Spontaneous Weekends

This weekend, Pete and I got to experience the joy of the spontaneous.

We didn't start out with any plans for our weekend. Just the usual, "Yay, we don't have to work," and a plan to finish moving my office around before the Free Indeed Concert on Friday evening.

Then I found out that Free Indeed didn't have any decorations. And that my desk wasn't going to be ready to be moved in until Monday. And that no alumni moment had materialized for Free Indeed.

We went to work. As soon as we established that I would not be able to finish cleaning my office, we left to pick up some decorations and door prizes for the concert and the alumni moment. As we were decorating, my cell phone rang. It was theKate, calling to tell us that she and her best friend were going to be coming up to stay the night so they could go Christmas shopping--with their own spontaneous ideas.

"Sure, not a problem! You know you're welcome!"

After the concert, I was talking with Gabe's dad, who mentioned that he would see me on Sunday. Surprised, but not altogether in the dark, I realized that Pete must have told Gabe we would come up with him to see some highlights from Handel's Messiah with his family. While my brain was still wrapping itself around that plan, we were invited to stay for pizza with Free Indeed, which we did. We then topped off the evening with a spur-of-the-moment trip to Magnolia's for dessert and a date.

The next day, I was planning to meet my friend Heidi to talk about weddings (she's engaged now, btw--see my post about my wedding...). On the way home, I called to ask Pete if we could just go out and pick up our Christmas tree that afternoon--so we did, and we took Gabe with us too! We had bought and then returned a tree stand, thinking we wanted to get a fake tree instead of a real tree, so we needed to get another tree stand for our tree, which turned out in the end to be real.

Then we decided at the last minute before returning home from picking up our tree stand to meet up with Kate and Kristi at the Kobe Japanese Steakhouse in Leesburg. Then Kate and Kristi spontaneously stayed another night to help us decorate the tree. While we were decorating, it began to snow.

The next morning, we went to church in Pennsylvania and spent the day with Gabe, his family and our friend Katie. The community performance of the Messiah was worth the trip. It was held in a huge old Methodist church in Carlisle, complete with even more snow.

Sometimes, I suspect we just need spontaneous weekends, to remind us how fun living can be. Ask us about our new memories sometime!