festive

I know-- two posts in two days? What is this world coming to??

So yesterday was a busy day. We had a commitment at church for a couple hours in the morning. Unfortunately, our church is located just outside of downtown Athens...and as you may know, downtown Athens is home to the University of Georgia, which was home to a pretty major football game yesterday at noon. A football game that we lost, by the way, but I guess that's neither here nor there. But anyway, the reason that I even mention the game is to say that it means that gameday traffic is...something special...to say the least. So our trip to church was carefully planned to avoid as many major roads as possible.

I feel like I'm on a major tangent here. Why am I talking about my travel route?? I think I've gone off track somewhere...

Oh, yeah. So anyway. We went to church, we went back home as quickly as possible. We watched the game on TV. It was depressing.

In the midst of all this junk I was doing...what was really going on in my small town was the annual Sunflower Festival.

Oh yeah. A Sunflower Festival. In a small town. This HAS to be good!

I remember last year, when we first moved here...I saw these signs everywhere for the Sunflower Festival. And then I found out all about it in the Monthly Newsletter (that is enclosed with the water bill...come on, I've talked about this before!) And I really wanted to go, but couldn't...don't remember what we had going on, but I remember being very disappointed that I was going to have to miss a SUNFLOWER FESTIVAL. Because if there's anything I love...it's sunflowers. And festivals.

So this year, about mid-June, the signs went back up. Sunflower Festival!! September 18!! A 5k (at SIX A.M.!!!!!)! An antique car show! Food! Fun! Street Dance at 8pm! Bring your friends and your family!

Um...you had me at food. You really had me at the STREET DANCE.

What, pray tell, is a STREET DANCE?? Using my powerful skills of reasoning, I figured it must be some sort of thing where you dance. In the street.

Street dance?? In my very tiny town's downtown streets? Count me in.

So while I was super sad to miss the first 15 hours of Sunflower Fest-ing yesterday (remember...church thing, football...de-stressing from football...grocery store...dinner) we knew we had to at least go down there and look into this street dancing.

How does one dress for a street dance? I gave it my best shot. (Sorry, no pics! Your loss!)

We live about 1.5 miles from downtown. We coulda just walked, but my Street Dancing shoes aren't exactly the comfiest. Plus, if it was lame, we wanted to be able to exit quickly. So we drove. We were actually surprised to find some "traffic" (I use this phrase very loosely when referring to anything happening in this town. This is not to be compared to actual TRAFFIC in Athens on gameday!) about a block away from downtown. We parked in someone's yard because everyone else did. As soon as we got out of the car and started walking towards the main street downtown (because where else would we assume a Street Dance could be?), we heard loud music and saw --could it be??-- the flashing of strobe/stage lights.

Wassup yall, this small town is getting CRUNK!?!

So there's this band (made up of NO ONE under the age of 60) set up on a "stage" (sidewalk) in front of one of the antique stores (because that's about all there IS in our downtown. Antique stores, and a Subway.) In the street in front of the stage there's a "dance floor" delineated by bales of hay stacked in a semi-circle. There are TONS of people hanging out in lawn chairs, picnic blankets, golf carts...I mean, this is for real!! The band is playing some rockin' renditions of oldies and classic rock songs...and they weren't half bad...or in tune, for that matter, but no one seemed to notice. Unfortunately, most of the people were dancing were kids. They were entertaining to watch, but since there were no adults really joining in...Matt and I just danced over off to the side, next to the train tracks. I'm not really into being the center of attention on the dance floor (we didn't even do a "first dance" at our wedding), so even though I'd checked to make sure I didn't know anyone else at the festival (no neighbors), I didn't see a need to embarrass myself anyway. So we stayed for about an hour...and I must say, it was a lot of fun. Real life entertainment-- in the comfort and closeness of my own town! Now that I know what fun this Sunflower Festival really is, I will be sure to make it a priority for next year. No football game should stand in the way of a FESTIVAL. And next year, I'm taking my camera.

Although...there was no funnel cake. It's kind of hard for me to really celebrate without funnel cake, but I tried to make do. Actually, I bet they did have funnel cake earlier. I bet they sold out. Dangit!!

All this festivity makes me want to pull out my fall decorations. But then I remember that it's 94 degrees outside. So I'm a little torn. Should I just pretend it's fall? Go with an if you build it, they will come mantra? If you set out your fall decor...it will become fall?

Off to ponder things such as that...have a good rest of the (quickly fading) weekend!!