Trapped In A Room With A Zombie

Last month, our friends Ken & Lisa announced their plans to take us on a mystery excursion and wondered if we were free January 9th. They were awfully stingy with information and would only tell us to wear comfortable shoes and that we would be indoors.

I tried and tried to guess what in the world was going on, but not once did I think of anything even close to resembling this:  

There were 8 other people who had signed up for the same time slot, and just as the sign says, the 12 of us were locked in a room with a (real, live!) zombie and had 60 minutes in which to follow clues, solve puzzles and find the key in order to unlock the door and get us to safety. 

Every 5 minutes, an alarm would sound and the chain keeping the zombie at bay would be let out 12 inches. By the end of the hour, if we'd not found the key, the chain would be long enough so that he would be able to reach every nook and cranny in the room, and we would be dead. 

We all worked very well together, but in the end, we just weren't quick enough and were...ominous music!... eaten. The whole thing was great fun and we would totally recommend it to anyone who enjoys thinking games and who also doesn't mind a little bit of good, clean fear tossed in for kicks :) 

We also had some time to have pictures taken with our zombie afterwards - he was much kinder and more soft-spoken in real-life as opposed to his snarling, crazed alter-ego :)

I should add that I was cornered twice during the hour and would have been devoured on the spot if not for my heroic husband, who jumped in to distract the zombie, which allowed me to scamper away. Chivalry is not dead yet :) 

A Christmas surprise

Jan Michael's gift to me this year was a (wonderful, thoughtful, made-me-cry) surprise overnight stay at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, which  included tickets to ICE!, the hotel's (amazing, made-me-smile-until-my-cheeks-hurt, magical, C-O-L-D) winter wonderland. 

Our room was on the 9th floor and faced the atrium, so this is what we saw while we sat on our balcony during the day:

And this is some of what we saw while we wandered around in the atrium:

There are four restaurants at the Gaylord, but we decided to be fancy-schmancy and order dinner from room service - which we'd never done before and wouldn't mind doing again :) 

And here was our bird's eye view after dinner from the inside:

And the outside:

Now, about ICE!: Upon entry everyone is given an enormous parka, which is necessary because it's a brisk 9 degrees :) And then you're let loose to zip down slides made of ice, throw snowballs, and ooh & ahh over the ice sculptures (all two million pounds worth!). This year's theme was Christmas Around the World, which reminded us of It's A Small World at Disneyland... with slightly cooler temperatures :) 

The last sculpture was our favorite:

I love looking at all of these pictures again & again; what a tremendous gift to be given something we were able to experience together :)