Birthday Celebrations

Jason turned 30! There's no way around it, Jason is 30. His wife Kristen threw an incredible surprise party for him and we had a great time of catching up with the Penn State contingency.Highlights from the evening were seeing Kyle and Sherry's family (with sweet sons Brody and Teague),me freaking out that everyone would get salmonella from a key lime pie Team Vile had made, Kevin winning at beer pong 3 times in a row, and of course, the fact that everyone who mentioned they read our blog also insisted that we not blog about them or show pictures of them. This is no democracy, this is the Vileation Nation...there are no release forms to sign, no consent forms to approve, no nothing. If we experience it or take a picture of it, it could find its way to the blog. Unless it's ugly pictures of us, which we will absolutely delete. It's just our policy.Anyway, it truly was a great night celebrating Jason's birthday and then we moved on to celebrating the impending birthday of "Panda." Kevin's mom and our future sister-in-law Kristin threw a gorgeous baby shower in Langhorne on Sunday afternoon. You would not believe the food at this place...unbelievable. And you would not believe the CUPCAKES that Kristin made. They were nothing short of exquisite and involved cutting open the tops, stuffing them with lemon curd, closing the tops and icing them with cream cheese frosting. Amazing. And the decorations and games and centerpieces that everyone put together...just perfect. Definitely check out the rest of the pictures to see the gorgeous pink and blue themed pansies that Mom Vile potted for each guest. I think "overwhelmed" would best describe how Kevin and I felt in response to everyone's generosity and kindness. It was just a great day and made us all the more excited to actually meet this baby. Check out some pictures here (if you were thinking you were safe from being pictured, Jodi, you were wrong...lucky for you you're looking great so we thought you'd be okay with it...).Great weekend over here at the Vileation Nation...now we're just enjoying some April showers in Baltimore and planning our next visit to see the Orioles play. We went to Camden Yards last week and caught a game against the White Sox (actual attendance is represented by the picture below, seriously. Some are blaming the dry spell in Oriole's attendance on those hot-shot Nationals who just moved in in DC). I was shocked to see Jim Thome playing for the White Sox since I thought he was still with the Indians. I think it's time for me to revisit baseball and stop asking about people like Jose Conseco and Albert Bell.

Tag

The Vileation Nation has been "tagged" by the good people over at "Two Are Better Than One." While only one of us was specifically called upon to relay 7 interesting facts, we decided to make it a team sport (since we are, after all, Team Vile) and see if we could find 7 interesting things about ourselves as a team. We couldn't. We came up with 6 and instead we have a quiz for those who think they know the Vileation Nation as our #7. Here we go!

1. We enjoy traveling and have traveled to such exotic locales as Paris, Rome, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Alaska and even Birmingham, AL. We are trying to see all 50 states together. Too bad DC doesn't count as a state.

2. We refer to our unborn child as "panda."

3. We worked for the same company for several years and were even on the same project at one point. Speaking of exotic locales, it was in LaRue, PA. We didn't care much about each other on that project, really. Hard to believe we didn't fall in love in LaRue, but we didn't (Incidentally, the picture below is not LaRue, PA).

4. We enjoy fine reality TV programs such as Flavor of Love, I Love New York and Rock of Love. We have enough sense to be embarrassed of this.

5. We have operated a tandem kayak twice and almost got divorced as a result of the experience twice.

6. We have a ridiculous list of names that we call Luther. Poodle J. Pug, Pugsicle, P Pants, Das Luther, etc.

7. And since that's where our not-so-interesting facts end, here is our quiz. See if you can figure out which of us matches each question below.

a. Insists on setting ice cream out and allowing it to thaw before eating it.

b. Insists on reading every plaquard and piece of information available at museums.

c. Likes orange juice with lots of pulp. Which is something the other hates.

d. Once had pet goats.

e. Claims to have seen Ed Norton at the Hudson Hotel in NYC.

f. Claims to have seen Iron Eagle over 25 times.

g. Is a night person.

h. Is responsible for the ironing.

i. Is responsible for the laundry (excluding ironing).

j. Thinks it's fun to see if there is a website for weird things...such as "poodlepugs.com" or "iloveteamvile.com" or "ilikethesmellofmysocks.com" etc.

k. Refuses to cash checks or use gifts received until the thank-you card is written and mailed.

l. Could happily do nothing but crossword puzzles all day long.

Okay, that's all we've got. We were asked to "tag" others as well, so while there is no pressure to actually respond...you're up, Land O'Leary, Jaglowskis, Avocados and Asparagus, Lillibridges, Living Local, and Yanks in the UK! Those of you who are not listed, it's only because I think you've already done this or I have not received proper approval that I can publish your website yet! You know who you are...

(Quiz answers....Kevin is letters b, d, f, g, h, j and Amy is the others...although Luther has probably seen Iron Eagle over 25 times as well.)

Aaron is here!

For those of you who are wondering how Luther did with his surgery...well...he did not have surgery. We got the whole way to Cleveland only to learn that he is a relatively healthy animal and that he could hold off on surgery for a while. I guess this is good news, but what is even better news is that the trip afforded Amy a visit with Susan and JC's beautiful sons! Here's a picture of our baby and their baby.

Joshua is the proud older brother of Aaron and it was such a joy to visit with them. Check out the pictures here and make sure you don't miss JC's new "man basement." There's even a picture of JC with his good friend Mike Jordan...see if you can find it! All the kids are going to want to be at Joshua and Aaron's house when they get older. Their mom and dad are the coolest. Here's a picture of JC and Susan pre-kids, several Halloweens back. Yes, JC is wearing a wig, c'mon

We made dinner!

I recognize that many of you do this every night...you make dinner and eat as a family. We don't do this very often. And if we do, it is something frozen that we heat up. But we were bit by the "let's cook dinner" bug and made ourselves some spaghetti, salad, garlic bread and biscuit cake with strawberries for dessert. Again, to many of you this is not news. This is not blog-worthy. We consider this the biggest news since we learned we have a baby on the way.
Here's what I looked like after eating.

Also, please say a prayer for our little pug...Luther is having surgery on his cursed bladder stones on Wednesday. Poor guy. So I'm driving him to Cleveland tomorrow to go under the knife. Honestly, it is roughly a $700 savings to do the surgery in Cleveland rather than Baltimore. Unreal. We will take that $700 and go grocery shopping and continue to try to cook dinner.