Living That Pre-Teen Life

A couple of Fridays ago, Sophie celebrated her 12th birthday with a small group of friends and our not-so-small family.  Her big request was to go to an escape room place here in town and try to break out with 3 of her friends from church.  Since I've never been to one, I gladly volunteered as tribute to take them over and participate with them in a "Clue" themed room.  And boy am I glad I did!  Hahahaha.

(Sophie was Miss Scarlet, Eva was Professor Plum, Adelaide was Colonel Mustard, Lauryn was Mrs. Peacock, and I was Miss White.)

It was even more fun being in {mostly} observational mode while trying to break out than if I were actually trying to break out myself.  :)  I was beyond entertained watching the girls puzzle things out while hopping from clue to clue to clue.  It was the most epic case of "SQUIRREL!" I've ever seen in my life.  Hahaha.  The excitement eventually wore down enough that they were able to focus on the clues long enough to solve them, and in the end, we came thisclose to breaking out in time.  We came right down to the buzzer and ended up figuring out who did it, what they did it with, and WHY they did it, but we missed out on the where.  :(  In our defense, I think the "hints" that the employee gave us towards the end were unintentionally misleading/confusing.  Otherwise, I think the girls totally would have known it was the bathroom where the crime took place, and not the garage.  Haha.

(My hat was quite fetching.)

It was all good, though, because this group of girls were fine enough with their near guess, and after we finished up taking some pictures, we skedaddled on over to the cupcake bakery across the street because I had made a last minute decision earlier that day that there was no way I'd be able to create a periodic table of elements cake on such short notice.  It was a good call.  The girls all got to choose the flavor they wanted and then I bought a bunch more for the rest of the fam to sample and I even got a little pupcake for Maxwell!

Scott arrived home with the pizza for dinner just as we were getting back from our outing, and the rest of the evening was a chill party of eating, opening presents, enjoying those cupcakes, and then playing some games up in the bonus room while waiting for the girls' parents to arrive.

 (They played Listography.)

All in all, I think it was a rather successful celebration!  And now that I'm 3 kids deep into "12 year old birthday parties," I think I can authoritatively say that they're MUCH easier to orchestrate than the 5 and 8 year old ones.  Hahaha.  I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- Sophie has really lucked out in the friend department with our move!  All of these girls are just so great.  Now if only Sophie will NOT follow in the footsteps of Ethan and Grace and turn absolutely psychotic during the course of this year.  Hahahaha.  {But seriously -- please, let's hope she bucks the trend!}