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Birthday Scavenger Hunt

      Several weeks ago, I was thinking about how I didn’t really feel like an adult, I mean I should really start thinking of myself as a “grown up”, but I really don’t. This particular time was in the context that I really missed things like my college group at church and some of the events that we used to do. There is definitely a gap in our church ministry when it comes to “young marrieds”, given they are working on that. In the college group you hang out, do these random events like movie nights, beach days, and scavenger hunts. Once you leave college though, there isn’t really much of anything. The “married groups” are bbqs and game nights, fun but a little more on the subdued side. Adding to this is that I have a good number of friends in the singles ministry at church and it seems they are always heading off to do some kind of crazy fun event!! Given the couple that runs it, it’s not surprising, they are the most energetic and fun-loving people I have ever met.

        So here I am, too old for college group and too married to go off to the singles group beach day. Are my days of crazy things like scavenger hunts over? Then I realized why was I waiting for someone else to throw an event? Why couldn’t I just do it myself? My birthday was coming up and a scavenger hunt seemed like the perfect way to celebrate it.  Matt and I could write it, have our friends break up into teams and then go! So I tell Matt “I think I want to do a scavenger hunt for my birthday.” My plan was that we would both work on it, but Matt brought up the point that if I helped write it, I couldn’t play. So he insisted that he take care of it all. I felt bad, I didn’t intend for it to be so much work for him, but in the end, he did an AMAZING job!

       We invited over some friends and then broke up into 4 teams. Matt gave us all mission packets and explained the rules to us. We had 15 minutes to review and plan, at 3pm we would break and had to be back there no later than 6:30pm or we would lose points. The man went a little crazy with the writing the game, there were 7 sections of the hunt: Items to bring back, Items A-Z, Photo locations hunt, Photo scavenger hunt, Riddles, Team Competitions, and Team Cheer.

       I was on Team 2 with Eric and Belen, we planned our route based on the photo locations and then figured we could figure out the rest on route. Suddenly it was 3pm and we were off! First stop was Jamba Juice, because it was hot and we were thirsty. So there we took care of a couple items on the photo list.

Scavenger Hunt Photo Item: Picture of your team sharing a drink

"High-5 a complete stranger" That's my arm... really...

After that it was a mad dash around the Valley, there were so many stories just on our team I couldn’t begin to tell them. So I’ll just include highlighted pictures of all the teams.

Dance on a busy street corner

Team 2 "Climbing a wall"

Belen and I "rolling down a grass hill" also at a photo hunt location, one of our friend's houses

"Walk a stranger's dog"

At the solution to one of the riddles, with burger king crowns which were an item to bring back!

Team 3 climbs a tree, points to Crystal for being 4 months pregnant and doing that!

Cross the street like the Beatles

Mike and Michael at a photo hunt location

 

On an escalator

 

Team 4 High-5's a complete stranger

 

Watching a sporting event

Team 4, ask a complete stranger for their phone number

 

Pump a stranger's gas

At a photo hunt location. Dan, you may want to watch out, Bob is eyeing Vicki!

 

 There are so many other wonderful photos, all of which are on our photo page

      We all arrived back before 6:30, terrified of losing precious points, while we were gone Matt had picked up Stonefire Grill and Cupcakes for everyone. We relaxed, laughed, and shared stories about the afternoon while Matt sat in the corner, isolated, desperately trying to score the teams to declare a winner. Poor guy did so much work! In the end, Team 4 won, we gave them gift cards to Cold Stone! Dan had never been on a scavenger hunt before, he thought they were lame apparently. Now that he’s done one and won it, he said it was a lot of fun! Everyone seemed to have a great time and it was a perfect way to celebrate my birthday.

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