The Nation's Best Homecoming

Last time I wrote on here, I told you that we had another busy weekend coming up.  Well, the weekend has come and gone, so now I'm here with the re-cap.  (Add to this the fact that we had seven people stay at our house, and a neighborhood halloween parade Sunday, and you get one tired girl.)

For those of you who don't know, homecoming is a big deal here in Stillwater.  In fact, it's rumored that we have the nation's largest homecoming celebration!  In the week leading up to homecoming weekend, the university sponsors many activities including a carnival for the kiddos, painting the street leading to the stadium, huge signs depicting the theme designed by various organizations on library lawn and adding orange dye to the fountains.  One of the highlights of homecoming is walkaround.  In preparation for walkaround, the sororities and fraternities are paired up.  Together, they design and build a house dec that includes moving parts.  These giant house decs are covered in chicken wire that has been "pomped" with small pieces of tissue paper to create designs.  Many hours go into preparing these monstrosities!  During walkaround, the streets surrounding the fraternity houses (where the house decs are), are closed off.  Hundreds of people crowd the streets walking from house to house talking about which house dec is the best.  (My husband actually got to judge the engineering aspect of the house decs one year, as an alumni, this is a big honor!)

 

Walkaround is officially over at 9:00 when everyone is invited to the basketball arena for a pep rally type thing.  After walkaround, we me up with my mom and her friends for a little bit.

Then went down the road to watch a band.

They were dressed up as Thunder Cats for halloween... get it?!

I normally get up and go to the parade on Saturday morning, but this year I decided to sleep in a little and miss it.  As much as I wish I would have gone, I'm happy with my decision.

Before the game, we met up with the rest of the Parks' crew that was in town.  None of us had tickets to the game, so we enjoyed hanging out with each other.  That is, until the girls ditched the boys to go shopping. :)