Indybrowns: Birthday Celebration

I'm not sure how it started exactly, but for nearly 10 years now, we have always created a scavenger hunt for Matt on his birthday. Sometimes there's a present to find at each step along the way and other times there are just many clues leading up to THE present.

So...on Tuesday we got this bright idea to try to make a QR code out of Legos (I now know more about QR codes than I care to admit...not an expert by any means, but more informed than necessary for sure!) We scoured our Lego buckets and still came up short. The sites I read led me to believe that it would still work with 2 dark colors, but I never had a chance to find out. We ran out of white and couldn't find more pieces anywhere (even the Lego store at the mall didn't have them!) While we still think this idea is cool, we had to come up with Plan B for our scavenger hunt. We were thinking about the "QR Code" and I thought maybe it would be fun to have a theme to the hunt this year..."Crack the Code"...and each clue would require Matt to decipher a different kind of code!

Millie delivers the first clue...

Well, of course, we had a Cheat Code card...so Matt headed to the video game basket and found the next clue.

Hmm....a musical clue. Wonder what this means?

Needing a little help from cyberspace. AHA!! These four notes spell B-A-C-H. And tucked in the cabinet right between the Well-Tempered Klavier and Anna Magdalena's Notebook, Matt found the next clue!

The 3rd clue was in Morse Code...with a little more help from the Internet, he determined that it spelled the word B-E-D. Upstairs to look under his pillow and found the 4th clue...

32819

Now this one was a little bit tricky. It took him a few minutes to determine that it's not a number, but a ZIP CODE!! After a trip back to the iPad was required, he knew that it was an Orlando, FL zip code. He went straight to our vacation book and found the final (paper) clue...

After a quick scan with the code reader app, he landed here. It surprised us that it still took him several minutes to find the gift on the shelf. Fun, fun, fun, and we hope he enjoys reading on his new Nook.

This is about as close as he's gotten to a golf course this summer :o( Clara and I worked together on these cupcakes. We each had one and then Tonks helped herself to the leftovers at some point in the evening.

Then Matt and I headed out to Wine and Canvas for a night of painting!!

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