A Big Birthday

Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it seems to all but stop, sometimes it seems to fly by . . . sometimes it seems linear, and some times it's more like the blips on a heartbeat monitor. Somehow we jumped from being first time parents to parenting a legal adult. I'm not sure what all that means--do we still get a tax break? Should she pay for more things? Make more decisions? Do we keep sailing along until graduation and then figure it out? I guess time will tell :) What I do know is that she wanted cinnamon rolls for breakfast, flowers in the house, and chocolate for her birthday--she got them all. She also got a sudden snow squall which made our plans more complicated and cancelled our grand finale, but all-in-all, I think she had a fun and memorable 18th birthday.

Following a pasta lunch by request, Caelan opened a box full of make-up covering her birthday from most of us and Christmas from Brennen, a beautiful box of chocolates from G$, and a "pretty, soft-covered, ESV" Bible from Buck and myself.

For the afternoon's adventure, we set out in the Caddy/tank--dashing through the snow (it was a mess out there)! Caelan chose a Civil War era escape room, and it was a blast! We started in one small room, and soon walls and doors and tunnels were popping open, we climbed stairs, there was a ladder, secret panels, codes, locks, a message in Morse, soldier figurines, whiskey bottles, and we only needed two of our three clues to finish the game--with time to spare! We all worked really well together, and Brennen got to bust the musket out of a locked cage to complete our escape from enemy territory by blowing the lock off of our cell door. The guy running it said, "Are you sure this is only your second escape room? That was one of our hardest rooms and you killed it!" I guess the completion rate was under 30%--which had me a little worried because we had a dinner reservation to get to :) Clearly that wasn't a problem for the Crew, ha! What a fun way to spend a birthday in a blizzard!

We met our NGFs at an Irish pub for dinner. They braved the snow to eat fish and chips and sing Caelan Happy Birthday. It was good to be together! So good, that I didn't check my emails to find out that our anticipated finale light show was cancelled. We drove all the way out to the event location (sliding around some corners to the kids' delight and my stern "Let's not do that again"), only to see a dark emptiness. Oh snap. I'm glad we decided to take the tank.

Instead of hot cocoa bombing through the lights, which in hindsight wouldn't have been quite as much fun since we couldn't see the results of the "explosions," we attempted the process in our kitchen. If you remember my purchase of vegan and dairy free as a last resort--assured they would taste the same (they did NOT), Buck added five from a co-worker who found the expensive kind elsewhere before they sold out. His gift bombs and hot milk made interesting things--like glitter and marshmallows--pop out of the middle. Chocolate bombs and hot water--blech!

Once our hot chocolate was slurped up (or poured down the sink), we sang Caelan the Happy Birthday song, again--lower--by Caelan's request. I would suggest it was too low, and I think Caelan would agree, given the way she laughed when the song reached its epic conclusion :) Gabby spent hours decorating a three-level piano cake with tons of edible glitter. We all had food-dye smiles afterwards, but it was totally worth it!

None of us remember what happened after that, so it must have been very relaxing and quiet after our busy day of celebrating. Three kids and three adults . . . I guess we're even now (sort of ;)