don't wanna grow up

There's been a outbreak of 1st birthday invites recently, and they are conspiring to make me feel old. Perhaps as a result, I had a particularly good time two weekends ago at a 30th birthday party which was designed to make us feel like kids again.

We started at LOL Parties, at Silver Creek Sportsplex in San Jose. I think between 20-30 people showed up to tackle an inflatable obstacle course, followed by a basketball game inside of a bouncy castle, and then several games of high-intensity dodgeball. My favorite was the basketball game, but all three events were fun and exhausting, and only a few people got noticeable plastic-burns. At this point I was pretty sweaty and gross, but managed to get into a Gold's Gym with a free one-day pass to shower and change. (As an aside, the guys at Gold's seem to be pretty lax about visitors, or maybe just with women.)

Next, we descended on Oakridge Mall to participate in a scavenger hunt. It was quite impressively organized, with each team getting matching sunglasses, play-doh (to build a doll representing the "birthday boy"), and a list of clues indicating certain photos/videos which we were supposed to acquire. After being mistaken for teenagers by one saleslady (woo-hoo!) and nearly being thrown out of Macy's by security (boo!), we wrapped up the hunt and headed over to Buca di Beppo's for dinner. That turned out to be an excellent choice as we were all starving, and managed to finish nearly of the food, which is pretty much unheard of at Buca's. We also had cake and prizes, and generally had a great time all around. Yay for 30th birthdays!