Jazzercise Tropic Heat: Day One

After lunch yesterday, I packed up my car and headed to Orlando for a weekend full of Jazzercise with my mom and sister at Tropic Heat, Jazzercise’s annual “On Location” event that includes lots of classes, DVD tapings and meet and greets with the head honchos of Jazzercise.

My mom has been an avid Jazzerciser for more than 20 years and bought tickets for all of us to attend.

I left Ocala after eating a quick lunch yesterday around 11:30 a.m. and had plans to do a little last-minute shopping in Orlando before meeting up with my mom and sister.

I nabbed a French vanilla iced coffee with skim milk from Dunkin’ Donuts for the 90-minute road trip.

I had the majority of my sister’s birthday gifts wrapped and ready (her birthday was Tuesday), but I wanted to scope out some things at Orlando’s Mall at Millennia since I was hoping to find some cute bangles to add to her gift.

While I was there, I stopped by Forever 21 on a whim and realized that I have outgrown that store both physically and mentally. I am officially too old, too big and too impatient for Forever 21. (I tried on a pair of shorts in a size large that were borderline pornographic.)

I browsed the accessories section for about two minutes and got the heck out of there.

Now, I moustache you a question….

What do you think of that Forever 21 necklace? (The things I will do for a lame pun. Seriously. I know no limits.)

I left the Mall at Millennia empty handed, but hit up Tutti Fruiti right outside of the mall for frozen yogurt before driving to our hotel.

My mom and sister beat me to the hotel by about 20 minutes and once I arrived we had a mini birthday celebration for my sister in our hotel room.

Christmas in June! We didn’t have any birthday wrapping paper on hand, so Santa made an appearance in honor of Leslie’s 23rd birthday.

Jazzercise Video Taping

Once she was done opening her gifts, we headed downstairs to the Jazzercise DVD taping.

The room was absolutely packed.

The DVD taping lasted from 4:30 to around 7 p.m., and we were there for about two hours, Jazzercising away! It was a lot of fun and I could tell my mom was on cloud nine.

The attendees were all decked out in Jazzercise apparel and you could tell they are Jazzercise fanatics. It was great to see so many people of all different skill levels, backgrounds, shapes and sizes doing something that’s so good for their physical and mental health while having an absolute blast.

Since I’m not a serious Jazzerciser myself and just go to classes here in there in St. Pete when I’m with my mom, I wasn’t sure if I’d feel awkward at the event, but I should’ve known better! Jazzercise really is one of the most inclusive group exercise classes I’ve ever experienced. It’s like Zumba in that everyone seems to want to workout, have fun and support each other. Plus, it can be catered to people at any fitness level which is great. During the taping, they had someone on stage doing the routine full-out, while another instructor did the lighter, low-impact version of the routine right beside them.

After the taping, the founder of Jazzercise, Judi Sheppard Missett, and her daughter Shanna, the current president of Jazzercise, were available for pictures but we didn’t want to wait in the crazy-long lines.

We were pretty darn hungry by the time we got back up to our hotel room and we decided to head out in our workout gear and get a casual dinner at Chipotle.

I ordered a vegetarian burrito bowl (when did they get brown rice!?) and loved every fresh and flavorful bite.

We spent the remainder of our night hanging out in our hotel room talking and watching the gymnastics Olympic Trials on TV. Holy cow, those girls are athletic. Watching the gymnasts reminded me of the “Magnificent Seven” 1996 U.S. gymnastics team with Dominique Moceanu, Dominique Dawes, Kerri Strug and more. They were so fun to watch!

I’ll be back soon with a fun fashion-related giveaway!! Have a great weekend!