Romy Birthday Celebration

My 36th birthday was the best one yet! I am so fortunate to have so many people who love me and wished to celebrate this milestone with me. My actual birthday fell on a Thursday. I celebrated it with the kids that evening. 

My amazing husband drove all the way to Orem to pick up some original alfajores from an Argentinian bakery for my birthday cake. They were delicious! They reminded me of childhood and my mom's cooking. 

My presents were mostly for emergency preparedness and excercise. I got a new camp chef stove to use this summer when canning and some blocks that I plan to use to store water for emergency preparedness. They each store 3.5 gallons so they are easily transported.

My other large gift was an elliptical machine. I've been wanting one for a while. Now that we have a baby in the house again, I've found it hard to find a good time to exercise. The elliptical gives me the flexibility of  getting my steps in regardless of time of day our outside temperature.

On Friday night we got together with the Whitneys, whose birthdays are withing a few days of mine, and went out to dinner, played laser tag and came home to watch a movie in out theater. It was one of those mega dates that we hardly ever get to do any more because we had to be home in time to put the kids to bed or don't want to spend a fortune on a baby sitter.

Saturday we went out with our other good friends, the Easons. Nicole's birthday is also a few days from mine. I've been wanting to try an escape room for a while. The idea is that you are locked in a room with a group of people and you are all trying to solve the puzzles in the room in order to unlock the door and escape before the time runs out.

Eskape had a great discount through Groupon and is located in Lehi - a central place for Nicole and us to meet. Their locked room is an Airstream RV. Our group had 12 people -  8 of which we didn't know. The girl who explained the rules to us told that only 40% of the groups manage to escape in the 45 minutes allotted. There are things which are obvious clues, and some that are meant to distract us.

The lock to the door was placed in a plexiglass box secured by three other locks - a bike lock, a pad lock, and a combo lock.

The room was furnished by a book case with some nick-knacks, next to it was an old exercise bike. On one end was an old desk with at typewriter, coffee mug and some papers. At the other end were some books, and two locked wooden cases. On the ceiling was a maze carved out of wood with a key attached to it.

The key from the maze unlocked the cabinet where the books were held. The cup on top of the desk also provided clues that unlocked one of the cases on the opposite wall. In both cases, solving the puzzles only gave us access to other puzzles.

I am so glad I am married to a smart husband and have some smart friends because if it wasn't for them we would have never gotten out. Todd was able to skip a puzzle entirely, by solving one of the clues without having to unlock it out of it's case. In fact, I think he solve at least half of the hardest puzzles in the game.

In the end, we got all of the codes with a few seconds to spare. It took the guy who was working on the different combinations a few tries, so we managed to get out a few seconds after the time ran out. It was good enough for the girl from Eskaped who was helping us. She allowed us to sign our name in the 'wall of fame' inside the trailer.

The experience was SO MUCH FUN! It was intellectually exhilarating. So much better than dinner and a movie. I so want to do it again!

Finally on Sunday, we got together with the Humphries gang to celebrate May birthdays.

I hope the rest of the year is as much fun as what I've experienced thus far :)