18 Holes

Matt and I recently decided to take up golf, and I have to say I love it! Now don’t get the wrong idea, I’m no Tiger Woods. In fact, I would actually say I’m pretty bad at the game; but that’s OK, I don’t care. Sometimes I can hit the ball pretty straight and far, other times I hit the ball and it bounces off the tree in front of me and rolls further away from the hole then when I started… but either way, there is something about golf that I just really enjoy!

Matt and I both decided to learn to play together, and I have to say it’s been a lot of fun for us. We even recently played a round with ‘the dad’s’ which was a good time! I love that we can go out in the evenings, or on a Saturday and just spend time together, doing something fun. I also really like that golf forces me to focus on the game, and takes my mind off the other stressors in my life. You can’t worry about dirty laundry when you are swinging the golf club.

Oh, and did I mention that I had to buy new golf clothes, shoes and a bag? Drats! ( I bought some used clubs from a family friend to save money just in case we didn’t stick with it, but I love those too!)

Here are a couple pictures from our recent golf adventures…

Welcome Baby Joshua!

I’ve been holding off on writing a post about Megan and her new bundle of joy, since Baby Joshua decided to arrive earlier than planned. But now that everyone is doing great, I thought it was about time I did a post on my best friend, and her beautiful new baby! Joshua Raymond Holston arrived 2 weeks and 1 day ago, and he couldn’t be cuter!

Megan and Joshua (and Ray!) had a little bit of a rough time, but it seems like Joshua is thriving, Megan is back to her old self and Ray can finally take a breath!

I’m so excited for them, and I love being Auntie Erin B. I got to hold Joshua for the first time over the weekend, he is so precious, I just didn’t want to let him go!

The newest little man in my life!

The Denmarkian Chick is Coming!

When Christine booked her flight to come to the US for a month this summer, it seemed so far away. Now she will be here in less than ten days, I can hardly contain myself!

This photo was taken of us the summer after we graduated from college. SO much has changed since then, it’s like we’re hardly even the same people anymore.


I moved from the ‘oh -so-fabulous’ Federal Hill down to SoMD, got a dog, bought a house, started two new jobs (three if you count that sketchy mortgage company that never made it onto my resume) and got married.


Christine moved to Denmark, started her graduate degree, met a cute blonde boy, moved into a larger apartment and had baby Oscar.


Oh, and I’m pretty sure we both look much different than in this photo. I for one, now have blonde hair again. Looking back, not sure why I ever thought it was a good idea to dye it dark…guess my mom was right on that one.


See, I just summed up three years into three sentences!


It’s amazing how much can happen in just three short years. Can’t wait to see what fun things this summer will bring!

Ocean City & Eric Church

I had every intention of updating after my trip to OC two weeks ago, but somehow I found myself extremely under the weather (as in 2 weeks and 2 doctor visits later I’m still only back to about 75%).

So, Ocean City. Hope, Shelly and I headed to Ocean City for some Memorial Day fun. The drive down Sunday morning was fine and we made great time. We checked into our hotel without any big issues (if exclude the fact that we had to request another room b/c our first room had the distinct smell of illegal activities…) The beach on Sunday was great. We had perfect weather and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon laying in the sun. Sunday night however, was a disaster. We started out at Fishtales, which was great. That was until the bar started getting really crowded and they had to take our stools away. We decided that was our cue to leave, so we headed down to MR Ducks. Shelly had never done a ‘chug-a-duck’ before, so we couldn’t possibly let her leave w/o doing it. I’m not sure she loved it quite as much as Hope and I thought, but hey, now she can say she’s done it! From there we attempted to take the bus up to Seacrets. What a disaster. The bus was jam packed with high school seniors. Apparently senior week is early this year….like an hour and a half later we finally arrived at Seacrets to find a line with about 500 people in it. I’ve never seen a line like that at any bar, ever. By this point it was about 12am and we decided to call it a night. It only took us another 45 minutes on the bus to get to our hotel. We had enough of over crowded OC, so we left around 12 noon and I pulled into my driveway at 6pm. I don’t think I’ll be doing an OC trip on a holiday again anytime soon!

Matt and I went to see Eric Church last Saturday night at St. Leonard Fire House. Although I was already sick, I had bought the tickets a long time ago, and I love Eric Church, so we decided to go anyhow. Not sure it was the best idea (especially considering I got progressively sicker for the next 4 days after the concert) but despite all, it was still a lot of fun! I really loved the venue. It was small, so “lawn seats” were still close enough to the stage that I could see everything. It wasn’t super crowded, and we parked just far enough away that we didn’t catch any traffic heading home. Eric Church put on a great show and it was a really run date night with my hubby! Can’t wait to go back and see Luke Bryan in a few weeks!

Marine Corps Half Marathon vs. Erin Brown

So, as promised, here is an update on my experience with the Marine Corps Half Marathon this weekend.

Diane and Me before our races! - Notice the super cool headbands!

The race started bright and early – and I mean really early. We stayed in hotel very close to the starting line, and at 4:45am the music started blasting. (If I were just a normal hotel guest, I would have been angry!!) Since we were running, it wasn’t too big of a deal. The race started off right on time at 7am. It was extremely well organized, and I was over the starting line in about 5 minutes. I was in corral group time 2:30-3:00, so I was pretty far back. It was impressive how organized the event was. I was doing great until about mile nine. I wasn’t overly winded, even tho the course was challenging with lots of hills, and I was actually thinking I might beat my PR, which is 2:34. That was, until I stopped for a bathroom break…surprise surprise (ha, not!). Not exactly sure what happened, but once I stopped and restarted I got really bad cramps right above my knees. This is something I’ve never experienced before, so I didn’t really know how to handle it. I continued a run/walk combo for the rest of the race. Basically I would run until my legs started to buckle, stretch for a minute to two, walk it off and then try and run again. As you can imagine, beating my PR went out the window. In fact, I was happy I was even able to finish it (for a while it wasn’t looking good)… Matt and Diane were waiting at the end cheering for me, even tho I was moving really slow, so it ended on a positive note!
All in all I was a little disappointed with myself. I’ve been training a lot and was hoping to do better. But that’s OK, next time I will do some alternate training for hills and I will make sure to stretch the muscles I must not have this time.

Like I said before, the race was extremely well put together. I think we all had a really great time, even if beating PR’s didn’t happen. I would absolutely recommend this race, but be sure to train for hills!

Marine Corps Half – 1
Erin – 0

Next year, watch out!

Busy…(Such a bad excuse!)

I haven’t really blogged much recently (as you can see).  The only excuse I have, and it’s a poor one at that, is that I’ve been pretty busy. Back up to April…

Matt and I went to Mexico for vacation.  We stayed at a very beautiful, all-inclusive, resort.  The resort was very nice and relaxing. Lots of time to sit and enjoy the beautiful sun, ocean and the nice poolside.  If you know Matt Brown – that’s like his worst nightmare come true, lot’s of time to sunburn.  My bad.  For some reason I was thinking an all inclusive resort would be full of activities, like a cruise. Not really.  So, we made our own activities.  We made it a point to do something off the resort everyday.  We did a scuba class (refresher for me and beginner scuba for Matt) which was a lot of fun.  So much fun actually, that we decided to go back for a second dive on another day! I’m so excited Matt loves diving as much as I do, it is such an amazing experience. This trip we saw a sea turtle and a sting ray – Now he just needs to get certified! We also did some beginner golf lessons.  My dad has been egging me to play golf for a number of years now, and since we had some resort credits to use up, we decided to give it a shot.  We had a ton of fun with that too, and we have since started playing golf together. (That’s been keeping me busy as well)  Because we were visiting Playa del Carmen, it was a must to see the Mayan Ruins.  They were very nice and the trip was very informative.  All in all the vacation was very nice.  Matt managed to stay out of the sun (and use about 80spf sunscreen) so we left with no sunburns.  I think it was just a little too slow for us tho.  Clearly we both have the attention span of an eight-year-old, so next time I will plan a little better.

Other than that, April was pretty uneventful – there goes my excuse about not having time to blog…Once we came back from vacation, we moved right into the May wedding festivities for Tasha and Ryan.  The Bachelorette party was tons of fun.  I mean come on, you can’t go wrong with a bus full of girls, a clothesline of lingerie and tacky light up accessories! The Bachelorette weekend was immediately followed by the wedding weekend.  Their wedding was absolutely beautiful, and I think everyone had a good time from start to finish.  I think I may have had just a little too much fun… whoops! I’m actually a little sad it’s all over.  I made some great new friends...and I think Matt did too!

It’s amazing how quickly weekends fill up in the Summertime. (ahhh I how I love Summer!)  This weekend I’m running the Marine Corps half marathon in Fredericksburg.  I’m pretty nervous tho, as I’ve heard it has a killer hill at the end and I’ve managed to hurt my ankle.  Hopefully I’ve trained enough that I can make it. Then comes Memorial Day weekend.  As of yesterday, my plans to spend a quiet relaxing weekend at home have been changed.  The girls (Me, Shelly & Hope) are headed to OC - I just can’t get enough of the beach! Then the following weekend, Megan, Matt and I are going to see Eric Church!

So now that I’ve outlined the past month and next few weeks of my life, I should have some more content for my blog…no excuses not to follow up on the half marathon, OC weekend and concert, right?!

Need Inspiration

I’ve found myself recently lacking ideas for things to blog about. Not that anyone really reads my blog anyhow, but still…I said I was going to try and write at least one post a week, and clearly, that has not happened.

So, for lack of better things to share, here’s what’s new.

I completed my first half marathon. (You probably already know that if you’re reading this tho, since I couldn’t stop talking about it all last week!) It was a great experience. I had some serious doubts about my ability to run the entire thing, so it felt great to actually do it. And there are some really funny photos of me running. Maybe I’m not as graceful as I thought. Regardless of my bad form, I’m now sporting a new 13.1 bumper sticker. It’s pink, as per usual. Next half marathon is in May. Maybe my goal can be to beat my previous time, rather than just crossing the finish line!

Matt and I are headed to Mexico soon. I know we just went on our honeymoon, but we have lots of plans this summer so we decided to go on vacation sooner, than later. Plus, after the outage (sort of the equivalent to a security audit) at the Power Plant, I know Matt has got to be ready to get away. Personally, I’m really looking forward to some scuba diving!! Matt is even going to take a beginner course. I hope he likes it as much as me!

Over the past weekend, Matt and I spent some time fixing up the front yard. If you’ve been to my house, you know that all the lawns look dead on our street. There is continuous sunlight on the front side of my house, so keeping anything alive (including the tree) has proven rather difficult. We specifically asked the woman at a local nursery for plants that will be able to survive the intense sun (and the black –not green-- thumb I inherited from my mom). Right now, the yard looks good, and I actually really enjoyed gardening…hopefully the plants and my enjoyment makes it through the summer.

On another note, Matt is about to tackle crown molding. I’m SO excited. I think it is really going to take our house up a notch. With a little help from his dad and uncle, we’re hoping it goes smoothly…. If all goes well, maybe we can demolish our problematic bathroom and put in a giant rain shower?! (That might be overly optimistic wishful thinking.)

Other exciting news…all worthy of exclamation points…

Christine is coming soon! (I get to meet Oscar!)
Megan is going to have a baby!
Tasha is getting married!
Shelly got a cool new job!