In order to reduce the work of celebrating the kids’ birthdays each year, we only do birthday parties with friends on even number ages (thanks for the idea, Mom and Dad). It also happens that 7 of our 9 kids were born in an even number year, so we have lots of birthday parties to plan on even number years, like this one–2020. We also have 3 birthdays to celebrate in May, followed by one the beginning of June, plus Mother’s day and Father’s day, so 6 gifting events over the course of about 6 weeks. It’s exhausting.

This year, Eli turned 12 in May, the week after his port removal and before things started opening up after the Covid-19 shutdowns, so we didn’t do much. When Eli’s relapse became obvious, along with the likely outcome, I decided he needed to have a birthday party with his friends. We scheduled it for the week after his tumor removal. Since Eli had an escape room on his list of things he wants to do, we chose that as the planned activity.

I mentioned this on Facebook and shortly thereafter had a couple friends offer to set us up with an escape room experience (thank you Jenn and Amy!). Eli ended up doing two escape rooms, one with family and one with friends.

Escape room #1:

This was tons of fun. Eskaped brought the trailer to our home, took all the precautions for Covid-19, and still provided a phenomenal experience. We managed to get everything unlocked with about 7 minutes to spare. It was so convenient not to have to travel beyond our front lawn, and the puzzles were diverse and interesting. It was a great family unifying experience. They even provided a copy of the video of us solving the puzzles, but we will keep those to ourselves so as not to spoil the experience for anyone else.

Escape room #2:

This escape room was Excalibur themed. There was an actor who offered clues from time to time. There were plenty of puzzles for us all to work on and there were three rooms, complete with a hidden passage. We all really enjoyed working together to unlock the locks. With two and a half minutes to spare, Eli slid Excalibur out of the stone.