I took these cute little freshman girls out for the day on Friday to celebrate no school (I say “little” even though all of them have way outgrown me!).  We ventured out to Independence, MO to go to an Escape Room.

Reece was glued to my side because everything about this outing seems really creepy to a 7 year old.  I have to admit, walking into an unfamiliar door in a strip mall with a bar next door and a carload of girls made me a little nervous!  I had no idea what to expect but it’s actually pretty cool!  Basically you pay money to get locked in a room and try to get yourself out.  You solve all kinds of puzzles and open locks to get more clues and eventually one code opens the locked door.  Clearly it helps if you are all working together well.  I wouldn’t want to be in there with my worst enemy by any means or need to use the restroom, that would be a disaster.  At this location there were 3 room choices in different themes.  The one that worked into our schedule for the day was called “Wall of Frames.”  All of those frames on the wall had to be solved and a purpose to the final code.Reece and I got to watch and hear the whole thing go down from the control room next door…it’s absolutely hilarious and so entertaining!They could ask for 3 helpful clues if they were stumped.  This guy in the control room watches what they are doing and if they ask for a clue then he types it into the computer which shows on their monitor in the room.  He just laughs and laughs because he obviously knows what all of the answers are and what they are doing wrong.  He’s seen it all! These cuties worked together well and my goodness they were loud!  They would put anyone at the bar next door to shame!  Here’s a video clip of what we were seeing…

They were doing so good and we thought for sure they would make it out in the allotted time.  Turns out they did get out but they were 4 seconds over time!  They had the right code, they just needed to push the # sign at the end!  I’m going to call it a success…way to go girls!  Here’s the video clip…

By the end, Emma was ready to go back and do a different room.  She was hooked.

We made our way out of Missouri and back to our neck of the woods for lunch at Panera  and couldn’t resist going into the American Girl store to reminisce about the days of loving dolls.  I would do anything to switch these girls back to the ‘dolls’ phase of life!Meanwhile, Drew was tromping and hiking through Lake Quivira for Carter’s (Emma’s little brothers’) birthday party…

Can you believe this waterfall exists at Lake Quivira!?  It reminds me of Dunn’s River Falls in Jamaica or Hawaii – obviously on a smaller scale, but it’s right here in KC!  Awesome!And Jake was playing a round of golf on the course with Uncle Scott…

I’d say that is one amazing day off from school!!!