Oklahoma Czech Festival

Well I decided it had been long enough since I went out of state to celebrate the wonderful Czech heritage so off to Oklahoma we went. :)

I rode down with Sandy Schnackenberg (one of the pageant committee members,) Carrie Brown (Miss Czech Slovak US 2009 2nd Runner Up and Nebraska Czech Slovak Queen 2008,) and Monica Brown (Carrie's mom.) We had been talking a few weeks before and all agreed that we wanted to go. My poor mom had to be in Hawaii to celebrate my parents 30th Anniversary and her 50th Birthday so she had to miss out on all the fun. HA! Well one thing I did learn from my mother in is our packing strategy when leaving for a trip. I was up all night then slept for a few hours just to get up and finish. Of course I was trying to finish about 10 things for the York festival before leaving too!

We started our trek after lunch and headed straight down to Choctaw, OK. We arrived at Christy Kessler's (Miss Czech Slovak US 2008 1st Runner Up and Oklahoma Czech Slovak Queen 2007) house around 10pm. Her family was kind enough to let all of us queens stay at their house rather than paying for a hotel! We moved all of our stuff in and sat to visit for a while. Debbie Kessler went to high school and graduated with Garth Brooks so she told us some fun stories and showed us pictures of him throughout the years. Carrie and Monica finished some car signs and then Sandy and Monica headed to their hotel for the night. It was after midnight by the time Shandra Korbelik (Nebraska Czech Slovak Queen 2007) and Brianna Tichy (Miss Czech Slovak US 2009) arrived. Brianna had to make signs when she arrived so we were up till around 2 or 3am when we all layed down and tried to go to sleep. We had to get up early so some of the girls could shower and get ready for the day. Before we went to bed we left a note for the Kessler's on the window with sticky letters. "Thanks Kesslers! Love, Queens!" The morning came a bit earlier than we all had hoped! Debbie got to be a Mega Queen Mom in helping 5 queens get dressed and ready for the day. After everyone was dressed and ready we headed to Yukon to start the day with their parade. It was neat because we got to ride through in some neat old cars. As we were going through the parade every once and a while I would hear "GO HUSKERS!" or "YEA NEBRASKA!" and look out to see one lone Husker fan out there. :) Then I heard my name yelled out and saw someone I hadn't seen in MANY YEARS. Well when I was 11 I was a little sister in the Miss Czech Slovak US pageant. My queen was Traci Crofford from Oklahoma. When I knew I would be heading to Oklahoma I tried to find her....and thanks to Facebook....I did and told her that I would be there for the festival. She lives in Yukon so we exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up sometime that day. It just seems crazy that in August...I'LL BE THE BIG SISTER AT THE NATIONAL PAGEANT! After the parade we headed to their main stage for the festival and got some lunch. It's always fun to have Czech dinners at different places because they are all so different! Traci came over and found me and we took a few pictures together. They had a big group of dancers so they entertained quite a bit. They had them dancing and singing and then had time for everyone to join in and dance too. I learned the 7 step polka...I think that's what it's called. LOL! They had us come up and introduce ourselves at one point also. After we all introduced ourselves I made sure to thank the Kessler's for their hospitality...it was definitely above and beyond anything they had to do and I know all of us girls appreciated it. We shopped through all of the little stands they had in the craft area and stayed until the end of events in that part of town. At the very end of the day they crowned their 2009 Oklahoma Czech Royalty. They crown a Prince, Princess, Junior Queen, and Queen. I met their new queen Jacey Jedlicka who will be in Wilber with me next year and we took a few pictures. After their crowning everyone heads over to their Czech Hall for a dance in congratulations to the new royalty. We were escorted into the dance and lucky for us...again the Kessler's helped us out! After we were all walked in and introduced we danced the first dance with our escort to get the dance started. We didn't stay for too long after that as we planned to get halfway back to York that night so we wouldn't have to get up QUITE as early in the morning. We had a great time and I met even more wonderful Czech people...I still don't' think you'll find better people around! I look forward to attending the Oklahoma festival again in the future! If you're around the area...definitely Czech it out! :)

Na Shledanou,
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen