Bowling

Scott got home last night after a week-long business trip visiting his clients in Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. We are SO happy he is home! To celebrate, we thought it would be fun to go have a family night out. We decided to try taking the kids bowling and they had a blast! I was actually surprised how much fun they thought it was and that they were able to do it.

Initially, Titus was very concerned about winning and thought that he needed to get a "strike" in order to win. I tried to explain that any time you hit any pins down that is great! (Guard rails automatically come up for the kids now when it is their turn, which keeps their bowling balls out of the gutter. Thay way, they knock at least one pin over.) So, once we got past that and started to bowl the kids were so excited: This was their reaction after Titus' first turn. They were hilarious jumping up and down and hugging and cheering for each other!
Everytime someone knocked a pin over, Audra would jump up and down and scream and cheer, "You won! You won!" while giving the person hugs. She never tired of this the entire game...and was happy to cheer for and "high-5" the college kids on either side of us when they did a good job, too! I had no idea bowling could be so thrilling!
More celebrating!
Justus didn't want to be left out of the celebrating, either. Everytime we cheered, he would clap and cheer, too. Mostly, he was content to hang out and eat french fries! (How things have changed! I'm pretty sure Titus never ate a french fry before he was 3.)
Daddy helping Audra.
Titus working on his bowling skills. He really wanted to do it like Mommy and Daddy. Speaking of Mommy and Daddy's bowling, I started off really strong with a strike and two spares. Unfortunately, things went crashing downhill from there. I could have used those guard rails. Scott, on the other hand, grew up bowling with his StepDad and StepGrandpa and use to compete in a league when he was younger. Apparently, he hasn't forgotten anything because he was doing all these fancy schmancy curve balls and got 5-6 strikes. (He also grew up as a left-handed pitcher in baseball and loves to analyze the anatomy of sport techniques, so I'm sure this helped him, too.) His score more than doubled mine. Kindof takes the wind out of my competitive sails.

On a side note, for any of you with small kids, there were lots of families with young children there. It was a very family-friendly environment and the kids all seemed to be having lots of fun. It is smoke-free now, which really helps. The burgers are really yummy, too.

The girls' self-portrait!