Family Fun

Last weekend, Carter made his first trip to a bowling alley.  It's been a while since we've all gone bowling; the last time, Jacob was very young, and Carter was about four months old.  It's a great winter family activity, though, and we hit the local bowling alley ready to have some fun.

Our first stop was to get shoes.  Oh, teeny-tiny toddler bowling shoes... could there be anything cuter?

Apparently, not everyone thought so.  Carter was not a fan of the bowling shoes, and spent about five minutes yelling for his regular shoes.

Eventually, he became distracted by all the other new things:  the lights, the ball return, the pretty, pretty bowling balls.  Once he saw Frank roll his first ball down the lane, he was intrigued.

 

Jacob isn't a bad little bowler.  We did have bumpers (that came in handy for Frank and me!), but he understood some of the concepts much more than he did a few years ago.

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Look at his ball.  It's probably still, as you read this, rolling towards the pins.  Bowling with preschoolers is really, really slow

Like, really

really

slow.

The boys thought they were cool dudes, though.  They were high five-ing us and each other with every roll.

The cuteness lasted for all of six frames.

After that, I'm not sure what happened.  Jacob was pumped and ready to play another game, but Carter was d-o-n-e!  We finished the game, but it wasn't pretty. Even though we ended with lots of tears and shushing, we accomplished our real goal.  It's important to us to give our kids lots of fun and lots of new experiences.

Eventually, we'll be able to have an outing with no tears or freak-outs about shoes.  Jacob is our proof that "family fun" can actually be fun, if you just persevere.  For the most part, he enjoys new activities, new situations, and new people.  Carter will get there...eventually... maybe slower than the strikes he throws, but he will get there.