Happy Derby Day!

Happy Derby, everyone! Today is a very special Derby Day for me and Chuck, as it may be our last Derby in Louisville for a couple of years. This thought scares me a little, as I have never NOT been in Louisville for the Derby in my entire life. So we will have to live it up big time today!

For as long as I can remember, we have gone to Uncle Tony and Aunt Kelly's Derby party and since college, Chuck and I have started also going to the backside at Churchill Downs with his family every other year.  Both are extremely fun and exciting in different ways. At Tony and Kelly's we bet all day, eat amazing food (also all day...), make fun drinks, compete in sack races, three-legged races, underwear races, play cornhole, and usually end the day trying to find any other way possible to bet our leftover money on something besides horses- LRC games, Texas Hold'em, etc. etc.

Sack races- where things get instense.

You can make some serious money at the Hagan Derby party!

Anyone who has money leftover at the end of the races usually ends up losing it in a game of LRC...

....or poker.

When we go to the backside, we also get to bet all day and eat amazing food all day, but the difference is we are hanging out between horse barns with Chuck's sister's in-laws and friends. We get to be around horses all day, watch the Derby horses being led from their barns out to the track to walk around to the front to get ready for the race, and can occasionally sneak over to the infield to check out the mayhem happening in there. And then of course there's nothing quite like standing up against the fence of the track, watching as 20 horses run past you at 40 miles an hour racing for the finish line in hopes to be crowned the Kentucky Derby winner!

 

Here we are on the backside. That's our view- pretty sweet huh? Right on the other side of that fence is the track! 

Up close and personal with the horses!

 The set up:

The saddest part about being in Boston for the first Saturday in May for the next two years is that unfortunately, I don't think anyone there will care about Derby. But I've decided that we will have to change that- we will make them care. So I've already started thinking about hosting our very own Derby party and teaching the non-Kentuckians all about the greatest two minutes in sports.

Here is a list of things we will and will not do at our Boston Derby party:
We will: make mint juleps and force everyone to drink them, similar to how my dad does every year.

We will not: have underwear races.

 We will: bet on every race.

We will not: let anyone pass out on the stairs. That's dangerous!

We will: dress up.

We will not: invite the Queen of England. She hardly talked to anyone last time she came!

It will take a lot of preparation and planning, but after attending over 20 Derby parties and the actual Derby itself, I think we'll be able to throw a pretty sweet Derby party and make Derby lovers out of all our new non-Kentuckian friends. But really, what's not to love?

(This is actually the Oaks race, 2010- not Derby. But I took this picture and I like it. Pretty good seats that year, right?)