Escape the Room. Or not.

This evening, the Rowes plus Auntie Shannon went to try out "Escape the Room" in Boston.  Madeleine was really excited to go, even though she couldn't manage to escape the bathroom without help.  For whatever reason, Madeleine decided to revert backwards in time to the days when she needed me to wipe her butt for her, repeatedly exclaiming in anguish, "I can't FINISH!" at me as I sat trying to write an email to her teacher about Madeleine bringing in a white shirt for her class to sign on her birthday.  Because every mommy should be able to wipe her nearly eight-year-old's butt AND email the teacher at the same time, right??

I guess Madeleine's inability to finish in the bathroom was a harbinger for us, because, alas, we did not escape the room.  I am gung-ho to try this out again, though, because we were awfully close and I want another chance!  Julia was able to take our failure in stride; however, Madeleine went into the experience certain that even if we didn't succeed, we would be given a little leeway.

MADELEINE: So, Mommy, if we don't escape the room, do you think we can just ask for, like, five more minutes?
ME: No.


To prove our complete and utter inability to solve anything this evening, we had two further failures.  We grabbed dinner at a Mexican restaurant next door to the Escape the Room site, and Julia decided to challenge Ethan to a game of Hangman.  Ethan came up with a Hangman for Julia, reminiscing back to the good old days of Butt Crocodile.  Julia was completely stumped, so I helped her figure out what letters to guess until she had almost completed the puzzle.

JULIA: (looking helplessly at "B U T T  C R O C O _ I L E)  Uhhh...."H"???



Then, to rub salt in our wounds of failure, NONE OF US could figure out how to get out of the parking garage with our parking ticket.  Ethan, Shannon and I repeatedly inserted our ticket into the wrong slot instead of realizing we were supposed to hold it under the scanner, and it took a call to the MBTA and an employee coming out to help us before we could get things working.


All in all, a totally productive day!