Bowling

The kids love bowling. It's not a sport that I love  -- mostly because I'm not good at it.  But the kids have field trips throughout the year to bowl and birthday parties to attend that involve bowling. So one day, I thought we'd try out a fancy bowling alley in the suburbs.

This isn't your typical dive bowling alley with olds, smelly shoes.  No, this is a swanky, high tech bowling alley.  Take the price, for example, $30 for four people to bowl one game (or whatever they call it in bowling). Waitresses bringing you fine fare and drinks of your choice - alcoholic or nonalcoholic.  The lanes are all automated so you don't have to keep score (or for me, figure it out like the old days), but the best is that you can check to automate the bumpers (that just magically pop out of the gutters) for each individual player.  They also have this roller coaster type of contraption so the little kids can put the ball on it and then push it down. Genius!

I grew up on the East Coast where we had smaller balls to bowl with. I always wondered how little kids could bowl with these 6 and 7 pound balls.

Anyway, with bumpers and all Peyton won. Austen came in second then Tom and me. Neither of us are very good but hey, we didn't use the bumpers!

We had a lot of fun.  So much that we went back with some friends of Austen's. Peyton won that time too!