Playtime

Our Escape Room Playdate Review

| Patti Webb

When we first came up with doing playdate reviews, we hated that we couldn’t find an escape room. For every spot in our area, the minimum age was maybe 10. Fast forward a year or two, and I get a flyer for Escapology at my girls’ field hockey practice. A new space was opening up literally 10 minutes from us. I could’ve kissed the mom (who happened to be the owner) who said that they didn’t quite have a minimum age.

“How could this be?”, you say. KIDS MODE!

Escapology is an immersive, and always private, escape game where players are gathered inside a themed room and must complete their mission before time runs out. Stepping inside a real-life adventure, they must find hidden clues, crack codes, and solve puzzles to make an escape—all in an hour.

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Our Muddy Kids Review

| Patti Webb

Technically, this isn’t a play date. I was so excited that I found a mud race that our kids could participate in. Unfortunately, it fell right on Mary’s 10th wedding anniversary. That’s fine, I’ll be a family activity review. Then the morning of the race, Z was sick with a fever. So the family outing became a Mom and Aeris day.

Muddy Kids is open to families and kids aged 5-17, so we were right at the minimum line. They also have a version called the Muddy Princess that is women only. Kids must have a parent to register, and a parent must race as well if their runner is under 16 years old.

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Summer To-Do List

| Patti Webb

On Pinterest and Insta, I’ve seen a lot of posts on summer to-do lists. You know, make s’mores, go to the beach, have a barbecue, etc. This is a far cry from my typical summer growing up, which was mostly sitting around while my parents worked or just being parked in front of the tv and out of the way. While summer was great because you didn’t have to go to school, it also meant being lonely and bored most of the time.

In June and July for a working parent, you have to figure out some sort of childcare. For a SAHP, you have to be cruise director all day for two solid months. Not to mention, fending off Summer Slide. I can see why parents really hate extended summer break because the school year has so much more workable structure.

Just like holidays, it really is up to us parents to make summer fun. So with that in mind, here are Mary’s and my summer to-do lists.

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Prepping for Healthy Gaming

| Patti Webb

In my Healthy Gamer book review, I shared a bit about my brother’s and my relationship with video games growing up. I’ve also shared about my husband Troy being a serious gamer well into his adulthood. And now that we have two kids who are ready for beginner video games, we’ve had to create a workable plan for having them in our home.

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The OT in Video Gaming

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

I’m just going to come out and say it: Gaming has gotten a bad rap.

Despite its associations with a sedentary lifestyle or as a catalyst for violence and aggression, new research has found that there’s much more to gaming and these negative connotations have no real proof.

That’s a good thing as gaming has evolved with our lifestyle and in its own medium. It is literally at our fingertips whenever we’re bored or want a quick escape from our daily life. And even if we don’t engage in video games, our kids definitely know about them; from YouTube videos and Twitch to classmates talking about it in school. In other words, gaming culture is here to stay and we’re here for it.

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