Where It's At  by Nancy Uptain

Howdy everyone! I sure hope you all had a wonderful spring break, full of plenty of time to enjoy this incredible weather with your best four-legged friend.
I don't know how it could get more beautiful outdoors with all the green fields and gorgeous wild flowers covering our deserts and mountain areas and all thanks to our plentiful winter rains. With much of the nation digging out of the deep winter snows, I believe we are incredibly blessed to live in this wonderful state!
Well, March brought so many fun and exciting events to the East Valley with ropings, rodeos, pageants and a lot of other fun going on's.
For many in the East Valley, March begins by attending the Lehi Days Rodeo. This rodeo is an extra special event for us Arizona natives, because the Lehi area is an area so rich in Arizona history. Lehi is one of the first settlements ever established in our Valley and has managed to keep that small, rural town atmosphere even though it has become surrounded by the growing metropolitan area. This rodeo is hosted by the LDS Church and has been going on for over 100 years! It is so much fun to see all of the kids, parents and grandparents competing together in old fashion rodeo fun! They have all the traditional events such as roping, barrels and calf riding along with other fun events to include all family members such as the greased pig and chicken chases, goat dressing, rescue race and women's steer dressing. There is something for everyone old enough to walk! This is an event to mark on your calendar for next March. Who knows, maybe it will be so much fun you'll want to start this tradition in your community!?
The other extra special event I would like to cover is the Gilbert Days Rodeo Royalty pageant. The Gilbert Promotional Corp. always puts on the most wonderful rodeos and this pageant was a great kick-off for the new year.
Due to all the rains previous to the competition, the Gilbert Rodeo Park arena was more like a swimming pool than an arena, so thanks to the quick thinking and ingenuity of the GPC director's and the great handiwork of everyone's friend Rocky, who keeps the grounds beautiful for every event, the parking lot became the new "arena" and the horsemanship competition went on, and what a competition it was! Those girls can really ride!
Next come the speech, modeling and impromptu question competition. This portion was MC'ed by 2000 Miss Rodeo USA, Marjon Brady and 2000 Gilbert Days Queen Betsy Rose Rice. They did a great job and we all have a few more horsey jokes to tell, by the way, which fly in the kitchen is the cowboy? Well the one on the range, of course! Okay, okay, I won't go there again, but they sure kept us going. There were many girls competing, all beautiful, sweet, creative girls and all did an excellent job. I wouldn't have wanted to judge this one, the job would have been too hard.
For those of you girls that tried out, but weren't crowned this pageant, try again! You were all great!
For those of you who won, Congratulations! You are going to have one of the funnest years of your life. Gilbert is going to have a wonderful new court this year! And last, but not least, to last year's court, your represented Gilbert royalty, you did an awesome job and everyone is so proud of you!
Gilbert's new court is Queen Courtney Canover; Teen Queen Stephanie Flemming; Princess Shana Luster; Missy Madison Shaan.
Girls, have a great year! Gilbert is proud to have you!