This past Friday the girls and I made a pilgrimage back to Stillwater, OK to attend the OSU Homecoming Walkaround. Okay, “pilgrimage” might be a bit of a stretch…Stillwater is just about an hour from where we live in Oklahoma City, but I haven’t been to the Walkaround since my last year of college in 1996. Y’all, that’s a long time ago! And if my memory still serves me, back in the day the Walkaround wasn’t nearly the production that it is now. The premise is still the same, of course – Greek houses competing against each other for best pomped house decs and everyone walks around looking at them. But the implementation has seriously changed in the past 16 years! An estimated 80,000 people were supposed to have been in attendance that evening and there were carnival rides and street vendors – a far cry from the mid-90′s Walkaround I remember!
I wanted to go last year as we’d just moved back to Oklahoma and I thought it would be fun. We ended up not being able to go last year, though, so off we went this year. I’m not sorry we went – it was an interesting experience to be sure, and we met up with an old college buddy of mine and his sweet family and enjoyed walking around together, but I feel like I got it out of my system. I don’t need to go back again any time soon!
On our way out of town we drove by the “new” Walmart. I say new because that wasn’t where it was when I lived there, but again, that was 16 years ago… I actually have no idea how long the “new” Walmart has been where it is. It’s a nice one, though! Seems new to me! I was on the hunt for the Pistol Pete #MascotWear Huggable Hoodie and figured if they didn’t have it at the Stillwater Walmart, they wouldn’t have it ANYWHERE.
But low and behold, they DID have it! We had to hunt it down a bit, but it was a pretty fun scavenger hunt through Walmart and we discovered a lot of awesome OSU stuff as well as a lot of silly OSU stuff on our hunt. You can see what all we found including OSU slippers and face paint/stencils (oh and a hilarious OSU lamp) in this Google + photo album right here!
As we still had an hour’s drive back home and I hadn’t purchased anything from a street vendor during our time at the Walkaround, I let the girls choose a travel treat for the ride home. We paid for Pistol Pete and loaded up on candy and caffeine (don’t judge – desperate times call for desperate measures…sometimes…) and headed home.
Now, it’s true that we do like to watch the occasional football game around here, and we almost ALWAYS watch the Oklahoma games (both OU and OSU) when they play on local TV, but being that it’s the middle of the week right now AND October, my family was actually homegating for the NCLS train wreck that was the Cardinals vs. the Giants tonight. Hint: our team lost. But that didn’t stop us from watching, nor did it stop Katie, aka: Pistol Pete from making a grand appearance. This hooded blanket has been the surprise hit of my kids. I think it’s just funny, but they seem to LOVE it. In fact…they fight over it. *ahem* And when my family homegates, we always, ALWAYS have popcorn. All of my kids can successfully operate the air popper we have and they all do a decent job of adding the butter and salt in the right proportions. The biggest challenge is making sure we have enough!
Our second biggest challenge is making sure Pistol Pete stays out of the way of the television screen… *giggle*
Now then, if my kids can figure out how to share Pete, he might have a nice long life in our house…particularly when our OU loving friends come over. *grin*
The whole Mascot Wear line has some pretty cute collegiate-themed Huggable Hoodies. Be sure to check them out on both Twitter and Facebook!
I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Infinity Headwear and Apparel #CBias #SocialFabric. All opinions expressed in this post really are my own honest thoughts. I keep a proper disclosure statement available here.
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