sized morsels. The winner for the evening was Tamra's googly-eyed crab rangoon, each of which were painstakingly shaped to have actual pincers of the sides. That was cute. Our grand prize was a plastic pig wrapped in a blue blanket. Get it?

Then somebody broke out the Riesling and all hell broke loose. The best part about parties with our friends is that Vivian and I can plan no specific entertainment whatsoever and we still wind up spending a few hours cracking up with each other. Jessica in particular bent over backward (or forward?) for our amusement in-between singing VeggieTales songs and being generally goofy.

Of course, adorable Hannah Marie also added to the fun of the evening. She got passed around to just about everyone, including Eric, who did a little dance with her on his lap that she seemed to get a kick out of. We wrapped up the night playing a couple rounds of Telestrations, concocting horrible new double-entendres that will likely be repeated ad nauseum for the next couple of weeks. (Anybody need to polish the coffin?)