hunting for a 40th surprise

friday night was go night for a surprise birthday treasure hunt. while it centered around the birthday boy, it was his wife's idea to make it a team competition regardless. everyone participating had a great competitive spirit....they raced to locations, pretended to give up so others wouldn't know they'd solved a clue, and the birthday boy even stole someone's car keys to try and slow them down!

something new we tried was have some checkpoint secret agents involved that the birthday boy knew....including his sister (sporting the chameleon) and his two children. there were some other friends involved, and even a local business in on it.



rebecca's goal was to completely surprise her husband, and he had no idea what the evening held for him. he came home, blindfolded, to a house full of friends from various groups he's involved in, and 20 minutes later they hit the road.



each team had been instructed to have with them a road bike, running shoes, scissors, flashlights for everyone, and an unmarked apple.


the first team (Team Chewbacca) showed up at the final location after 3 hours 16 minutes... having run two blocks because someone (who just turned 40) stole their keys... the next team showed up one minute later. and though the birthday boy's team (Team Spaceman Spiff) didn't win, there were two more surprises for him. the first was evident when he showed up, because there were dozens of people there to celebrate him, complete with a spray painted "happy birthday" sign on the back garage wall.

the final surprise was a "we're glad you exist" treasure book. his wife snuck his phone from him in the middle of the night to get email addresses from all the people in the world that he knows. i sent them each a questionnaire and then compiled all the answers into a 250-plus page book of people describing what they admire about him, what their favorite memory is of him, advice for getting older, and so on. there were also two CD's, one a grouping of songs that his friends say remind them of him -- the other contained songs his friends thought should belong on his life soundtrack.


i've got a lot of thoughts and feelings and updates for you on all this, but i was totally beat and slept like a rock afterwards. and i wanted to get something up here before too much time goes by :) so.... more to come on that!



i spent today mostly relaxing and reflecting -- all good! -- and then chris and i spent some time with our elizabeth and wades. there was soda, 7-layer dip, el matador chips, grape smirnoff (someone read my mind!) and lots of winning and losing at squabble and cranium. jenny impersonated ed mcmahon, i road the ottoman like a pro bull rider, and dwight and chris knew waaaaaay too many answers to the girl questions (it was a guy versus girl thing).




oh. and there were candy apples. did i forget to mention that?