Hometown Holidays

I haven't been back to Wilber much since Czech Days in August so I was excited to hear about their Hometown Holidays event. They have different vendors all day and people can decorate a Christmas Tree in any theme they want for display. We got there to look around a bit before I had to perform. There were some very traditional trees and some that were completely off the wall. For example there was one that everyone walked by and didn't notice till they walked around looking at all the trees. They had stuffed the trees into kroj! :) The trees totally looked like mannequins dressed in kroj. LOL! I also looked at all the booths. They had the woven rugs from the Czech Museum we used to make when we were there and LOTS of other Czech heritage items. After visiting for a while it was time for the queens to make our appearance.

They started with Laura, the Wilber Czech Slovak Queen, and had her introduce herself and tell a bit about what she had done as queen so far. She couldn't' perform her talent as she is having problems with her foot and well...dancing isn't an option. I was up next! :) I told everyone what an honor it was to represent the wonderful Czech people from Nebraska. I talked about how far I had traveled and what I plan to do in the future as queen. I then had Brad come up on stage and talked a bit about playing the accordion. I told them how long I had been playing etc. We performed the Blue Skirt Waltz then passed the stage onto Shandra Korbelik (2007 NE Czech Queen) to play a few songs and next to Sheyenne (the Wilber Princess)to play a song for everyone. It was AMAZING to see so many young LADIES playing accordion right along side me. We then all joined together and played 2 songs in a mini jam. It was great to see Sheyenne play with a group like this for the first time and do so well. After we played the songs she knew Brad, Shandra, and I played a few more for everyone. It was a lot of fun and can't wait to play with all of them again in the near future. :) After we all finished playing we looked around a bit more and had to head back to Lincoln. It was a lot of fun and it was great to see some of the Wilber group that I haven't seen for a few months! Seems to be filling up my schedule again which is good...I felt lost not wearing my kroj once a week or so!! HEHE!

Spanem Bohem!
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen