The rodeo may be six months away but that’s reason enough to throw a party.

The folks behind the Kitsap County Fair & Stampede are throwing their second annual “Dance for a Wish” western party starting at 7 p.m. March 9 at the Fairgrounds Presidents’ Hall. Tickets are $35 in advance from www.kitsaprodeo.com (click on Dance for a Wish) or $45 at the door.

The night’s agenda includes live music, no-host bar, hors de oeuvres, live and silent auctions (top item is a trip to the San Antonio Stock Show), and table entertainment. As a bonus, the Fair’s headline act and rodeo acts will be announced. It all adds up to one of the most generous nights of the year.

“We raised about $50,000 last year and we’re hoping to do better this year,” dance chairman Don Frazier said. “We spent it wisely in giving away two wishes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation (as well as creating several scholarships.)”

Frazier said they planned for 250 to show up for the inaugural event in 2006 but had 440 people attend.

“We’re hoping for more this year,” Frazier said. “Cowboys need to play in the winter and this fills that void.”

Providing the music are The Rangers, a Seattle-based western band that’s been a popular act for years, who won the Seattle Weekly’s “Best Country-Dance Band” award in 2001.

“They’re one of the best western bands on the West Coast,” Frazier said.

For 2007, the dance hopes to make more Make-A-Wish requests come true, provide funds to Camp Agape to give children undergoing cancer treatments a week of fun with their families and support the Fisher House at Fort Lewis which houses family members of military service members who have been hospitalized. Funds also will go to agriculture scholarships for Kitsap high school students and an Olympic College School of Culinary Arts scholarship. OC students are again preparing the food for the dance.