01 02 03 I'm My Favorite: Zumba for the Cure with Cesar Acosta 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

Zumba for the Cure with Cesar Acosta

There's not much that will get me out of bed early on an Saturday morning, but I'm proud to say that Zumba is one of those things. On March 26, I went to my second Zumba for the Cure on the north side of Indianapolis.

I was so excited to attend this Zumba fundraiser for many reasons. Towards the top of the list was getting to Zumba with Cesar Acosta. He is amazing.

Cesar Acosta

Cesar is from Venezuela and has been a Zumba instructor since 2006. He instructs at Peak Performance Fitness, Broad Ripple Park and Lifetime Fitness (where Zumba for the Cure was held).

Also at the top of the list of excitement for this event was for the charity represented. One of my all-time favorite instructors, Trish Coons, had a team at the event to raise money for husband's charity, Firefighters with Parkinson's Disease.

Team Gary

The Fabulous Trish Coons!

Ok, so back to my early Saturday morning. It was extra hard to get out of bed that Saturday because of the fact that I had been up until 1 a.m. working on my shirt! The Team Gary shirts were black short sleeve tees and I knew that I wouldn't be able to handle sleeves for two hours of Zumba. So, I did some searching on You Tube and finally found a tutorial for a t-shirt reconstruction that I liked. Being the perfectionist I am, I had to test it out on another shirt before I cut up my Team Gary shirt and being the procrastinator I am I didn't start working on all of this until about 10 p.m. the night before :) So here's how it turned out ...

Fatima, Shannon and me

Basically, I trimmed the sides and poked holes down the side and then cut up a lime green t-shirt I had and used that as the "ribbon" to do the lacing down the sides. Then I cut the collar off and cut it into a tank. I was really happy with how it turned out.

So, I woke up around 7:30 a.m. to get dressed and throw on a little makeup (I would be taking photos after all) and then I headed to Fatima's house to meet the gang. Ashley, Shannon, Jenny and Michelle all met in Fatima's kitchen and started showing off the t-shirt reconstructions we had done to our group shirts. I was happy to find out that I wasn't the only one that had stayed up late cutting up my shirt! We ran by Tina's house to pick her and her friend up and then we were on our way.

Ashley and Tina.
I think Ashley won the award for staying up the latest working on her shirt.

Jenny and Michelle.
I loved how Jenny's shirt turned out.

Besides some white knuckle moments following Tina on the interstate (remind me to never ride with her lol) we made it up to Lifetime Fitness in good time. I was kind of hoping for some shenanigans from Fatima like last time, but it must have been too early in the morning.

We signed our forms, turned in our donations and went in the gym to claim our spots and take some photos.

Then there was the 2-hours of Zumba. I really enjoyed all the different instructors and I managed to do the majority of songs with just a few water/towel breaks and a quick break to shoot a few photos during the Zumba'ing and upstairs to get some floor shots.

Part of the gym.

Tina snapped this photo of me.

Jenny and Tina grabbing some water.

The ever-important playlist.

Me and Jenny

The event flew by and, as always,we were left starving. We kept with tradition and went to a local Mexican restaurant to fill up on chips and salsa.

At the end of the day, nearly $1,000 was raised for Parkinson's research and over $3,000 was raised for the other charity, breast cancer research. I'm already looking forward to next year's Zumba for the Cure!

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