Worth the Wait

Just after the first of the year, we attempted to take the boys bowling. They’d only been begging for months and a nearby alley had “Buck Night” on Mondays, meaning games and shoes would only be $1 each. Something not good happened that day though… we forgot some of the school districts had that day off, so when we arrived at the alley at 4pm it was PACKED. Oh dear. And there was an hour long waiting list. Double oh dear. And Lily was going to be crabby and ready to eat in about 90 minutes and I didn’t have anything other than cheerios with us. Triple oh dear.

So we sat the boys down and told them it was too crowded and we would need to come another time. I bet you can all guess what happened, and if you’re too far removed from the drama the ages of 3 and 4 can bring, let me refresh your memory….

They cried. All three of them, burst into tears right there in the bowling alley. We pretty much had to drag them out to the van.

Don’t worry though, this story has a happy ending! Last Monday we tried bowling again. Guess what happened? Some of the nearby school districts had a snow day, for 2 inches of snow that fell in the morning. Bet you can see where this is going! Even with Nick coming home from work a bit early, we still ended up waiting 40 minutes for a lane to open up.

The boys did great with the wait (Lily was slightly annoyed), and were SO excited when it was finally our turn to bowl! This was also the first time the alley made them wear bowling shoes, which the boys thought were pretty awesome (and they were sad when we told them the shoes were not theirs to keep).

Nick giving Jackson a refresher on how to do this without hurting himself or anyone else.

Ty was super impressed, as indicated by his body language.

Chase was super excited! Funny story – every time I show him this picture (even immediately after I took it) he will get upset and insist he didn’t jump. Um…. Chase, you did!

Jackson was cracking us up with his various ball-watching stances. All 4 of these happened during the same frame! And then ended with a face-palm…

I think we need to have a discussion about what’s face-palm worthy… He had 9 of the 10 pins down!

This one just makes me laugh! Nick was trying to show the boys how to make the ball move a little quicker, but I couldn’t stop laughing at how it looks like he just laid a bowling ball! Ahh, the things we’ll do for kids.

Oh dear, hold onto the ball, Chase!

Lily finally got tired of sitting in her stroller, and Nick can’t resist the way she says “Daddy”. Sucker 😉

So we started out the evening bowling with just the bumpers up, but that was taking WAY too long. As in, we were only on the 4th frame and had already been at it for 45 minutes. Watch this little video clip and you’ll see what I mean about the “speed” of our game…

It only took us about 25 minutes to bowl the final 6 frames, so the ramp definitely helped! Without that thing we might still be there…