With school being out we are starting to pick up the pace on Ethan’s cub scout stuff and we decided that for family night tonight we were going to go bowling so Ethan could earn the bowling belt loop. We left for the bowling alley as soon as Kyle got home from work, and we got there while there were nice and not busy. 🙂
We paid for our game and got everyone changed into bowling shoes, and we picked a few balls of various weights (they even gave us a 6 lb ball for the little little kids to use), and Kyle got our names into the score board and we were ready to go. Kyle went first and then it was my turn, that way we could show the kids HOW to roll the ball, and then each of the kids got a turn.
I love how happy Dinah looks here. She was so excited that she could actually roll the ball down the lane and knock the pins over. Earlier today she was concerned that going bowling wasn’t going to be any fun. At girl scout day camp they got to do a little bit of bowling, but there was only a 12 lb ball and the girls had to roll it on the concrete in the pavilion to knock over some pretty worn pins (some of which didn’t really want to stand anyway). I don’t think many of the girls were able to even lift that ball, and so Dinah was worried that she wouldn’t be able to actually play.
Chloe was so excited that after she rolled the ball she would start to jump up and down as she watched it go and waited to see how many pins she knocked over.
Lydia was most excited to watch for the ball to pop up out of the ball return. She would roll the ball (with help of course) and then she would turn right around (not caring anything about knocking the pins over) and head straight for the ball return, where she would stand, anxiously waiting for the ball to reappear. There was one time however that she tried to chase the ball down the lane and she slipped and fell, right on her back. 🙁 Needless to say, she didn’t try that again.
Kyle was the only one in the family that actually threw the ball with his left hand.
Kyle really liked this “action shot” of me rolling the ball down the lane. Notice how the ball hasn’t actually hit the ground yet? Despite the fact that I am left handed, I threw the bowling ball with my right hand. I am kind of a weird lefty. I write with my left hand, and I always carry my purse on my left shoulder and I find it easier to carry the babies with my left arm, but bowling, using scissors or chopping veggies I do with my right hand. Weird huh?
At one point Tyra, Dinah and Chloe all needed to go potty. So after Kyle’s turn and mine he took Dinah and Chloe, and Tyra went after her next turn. When they came back, Kyle brought with them this neat contraption that you set the ball on, and then the little kids can just push the ball off!
This made it much easier for the little ones, and their balls went much faster pushing it off rather than pushing it on the ground. Dinah, Chloe and Lydia all finished the game using this thing, and Tyra used it a lot too. Somehow I failed to get any pictures of Ethan or Tyra while they were bowling. Part of that was because the camera’s battery was glowing red to warn me that it was getting low. 🙁 Ethan did pretty well, and Tyra seemed to have trouble rolling the ball. Most of the time when it was her turn she kind of threw the ball more than she rolled it and it always hit the floor with a much louder thunk than it would have if she just rolled it.
We went over our hour of lane rental and had to extend our time a couple of times (they only extended us by 10 minutes each of those times) and after the second extension we still had Chloe and Lydia that didn’t get to finish the 10th round. However we figured it wasn’t necessary to ask for a third extension just to finish up their turns, especially since it was getting late and the bowling alley was starting to get busy.
As you can see by the score board, I beat Kyle, and some of the kids have kids have higher scores than I do, but I would like to point out that that is only because THEY were using the bumpers. 😉 The kids were really well behaved while we were playing and they seemed to really enjoy bowling, so we may have to do this again sometime (which is the perfect excuse to come back and work on the cub scout bowling pin).