the holidays, 2010 style

 so i pretty much missed holiday blogging this year, but i feel like you'll forgive me once you see the brief overview below, outlining just about all of the fall and winter 2010 holidays...

me, clearing the guts out of our first halloween pumpkin (yes, it's true, we haven't previously carved a pumpkin together...shameful)

mark, doing some tracing on our REDSKINS pumpkin!

he's pretty amazing, that husband of mine

finito! SO good!

thanksgiving brought us to philly and my first cheese steak at pat's

i got a whiz with onions and green peppers. eh, it was fine, but i don't think i was prepared for all the meat on the sub, it was a bit overwhelming

we were lucky enough to be able to spend wednesday before thanksgiving with meghan and alex. we went to the mutter museum, saw some gross stuff, got coffee and a fabulous dinner in town- PG representin' in philly!

us on thanksgiving

and we'll just skip right to christmas! this is mark and i with our lovely nephew, andrew, and his cutie-pie sister, taylor, on christmas eve

she's adorable, i just can't get enough

andrew takes after his dad, he prefers to be shirtless.

the schmidt clan the day after christmas. taylor was christened on the 26th and mark and i were able to host the after-party since we're so close to the naval academy chapel- score!

these were actually baked in early december for a thing at work, but i thought i would throw them in here. my first attempt at sugar cookies from scratch. they were alright, a little crunchy, not so chewy. i always prefer a chewy cookie, so maybe next year i will perfect the recipe. or just buy them :)

mark and i also decided to host a little new years eve soiree. family-friendly, of course :) 

the morgan's gettin' their party on

like i said, prefers to be shirtless.

there may or may not have been a small fire on our porch involving sparklers. i'm just sayin...

the lovely louisa

andrew is such a friendly guy

the lovely ladies! louisa, rachel, susan, jenn, jackie, and rachel

we were a little  too boring for rock, but he tolerated us as best he could :)

on halloween this year, mark and i were fortunate enough to complete the marine corps marathon in dc. we trained for about 6 weeks, which as you may know, is horribly inadequate. needless to say, we were both pretty nervous. this was mark's first marathon and my second. i trained for about 7 months for my first marathon, so 6 weeks was a joke and i knew it. up until about 1 week prior to the race i was wondering whether or not i was going to go through with it. BUT i knew that last year when i saw everyone on the metro with their race bags i was really sad that i didn't share in their mixed emotions of excitement, nervousness and general comradery. so, we ran. and as it turns out, we ran well. mark finished with an awesome time of 4:33 and i finished in 4:54, which happens to be 9 minutes faster than my marathon race time in 2008.

here are a few shots of us before the race. mark stretching and us freezing a bit before the sun came up:


i don't have any shots of us after the race since my camera was a in a bag and the bag was in a truck that was too far away for my jello-like legs to handle without a long rest. by the time we got my bag and took off my shoes, all i wanted was for the medics to fix up my toes (some unsavory things are still going on there, but i won't bore you with the details) and get home to rest!

a girls weekend in boston

long, long ago in a faraway land a few of us ladies got together for an extended weekend. since meghan lives in boston, courtney was visiting for a conference and suse was just a short bus ride away in nyc, i decided to hop a flight to beantown and have some fun. of course, we were all sad that rachel wasn't there, but knew we'd make up for it soon. since it's taken me 5 months to download the pics from my camera, i felt like it was alright to post about our trip now, even if it is so late in the game.

one of our first orders of business was to explore a local island that has an old, kind of creepy fortress on it. i think someone else got the fortress shots, but here are a few of us on the ferry:

and below is the lovely view of the boston harbor from the ferry:


later that night we decided to go out for a night of dancing and general good times. of course, it took us a while to get it together:


and finally:

once we arrived at 'da club it was a pretty exciting time, full of crazy stage dancing:

girls in skirts that left little, er, nothing to the imagination:

and boston's version of the jersey shore boys:

of course, we needed some obligatory historical boston photos before the weekend was complete, so we took our own educational tour of the city later that weekend:

and since we didn't want to take ourselves too seriously, just one quick fun shot:

what a great weekend, thanks ladies!

so it's been a while

in an attempt to avoid the school work that i have to do i decided to FINALLY write the blog post that's taken me two years to write- so here it is.

needless to say mark and i have been through a lot in the past couple of years. we're both in school these days, mark getting ready to graduate from UMD in may with his MBA and MPP (master's in public policy) and i'm roughly in the middle of my MA from GWU in museum studies, set to graduate next december. i'm still working full-time and mark has been interning on top of school, so relaxation is hard to come by these days.

on top of that we bought a house in august right outside of annapolis, right on the water (photos to come soon, i promise!) and we couldn't be happier about it. in the small snipets of spare time we find each weekend, we're busy painting, patching holes, hanging photos, and everything else it takes to make a house a home. there are so many amazing qualities about our new house, one of which is the super huge wrap-around front porch facing the water! the second is the proximity to a trader joe's. i've missed living less than 5 miles from a tj's in the past 2 years, so it's good to be back.

and finally, tomorrow will end our recent bout of marathon training. that's right, we've also managed to sign up and train for the marine corps marathon (although probably not as well as we should have). this will be mark's first marathon and my second, as i ran the MCM in 2008 as well. yesterday was the expo where we picked up our packets, free shirts and bought a few last minute goodies. we're both excited and nervous and praying that we just FINISH since we know our training has been less-than-ideal. if only my legs could just look like this, i think they'd carry me over the finish:



i apologize that this post hasn't had any real photos, but i promise they will be up of the house and of us in the next couple of weeks!

happy birthday mama chewners!

my mom turned a-certain- age-where-it-may-be-viewed-inappropriate-to-mention-at-this-point this past saturday :) mark and i went out to celebrate with mom, dad and allie to the rusty scupper in baltimore. my mom is a huge fan of their cream of crab soup, so of course we all had to get our own bowls- and i must concur, it was quite yummy! after lunch we retired back to the chewning house for a bit to hang out and eat some of the delicious pumpkin caramel pudding muffins i made in honor of mom's bday :)

happy birthday momma!

happy belated birthday to a princess!

last friday, princess alana turned 5 years old! we heard that she had a cowgirl/cowboy party with six shooters, cowpeople hats and a horsey cake, we just wish we could have been there :)

happy birthday alana!

us with alana this summer at the beach

so many updates!

it has been quite a while since i've updated the blog, for which i profusely apologize! a lot of changes and events have kept the mr. and i busy since mid-august. mark dove head first into his mba program and i haven't seen him since :) in all seriousness, mark does spend quite a bit of time working on homework, meeting with groups, studying, doing extra activities and attending club meetings- but he's enjoying learning and maybe he will one day learn to relish in the extacy of 5 hours of sleep a night. maybe. one day.

my new job at the Holocaust Museum has kept me very busy during the days, for which i am extremely thankful! being busy and wrapped up in a number of things helps the days go by faster and brings a sense of accomplishment (usually!). since i'm a little past the one month mark, i'm starting to take ownership of certain things, which i love.

although quality time with one another has lessened quite a bit from the amount of we got to spend during our "summer of unemployment," we've managed to make some great friends through work and school and have gotten to hang out with them on (super fun) occassions and there will certainly be more of that to come!

also, in other, wonderful and beautiful news, alexandra olivia schmidt was born on sunday, september 14th! lexi's parents are mike (mark's older brother) and diane (awesome sister in law) and her big (5 years old this friday!) sister is alana (best. princess. ever.). congrats to the fam!