01 02 03 I'm My Favorite: Zumba Glow Party for Leukemia and Lymphoma in Indianapolis 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

Zumba Glow Party for Leukemia and Lymphoma in Indianapolis

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I'll get to the recap of the Zumba Glow Party in just a sec, but I have to start off with this photo of me from Friday night. Once I got home from dinner with the girls, I started downloading the photos to Facebook and then went to take a shower. After my shower I came back to my computer to start tagging the photos and that's when I saw this photo of me:

This is my favorite "after" photo of me to date. I couldn't get over how little my waist looked is.

For reference, this photo below of me on the left is from a Zumba event in July (I was around 217 pounds at the time, today I'm 194). Both shirts are Zumba size XL.


My shrinking waist is 100% a direct result of Zumba. It's all that hip and stomach work.

Ok, back to the event.

As luck would have it, I had the afternoon off from work, so I went home and took a quick nap. Once I was back up, I tried on some of the different Zumba tops I won in the eBay auction last week and decided on the one pictured above - I thought it would look the best at the "glow party." I got the kids clothes together for basketball practice and karate and picked them up at school. I then met Jim over at the YMCA to drop off the kids and then I headed to Heather's house to pick her up and make our way over to Fatima's house to catch a ride with her and Ashley.


Heather, Fatima and Ashley waiting at the registration table.
I know it's always going to be an adventure with Fatima around :) I made sure that Heather and I got to Fatima's house on time because I know she likes to be punctual, but it turns out that Fatima was running late and when we finally started on our way downtown to the Madame Walker Theater we were running behind schedule and it was stressing Fatima WAY out. We were approaching I-465 and I knew what was coming. It was a Friday night, in the middle of rush hour, in the rain and traffic was crawling on the interstate. We did manage to calm Fatima down and make our way onto I-65 and downtown in pretty good time. We wanted to get there pretty early, but only managed to get there about 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. They must have started a little later than scheduled because we were able to meet up with some of the other ladies from our YMCA and take some photos with them.


Lisa and Stephanie

Shannon, me and Beth
Ashley, me and Dawn (this is the photo I posted at the beginning of this post)



I also was able chat with Kim for a few minutes. She was the first Zumba instructor I ever had.

Beth and Kim
Kim did several routines that night it was so great to move to her choreography again.

So, as we were waiting for things to get started, our group started decking themselves out with glow in the dark stuff. We weren't sure what all the "glow party" would entail, but we quickly found out when they dimmed the lights and all you could see were neon necklaces everywhere.

There were instructors representing all sides of Indianapolis that were introduced while the crowd cheered (I read there were 200 people there) and then we quickly got started with the warm up. It always takes a little time for the crowd to work itself out at these events. You have to make sure you have enough room, and people will move around a bit to make sure they're not stepping on the person next to them. I was a little concerned about Zumba'ing in the dark, but my eyes adjusted and I was able to keep up.

The room was pretty small and it didn't take long before it got really hot inside. I was already drenched in sweat and had to put my hair up. We did several songs and then took a break do do a raffle drawing and that's when we found the rest of our group from the Y.





At this point they had the people who had been stuck at the back of the room switch places with those in front, so most of our group was hanging out in the back of the room. About an hour into the class, I started to socialize a bit more. It was really hard to see the instructors at the front of the room and nearly impossible to follow the moves, so most of us just started doing our own thing off to the side. It was fun. I took a break and finished a bottle of water and ate a Kashi bar since I didn't eat anything before.

I sweated a ton, but didn't feel like I worked out as hard as I do in class. My legs told me differently after I got out of the car later. Heather had her body bug on and it said she burned 900+ calories. We did a few more songs and then a group of us went up to the front of the room where some of our instructors were hanging out. One of the songs that we do in class with Tina called "Wiggle Wiggle" came on and it was a different routine than ours but we did ours any way off to the side.

My favorite songs of the night were the ones where they split the room down the middle and we did a "booty battle" which is basically a dance off between each side of the room. We do this in class and it's a riot. Fatima and I went to the front row of our side and we were shaking it with the best of them.

The event was winding down and a group of us paid to get this group photo.


We gathered our stuff, made sure we had everyone and were getting ready to head out of the theater when we heard a few choice words come out of Fatima's mouth. Apparently her water bottle wasn't closed completely and water spilled all over her bag including her phone. Fatima's phone is her life, so she was pretty upset about it. We got that situation under control as best we could and headed back out in the rain to the car to make our way to Little Mexico, a Mexican restaurant on the south side, to meet up for dinner. Fatima was still pretty concerned about her phone and I had remembered hearing that you can put your phone in rice to dry it out so I looked up some instructions on my phone to tell her. I was reading the steps to her as she was trying to find a gas station before we ran out of gas.

Step 1 - remove phone from water (best Step 1 tip ever)
Step 2 - do not turn the phone on (whoops, too late for that)
Step 3 - do not panic (I cracked up when I read this, because she was FREAKING OUT at the time)

Ok, so we were all cracking up at these steps and it became a joke the rest of the night and I think it will continue to be one of those funny things we talk about for a long time to come. (btw - she put her phone in rice over night and it worked fine the next day).

We made it to the restaurant and chowed down on chips and salsa. I opted for Diet Coke and my regular dish - pollo fundido. I ate about half of it and took the rest home for Jacob to eat the next day.

Here are some fun photos from dinner.


Fatima looks deceptively calm in this photo - believe me she was freaking out about her phone




It was a great night. I was a little wound up when I got home and it took me awhile to fall asleep. Jacob and Gracie's last basketball game was at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning and then I went to Geraldine's Zumba class at 9:45 - it was killer. I felt so great after class for about and hour and then I crashed and took a long nap :)

Oh yeah, I totally love taking photos at these events. I probably had about 50+ Facebook notifications from all the comments people were making on them. I can't wait for the next even in a few weeks.
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