Zumba at Relay for Life
Posted on August 5, 2017 by Ching under Community, Zumba.
A few months ago, a friend of mine who was on the Relay for Life organizing committee this year reached out to me and asked if I would volunteer to teach a Zumba class on July 14 at 11 PM. I love volunteering for things so I told her of course I’d do it but I did want to clarify the time because I thought it was a typo at first. It turns out, she really meant it.
The Relay for Life event goes from 7 PM to 7 AM and they planned various activities every hour to keep participants awake and fully engaged throughout the 12 hours. She needed something for the 11 PM time slot. The instructor who volunteered last year had moved away and so she decided to ask me this year.
Though the time made me pause, of course, I agreed to do it. I live for this kind of volunteer work. It’s so fun!
Anyway, when she asked me back in January, we hadn’t finalized the summer schedule yet so I agreed not realizing that I would be teaching an 8:45 AM Aqua Zumba class the next day. I was a little bit worried but I had faith that I’d be able to handle it. I think the excitement of dancing from Friday into Saturday outweighed my apprehension. I hadn’t danced that late into the evening/next morning in years! Plus, this is my first ever 11 PM Zumba class.
Dancing alone is never any fun so I decide right off the bat to recruit some people to help me. I had five amazing Zumba instructor friends who answered the call. More people wanted to help actually, but we only had a one-hour time slot so we couldn’t have too many instructors. I took the first five to confirm. Huge thanks to Andrea, Nick, Melissa, and Charis for helping me!
All of our friends who agreed to stay up and dance with us that night deserve recognition too. I mean, I realize they were sacrificing sleep time to help. The party wouldn’t have been any fun without people to dance with.
Here are few pictures from that evening…
This is one of my favorite Zumba people, Melissa. She is just so vibrant and full of life, and she’s always willing to help me out with my Zumba volunteer events.
I’m glad we brought a few Zumba addicts with us because only a few of the Relay for Life people participated and most of them didn’t stick around for the full hour. I’m sure they were trying to conserve their energy for the long haul. After all, they had 7 more long hours to go and we were only there for the Zumba bit.
Brian is always really supportive and around for all of these events but I decided to give him a break from having to drive me around all over the place that evening. I managed to hitch a ride with Andrea to Melissa’s 6:45 PM Zumba class at East YMCA and then I hitched a ride with Melissa to Carlos O’Kelly’s (our usual post Friday night Zumba hangout specially right now because they’re doing that summer drink tour) and then I tagged along with her to her house and Bishop Carroll High School where the Relay for Life event was going on. Her house is just around the corner, less than 10 minutes from the school.
That was actually one of the craziest 24-hour periods of Zumba I’ve had (not counting ZINCON). Basically, I took Melissa’s Friday night class, then the Relay for Life Zumba at 11 PM, then I taught my two classes (Aqua Zumba at 8:45 AM and Zumba at 10:30 AM) at Andover YMCA the next day on about five hours of sleep (if that). That’s four Zumba classes in 16 hours. It was nuts!
And, Andrea did it all with me!
Anyway, I considered it my warmup for ZINCON, which is a grueling schedule of four straight days of 24/7 Zumba. It’s so fun though! I can’t wait to tell you all about it. I may have time to blog about it tomorrow.
In the meantime, here are the posts from last year:
Then these are from 2014 (we skipped 2015 because we used 2015 ZINCON budget for the 2016 Zumba cruise instead):
The very last Zumba Instructor Conference in LA in 2014:
My very first ZINCON in 2013:
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Carlos O’Kelly’s Summer Drink Tour
Posted on August 5, 2017 by Ching under Free Stuff, Things to Do.
Speaking of drink tours, Brian and I are scrambling to finish my Carlos O’Kelly’s summer drink tour. This is a “ladies only” offer so all of the drinks are pretty frou frou. Brian is more of a beer drinker so he hasn’t been much help. I suppose he could drink the Cuba Libre.
I’m a light-weight and can usually only drink one drink each time so this drink tour is taking FOREVER to complete. Although, since we’re down to the wire, I made an exception last night and drank two. The promotion ends on Labor Day.
These are all of the drinks you have to drink in order to complete the tour and earn your reward:
- Patrón Top Shelf Margarita
- White Peach Sangria
- Blackberry Long Island Tea
- Raspberry Gin Slushy
- Horchata Rum Shake
- Corazón CocoLoco
- Pink Paloma
- Blue Lagoon
- Jumbo Margarita
- Cuba Libre
- Blueberry Ginger Mojito
- Blackberry Mint Julep Margarita
The ones in bold are my favorites with the Horchata Rum Shake being my favorite of the favorites. It tastes like a milkshake. You can’t taste the liquor at all! It would be awesome if I could just drink 12 of those. That wouldn’t complete the drink tour, though.
I bet you’re wondering what’s the point. Your reward is an amazing set of handblown Mexican glassware. You get the glasses after you complete six drinks and then you get the bottle once you complete all 12 on the list.
Honestly, I’m not as concerned about getting the bottle but I do want two sets of the glasses because three glasses is just an awkward number to have. I want a pair of each. I got my first set of glasses a few weeks ago but then we left for #ZINCON and so now I’m trying to pick the tour back up.
I only need a couple more drinks on my new punchcard so I’m hoping to get my second set of glasses this weekend. Hurrah!
P.S. It’s not too late to start your tour. Wendy started hers last night. I gave her one of my punchcards that already had one punch on it. After her two drinks last night, she only needs three more to get her glasses. Come join us!
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Wichita Wicked Brew Tour
Posted on August 3, 2017 by Ching under Community, Date Ideas, Things to Do.
Have you gotten your Wicked Brew Tour shirt yet?
Brian and I have been diligently getting stamps on our passport in hopes of earning our shirts before the deadline or they run out of shirts. I actually completed my passport already and got my shirt. Brian would have completed his already too, except he left his passport in one of his shorts and it ended up getting obliterated in the laundry a few weeks ago.
Being the persistent people we are, he’s decided to start over and I decided to start over with him. So, I may have talked him into starting over. I mean, how are we going to be matchy-matchy if he doesn’t get his Wicked Brew Tour shirt?
I got my first shirt in a Medium size and I now want one in size Small. That’s pretty much my motivation for starting over with him. Anyway, we need a few more stamps but we’re getting there slowly but surely.
I’m not generally a coffee drinker but this whole Wicked Brew Tour has got me drinking way more coffee than I’ve ever drank before. Brian is a coffee addict but he don’t really like the kind I drink. He likes to drink his coffee black — plain and unadulterated. He was really excited for the beer drinking part of the tour, though.
The Wicked Brew Tour has got us visiting places we don’t normally get around to visiting. Here are a few photos.
The picture above is from our trip to the Donut Whole a few weeks ago.
This one is from River City Brewing Company. Incidentally, the night that we decided to go there for dinner was the same night as Automobilia and that was a real treat. Mostly for Brian but I enjoyed watching his eyes light up as he walked up to his favorite cars.
Automobilia surrounded River City so we decided to look check out the car show while walking off our dinner. There were 1500+ cars on display downtown from Washington to Broadway. It was car heaven!
We’re really enjoying the tour so far and I think we’d enjoy it even more after we get our Wicked Brew shirts. I’m hoping we can get the rest of the stamps in the next two weeks because the deadline is just around the corner. I sure hope they have some shirts left!
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Garage Door Opener Saga Continued
Posted on July 26, 2017 by Ching under Home Ownership, Things to Do.
Brian spent most of the day on 4th of July finishing what he and Chad started on Sunday afternoon: the partially complete garage door opener installation.
He tweaked and tweaked and tweaked. I wasn’t much help except I got to push the button every time he was ready to test it. He would make some minor adjustment and then he would tell me to push the button and then he would make some more changes and then I’d have to push the button again. I suppose I saved him from having to go up and down the ladder multiple times so I was useful that way.
Touchdown! He was so excited when he finally got it to work. Here’s a video of him explaining the whole thing.
While he was doing most of the troubleshooting — before my button-pushing part — I met Stephanie at North YMCA so we could take Melissa’s special 4th of July Aqua Zumba class.
It was a blast! And, I’m happy to report, my Apple Watch survived it’s second water test (an hour of being submerged in the pool) with flying colors.
I must say, I much prefer taking Aqua Zumba to teaching it specially when it’s 100+ degrees outside. If you’ve not tried Aqua Zumba before, come join us at Andover YMCA on Saturdays at 8:45 AM. We only have a few more weeks left before they close the waterpark. (SIDE NOTE: Hideki is filling in this Saturday while I’m at ZINCON but I’ll be back next weekend.)
Later that day we went to Cory and April’s for a real-deal 4th of July BBQ, complete with ribs and deviled eggs! Mmmm, yum!
April also served a bunch of festively colored food such as red, white, and blue jello, rice crispies cake, and cupcakes.
And Cory made this delicious, fruity concoction called ambrosia. It tasted heavenly!
Unfortunately, we couldn’t stick around for a second, post-fireworks dinner. We had to get back home to comfort our dogs. Not so much Molly, who we are convinced has gone completely deaf in her old age because not only do fireworks not bother her like they do most dogs but she pretends not to hear us whenever we call her so I’m thinking maybe she’s not pretending — LOL — but Saki gets really anxious that she starts shaking.
Honestly, I didn’t mind missing the fireworks portion of the festivities. I love watching the pretty fireworks in the sky but I’m not a huge fan of the loud, booming fireworks on the ground — specially the ones thrown at me. No thanks!
That pretty much concluded our holiday weekend. It was quite and uneventful, just the way we like it. We both still have our fingers and toes and didn’t incur any injuries. I call that a fantastic weekend!
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Hall of Heroes at Exploration Place
Posted on July 25, 2017 by Ching under Date Ideas, Things to Do.
Brian and I finally used our Exploration Place membership a few weeks ago. We went to check out the new Hall of Heroes exhibit. It’s actually pretty cool.
Here are a few pictures.
Okay, so I took more than a few photos. Brian and I were like two children in a candy shop. Everywhere you looked there’s something interesting to look at, read or interact with and, Brian being the comic book buff that he is, all of it was right up his alley. Brian and I completed several tasks to test our superhero powers, including the vertical jump test and the hang time challenge.
The station that I liked best among all of the stations, is the one where you have to answer true and false questions (about everything that you’ve learned at the various stations) in order to get the code to the vault that holds the answer to question “What is humanity’s last hope?”
I won’t ruin it for you but I’m sure you can guess the answer. I thought it was an awesome message for kids, though.
What I liked best about the entire day is seeing how excited Brian got about each exhibit and how eager he was to share all of his comic book knowledge. It was such a fabulous day date and to think we never would have had the opportunity had we not taken the Monday before the 4th of July off.
He loved the exhibit so much that I’m actually thinking of taking him to the Capes and Cocktails event next month. I think it would be the perfect way to kick off the weekend of our 15th wedding anniversary.
In the meantime, if you haven’t been to the Hall of Heroes, we highly recommend it. It’s a traveling exhibit so it’s only here for a limited time. It’ll be flying on out of the museum on January 1.
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