Brie's Escape Room Birthday!

Brie turned nine this month!

She was thrilled with the card we found her. 😆

We celebrated at El Jinete...

and at home:

She scored some awesome swag!

And, of course, Brie had big visions for her birthday party: An escape room! Sushi! A dance party!

Could we do it all? We sure tried!

Tony and I spent a pretty good amount of time making puzzles and researching brainteasers for Brie and her friends to solve...like "What's light as a feather, but the strongest person on earth can only hold it for about five minutes?" 😉 We also came up with a fun scenario:
The evil Dr. Thief is angry that summer is nearly over. He's so cranky that he has locked all of you in our home and taken one of Brie's loved ones hostage. This hostage is locked in one of our three upstairs bedrooms...with the keys to the house! Your assignment is to form two groups. Each group will solve five puzzles and each solution will give you a clue. After each group has solved all of their puzzles, you'll combine the ten clues to figure out where the bedroom key is (hint: it's in the house)...and which door to open. Then you can rescue Brie's loved one and get the house keys...so you can escape! 

Here was Brie's loved one (a.k.a. the hostage):

The girls divided into two groups (one upstairs and one downstairs) and then each time they solved a puzzle, they figured out a clue (a letter of the alphabet) and where to look next.

Here's an example of one of the (literal) puzzles that they solved...I glued NatGeo pics to the back of cereal boxes and the Tony cut out the puzzle pieces. 

Once they were assembled and taped, the girls flipped them over for the clues!

Everyone worked well together and both teams finished in about 30 minutes. This gave them a 5-letter hint about where to find the door key AND a 5-letter hint as to which door to open. And then they freed Rainbow the unicorn!

After that, we washed up for lunch. The girls may have worked up an appetite solving all those riddles, but they were far less enthusiastic about a DIY sushi bar than we had anticipated. Brie and her friend Maya dove into making and eating sushi, but the other party-goers gave Tony and I several "deer in headlights" looks and multiple" Are they for real?" expressions before Tony and I abandoned all hope and made about 100 Sun Butter and jelly sandwiches. (sigh)

Happy Birthday to Brie!

Then the girls headed to the backyard for playing and a dance party. It was a gorgeous day out and the perfect way to end this (mostly) successful party. Brie was delighted with how well everything went. 😀

This is Sebastian bustin' a move.

Can't believe Brie is nine and going into 4th grade. I remember thinking everybody was so much more mature and "trying hard to impress" in 4th grade. We'll see if Brie has the same experience!

P.S. Brie recently won Most Spirited at camp. Such a great month!!