Sips for CF & Race for the Cure

Hello blog world!

Last weekend, Tim went to Nebraska for the Ohio St./Nebraska game (which they won..yay!) so I had a nice quiet weekend!  My aunt and uncle were in town for Megan's white coat ceremony at pharmacy school and they stayed with me on Friday night.  Saturday, they went shopping, I went on a run, and we went and got lunch together at Zoe's before they hit the road. I did some shopping myself and overall had a relatively quiet weekend.

Thursday night of this past weekend, Emily Ann, Caroline and I formed a team for the Sips for CF challenge!  The event raises money for cystic fibrosis research and is a lot of fun for the participants.

How it works:

• Each team is required to bring 3 identical bottles of red wine. A team consists of 1 to 3 people.
• When you arrive, all 3 bottles of will be given to the hosts. Two of the bottles will be wrapped to conceal the identity and will be used for tasting. The third bottle will be set aside and used for prizes.
• Each team will be given five votes for the night.
• As your team tastes the wines, you will vote for your favorites. At the end of the night, the votes will be counted, and the teams that brought the top 3 favorite wines will take home everyone’s third bottle of wine.

Our team - ready to taste!

The bottles set out for tasting - there were about 60 different bottles!

We brought McManis Cabernet (which actually only Caroline had tried before). So funny story - we found we didn't like a LOT of the bottles - but there were one or two we really liked.  We heard a LOT of people talking about bottle #17 - we walk over there and it has a TON of tickets in the jar.  We taste it and Caroline thinks it tastes a lot like the one we brought.  We were SO sure it was ours.  We even took a picture - thinking this was going to be IT.  Sure enough...when they start to call out the second place winner....it's #17!  They start reading off the type - the McManis.........merlot.  Are you kidding?  We were so close!  And we all had been snobby talking about how we weren't big fans of merlot in general, but of course, we voted for it!  What a disappointment!

With what we THOUGHT was our bottle  :(

So, we didn't win, but it was fun nonetheless!  We were STARVING after the event - they had some munchies, but none of us had eaten dinner.  We went to Che Fon Fon for dinner...and we may have even snuck over to Highland's next door for some sweet and salty cake which you may or may not remember from my Restaurant Week post.  It was still so good.

Dinner at Che Fon Fon

Impromptu photo shoot!  Pretending we're celebrating!

Ugh...we voted for merlot?!?

Snagged a pic this time...sweet and salty cake...yummmm!

Then, on Saturday, Emily Ann talked me into running my very first race - the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  The race is a 5-K which I thought would be a good ease in to racing for me.  I have only been running for a little over a year now (but still wouldn't consider myself a "runner") and don't usually run with anyone - I wasn't sure how I would like having lots of people around.

Before the race

Around the corner from the start line - they had Zumba warm-up on the big screen which we elected NOT to particpate in  :)

Fountain dyed pink...sort of hard to tell

We did it!

Surprisingly, I ended up really liking it!  I was skeptical at the start...there were a ton of walkers this year and it was really crowded.  It took us a few minutes to get to the start line and even once we did we were half jogging/half jogging in place just trying to dodge the crowd.  But, after about 1/2 a mile or maybe a little less, it thinned out.  There were a few cheerleading squads along the route that cheered you on which really does give you more energy!  We wanted to finish in under 30 minutes and when we crossed the finish line the clock read 31 something...BUT...we think since we didn't start right on time, we probably met our goal.  Emily Ann has a Nike plus watch and she's going to see what we ended up running once we got out of the pack.  Overall, it was a success and I know they raised a ton of $ for a great cause.  It was emotional to see the runners with the "In Memory of..." and "In Celebration of..." signs on their back to show the women in their lives who had been touched by breast cancer.

Emily Ann is trying to convince me to run the Vulcan 10-K but I'm not so sure - its the day after my b-day!  We shall see...I'll put it out here on the world wide web and maybe I'll feel some blog accountability!  :)

Speaking of charitable events, the Curesearch walk I blogged about earlier is NEXT WEEKEND!  See this post for details about the event:

WILL TO WIN

It's not too late to donate or join our race team!!!