James Bond's got nothin' on us

Saturday night was the birthday party for my dear friend Manda, and it was uh-MAZEing! We've all been watching Alias lately, so it was decided to have a spy-themed party. We dressed up, picked code names, had a good dinner, and then...the mission began!

We each received a mission debriefing and split into two groups. We each had to gather clues and track down evidence while remaining covert and undetected. One group found an envelope taped to the back of a bus stop with clues telling them to go to the BYU library; my group retrieved a jacket from the lost & found at Macey's grocery store and headed to Costco. From there we were all over Provo and Orem! We all went back to headquarters (my friend Jen's apartment), had to try and crack the code to get a briefcase open, Tim (who was our op tech guy) had to decode an email from the bad guy we were trying to stop, and we discovered my brother-in-law Matt was a mole and had the crucial piece of information we needed to put together the code that would stop the bomb from going off. Whew! It was so much fun, and so intense once the countdown started and we had only 10 minutes to save the world!

Everything was engineered by my brother-in-law Rob, with a bunch of help from Tim, and it was so awesome. Of course there were a few glitches here and there (like Costco closing early on Saturdays...who knew?), but overall, it was seriously the most fun I've had in a long time.

And now, a ton of pictures:

Trying to open the briefcase


I slipped on some mud while sneaking around outside, so Valerie taped me up. It did actually hurt to fall, but we had lots of fun shouting "Agent down! Agent down!"


Tim (code name Marshall) trying to decode a corrupted email file


We suspected Matt was the mole and Valerie took it upon herself to keep him in custody.


Then it was confirmed Matt was the mole and Christian and Tim attacked him! I love this action shot. If you look closely, you can see Tim's tie.


Finally we were successful in terminating the countdown with about 3 seconds to spare (in true spy-movie fashion).


This is what the floor looked like when we were done--cards with clues to the code, air soft guns just lying around, the original mission debriefing letter, and all our scribbling as we tried to decipher the clues.


And naturally, the night ended with a Mexican standoff. (Code names, from the bottom left corner and moving counterclockwise: Zed, Marshall, Forte, Freebush, Fallout, Omega Prime, and Black Sparrow. My code name was Cricut--ten points if you know why!)