Our First Bowling Experience

Note to Self: I need to teach the kids all the do's and don'ts of an activity before inviting Esteban to come along...

Jayden has been asking to bowl so badly that I started to consider it. I don't know where it came from. Maybe from playing the Wii at Judy's, but we finally decided to take them on Sunday. I had a lunch date after church so we decided we would take them later in the evening and have dinner there.

I got home and picked up the family. Esteban seemed a little strange, but he was playing along so I let it go. We got to the lane, got our shoes and lane assignment and started to play. I didn't know they had special "bumpers" for little kids so that was great. Everything was fine until some bowl-a-holics got the lane next to us. It was so obvious that they didn't care for kids and things went downhill from there. Esteban kept correcting the kids and pushing Jayden around, which of course made Jayden unhappy and mouthy. It was awful. I was snapping at Esteban because he was being mean to the kids and he was annoyed.

In the hopes of saving the evening, I talked to the hostess and asked if we could switch lanes. It didn't help. Then I tried ordering food. Maybe the kids would settle down if they were munching on something and maybe Esteban would feel better too, but nothing. Esteban's mood was ruined. He started to bowl gutter balls, and continued to snap at Jayden and poor Maya wanted to participate so badly, but she kept running out into the alley and into other people's games. So she was getting pulled and tugged all over the place. Sigh...

I was devastated for Jayden's sake because he wanted to go so bad. I felt sorry that it wasn't fun and that he got yelled at so much. And I felt angry at Esteban for letting those rednecks ruin our night. Esteban misses alot of "firsts". I'll show him all the pictures afterwards, which paint such a happy picture, but teaching the kids to do something for the first time takes alot of patience and understanding. Apparently there IS someone on earth with less patience than I! So disappointed...

Horrible picture, but here's Jayden's ball going down the alley. Every ball would have been a gutter ball if it wasn't for those bumpers. He was rolling his 5 pound ball ever so gently. It was taking forever to get down the lane.

As you can see, any minute now Maya is going to pinch her fingers with those heavy balls. And Jayden gives up waiting. He comes running over to "help" correct Maya.
This is the beginning of our first game. Jayden was doing better than I was.

Jayden's first game score was 64 and his second game was 58! Way to go son!