the most random weekend of my life

robert and i are festival folk. there's nothing i love more than a hot pavement, street vendors selling funnel cakes, and men on stilts. i also hold the belief that there are very few things in this world that can't be fixed with an orange fanta and a hot dog all the way. this weekend was the 25th annual mount olive pickle festival, about three hours from our town. robert and i made a weekend out of it, staying at roadside hotels and doing the most spontaneous things possible.

here's a little list of the weekend we like to dub our "weekend of random things."

1. the weekend began with our royal wedding feast. see post below. this was a spur-of-the-moment decision that turned out to be a beautiful memory.

2. we were originally slated to leave for the festival early saturday morning. on friday evening, on a blanket under the shade tree, robert turned to me and said, "why don't we leave tonight?" we ran inside, packed our bags, went by and told my family goodbye, stopped at the gas station for a frozen mocha, and reached mount olive at 12:30 a.m.

3. driving to see my dad's old high school, near the city. walking the same grass his cleats did. looking at the worn, unchanged football field and thinking about the boy he was before he was dad.

4. stuffing my face with nine dill pickles at the festival. the strawberry coconut hawaiian ice. the deep fried corn. the hot dog. every beautifully indulgent nugget of deliciousness. the hot sun beating down on our backs, the first introduction to summer's heat of the year.

5. driving to supper, then seeing a sign in front of a random church that read, "boy scout italian dinner! come inside and support the troop!" we swerved in, got out, and spent an hour eating homemade spaghetti and meat sauce in a fellowship hall, deep in conversation with two old ladies out supporting their grandsons.

6. walking around our old college campus, late at night. with all the students home for the weekend, it felt like we had the place to ourselves. we went inside all our old dorms, peered into the lounges and study halls that were once such a huge part of our lives, now serving the same purpose for other students, other faces and memories. we kissed in front of the library and thought about how life has changed. for the best, yes. but we still miss those late nights in the bookstacks, going down to the coffee shop every half hour for a pick-me-up.

there were a million other sweet, random things that happened. i am so thankful to have a fun-loving husband who doesn't think too hard about things, but goes on adventures with me. with him, we turned a two-hour festival into a weekend i will never forget, even if the first sunburn of the year made its way onto my unsuspecting shoulders.