Another Birthday Celebration?

While I wasn't planning on doing much for my birthday this year, I would find out that there was lots of planning going on around me.  My friend Cooper turned 30 a day before me and planned a big staycation at the Talking Stick in Scottsdale.  Since he made it out to my 30th birthday a couple years ago, I figured it'd be fun to join him at the Talking Stick for the weekend.  Turns out  I would also have a special surprise guest coming in as well.  Mike had already been planning on surprising me in Tucson for my birthday, but when I told him I was going to be going to Scottsdale for the weekend, he revealed to me the surprise (good thing he didn't purchase a plane ticket to Tucson!).

The weekend ended up being a great one.  I got to the Talking Stick on Friday evening and reserved two rooms for my party.  Mike, Wes, Ramon, and myself found a blackjack table that was really hot and made us almost an hour late for dinner.  But as anyone knows, you never leave a heater.  I ended up winning $200 at that table, Mike made $175, Ramon $90, and Wes $25.  Can't complain when everyone walks away a winner and you collectively take $500 from the casino!

Dinner that night was at Yardhouse, where we met up with Cooper and several members from his party.  Altogether there must've been about 20 people out there.  We made our way to Old Town Scottsdale, where we pretty much spent the whole night at Gilligan's.  I was fading fast around 11:30 at night, but found my second wind and rallied to get through the night without passing out too early.

On Saturday, the two parties chipped in and purchased a cabana for the pool party all afternoon.  Apparently this pool party was a big deal, as wristbands were going for $40 a person.  Fortunately, each room came with 4 wristbands, so altogether we had 20 wristbands and 10 from the cabana.  We ended up going through all but 8 of them and enjoyed a day - albeit a hot one - at the pool.

One of the highlights of Saturday was the catered lunch from Chipotle.  I've never seen Chipotle cater, but Cooper's party had ordered enough food to feed 25.  There was everything you could ask for from Chipotle (see tasty picture below) and I'm pretty sure I ate 6 tacos altogether, lol.

That night, we walked our way to Top Golf, which was packed and said there was a 2-hour wait for a bay!  We knew ahead of time that they didn't take reservations, but I didn't expect the wait to be that long.  Nonetheless, it turned out to only be about an hour or so, and most people had food and drinks while we waited.  There was also kick-ball beer pong and some bag toss, so there were plenty of activities to keep occupied with until our bay was available.  I want to say that waiting for Top Golf was worth it, but unfortunately at that point, this cat was too drunk.  There are videos of me struggling to hit the ball after like 10 tries.  Whatever, I still enjoyed myself.  We ended up leaving Top Golf at 12:30am, and by that time I was ready to pass out from a long day of drinking.

On Sunday I was hurting a little bit, forgetting to take my multivitamin before I went to bed the previous night (the best hangover prevention ever).  We still made it to the Wandering Horse Buffet for lunch before I eventually called it an end to my birthday weekend.  I want to thank everyone who made it out for my birthday!  Mike, Ramon, Wes, Kyle, Chris, Jeff, Ashley, Jen, Bernice, Lucky, Matt, Tree, Jonny, Jenny, Tyler, Tina, Nate, James, Mariana, Junior.

32 years old, I feel settled, extremely satisfied with where I am in life, and I honestly believe this is the happiest I ever been!