Katie’s Birthday Weekend
Posted on March 17, 2023 by Ching under Events.
My friend Katie Merrill decided to celebrate her birthday weekend in Wichita this year. We started the weekend with an awesome two-hour lesson with Chris Heck.
I had initially booked the lesson just for me and Katie but our friend Genevieve Eskridge spent the weekend in Wichita too and Chris was nice enough to let us make it a trio. Thanks to Genevieve for these pics.
After our lesson, Katie planned to take a nap but we ended up learning line dances from our other friend Josh McAllister instead. He came up to Wichita to spend the weekend and celebrate with us, too.
Genevieve, Katie, and Josh
Genevieve and Katie both live in Tulsa. Josh lives in Oklahoma City. We also have another friend Ramon Lozano from Hays who spent the weekend as well.
Wichita actually turned out to be the perfect location to celebrate because it’s centrally located and an easy drive for everyone. The funny thing is, we had more people staying with us than we had rooms so, earlier in the week, I tried to figure out when everyone would arrive on Saturday. I told them the last person to arrive would get the couch. Ramon was like, “I’m coming on Friday.” LOL. He didn’t want us to give his room away.
Here are a few more pictures from dinner…
Colby Fugit, Jenny Cole, and Chris Heck
Jenny and Austin Corley
with Jenny and Colby
Ryan Kellenbarger, Ed Egan, and Ramon Lozano
Brandi and Ty Richardson
with Josh McAllister and Cindy Egan
We had a lovely group gather for dinner at Doma to celebrate Katie. I will post pictures of food next post. For now, we are going to continue with birthday weekend festivities.
After dinner, several of us went to Club Rodeo for some dancing.
These guys are wild. Genevieve, Brian, and I didn’t stay late.
I think we left around midnight. The rest of them stayed and shut the bar down. I know Brian, who is kind of a worry wart, stayed up waiting for everyone to come home. I was tired and just went to sleep. I was half asleep and half awake around 2:30 AM and he was like, “Your friends still aren’t home.” I’m pretty sure I mumbled something like, “They can get in through the garage,” and rolled over and went back to sleep.
Brian, the responsible person that he is, stayed up and when he heard the garage door open sometime after 3 AM, was like “Your friends are back. Ryan is here too.” He went down to check on them because he said Josh didn’t look too good. He must have had too much to drink. I’m glad they had enough sense to just come to our house and people didn’t drive home drunk.
Genevieve had her room upstairs. Katie and Ramon each had their rooms in the basement. We put Josh in the living room because he said he didn’t mind sleeping on the couch. Ryan spent the night instead of going home. They all looked pretty rough the next day.
Josh ended up crashing on the Xorbee chair, while Ryan took the couch.
They were like, “Whose idea was it to play pickleball this morning?” LOL. Hey, that’s what Katie wanted to do. I guess next time, the plan will be to play pickleball and then go to dinner and dancing, and not the other way around.
Even with staying up late the night before to make sure everyone was okay, Brian got up early to make breakfast. Papa Brian did such a great job of taking care of us all that weekend.
Everyone looked so rough. You can tell the people who stayed out way too late.
We all met up at the Sandbox in Derby for some birthday pickleball. Katie has a lot of friends in Wichita but also had some friends come up from Oklahoma (Kali Wilson and Tanner Rice) and western Kansas (Cory Sager) for the day — in addition to those who spent the weekend in Wichita to celebrate.
Anyway, I was working on a website for Katie for her birthday (ktpickleball.com) which I tried to finish in time for her birthday weekend but didn’t through no fault of my own. However, Tanner did come through for me on the “bag of dicks” gag gift for Katie. I had joked I was going to get her a “bag of dicks” for her birthday. Tanner got a good deal on them from his rock lady so all the ladies at pickleball that day got a mini penis as a party favor. LOL.
Anyway, it was such a fun weekend. I had a great time and hope that Katie did too. Here’s a fun video montage I made of all of the adventures and birthday festivities that weekend. Next year Katie will be turning 40 so I think we are all planning to go to Hawaii. I cannot wait!
Until then, GNG.
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