Texas Tri Series Party

I had been looking forward to the Texas Tri Series party for a long time. I knew it would be hard to beat last year's party, but I knew it would be a lot of fun! The Tri Zoners decided we all wanted to go early and have a pre-party drink, so Kendra (my date) and I got there around 6 and met everyone in the lobby. We scoped out the awards, hats, and t-shirts before anyone else got there, I love the shirts and mine fits perfectly- Yay! First thing I said when I saw them was "this shirt is totally going to Cozumel with me!" I made sure I was at the front of the line to pick up awards and stuff, then went into the party room and saved us the two best tables, right in front of the stage!
Annette, Kristen, Kendra, Julie, Eva, me, Cindy, Vanessa, Carol, and Kim. Photo by Miguel Ortiz
Tri Series finisher award and t-shirt! Photo by Julie Wolf
Eva with her award

We enjoyed lots of free beer and wine and watching the slide show, while we waited for dinner time. Of course every time a Tri Zoner came on the slide show we all cheered. did I mention there was free beer? Photo by Miguel Ortiz

I don't know if I was extra hungry or if dinner was really that good, but I really enjoyed it! But I took forever to eat, I was too busy talking to everyone to finish eating, so they started the prize giveaways before I even finished eating!

The entire party is always a blast, but the prizes are the best part, because, honestly, it's fun to win anything, even if it's just a $1 coupon or something. They give away tons of small prizes at the Tri Series party, to the point that almost everyone wins something. Then they move on to the bigger prizes, I'd say valued between $100 and $400 and there are more of those than you'd think. Then the biggest prize of the night is 4 entries into the entire Tri Series for the next year- that's 5 triathlons and worth well over $600!! So you know we were all WAY excited!!
The first big Tri Zones winners were Cindy winning a bag and Kristen winning a bookThey both ended up trading for visors. Photo by Miguel Ortiz
Then I won a visor- yeah I got pretty excited about it. Photo by Julie Wolf
Eva won a visor that matched mine. Photo by....no clue, but it was on my camera
Vanessa and Miguel won matching hatsThen Vanessa traded for the book. Photo by...ummm ME, with Miguel's awesome camera!
By the end of the small prizes, every Tri Zoner had won something, most of us had won the visors like mine, Julie won a huge bag of Shot Bloks (which is on her head in the picture). Then they moved on to the bigger prizes- we didn't all win those prizes but Kendra won a swim speedsuit worth $300! Based on last year and this year, it looks like being my date at the Tri Series party is good luck!**

They give awards for the winners in each age group over the entire series and both Julie and Kim won their age groups! Then they recognized the volunteers who had volunteered at every event, including Annette and Tom & Carolyn who didn't get to come to the party.

Then they did the Grand Prize drawings. Last year Ingrid won and put my name down (cool story here), and Julie won too. We were all on the edge of our seats hoping Logan would call our number! He called out a number that was about 8 higher than mine and I knew it was someone from the second Tri Zones table, so I immediately pointed toward them and started screaming and cheering, it was JULIE again!! What a lucky lucky girl!!
At the end of the party with all our cool Tri Series winnings! Photo by Miguel Ortiz
Julie was the BIG winner of the night! She posted this picture on FB, notice the huge pile of Shot Bloks under the plaque and the pile of money that says "2011 Texas Tri Series"

** it turns out the speedsuit doesn't fit Kendra, but it does fit me, so that's actually 2 years in a row that my "date" to the Tri Series Party has won a big prize and then given it to me! Do I have the greatest friends or what?!?