Saturday, January 19, 2008

You say it's your birthday?!?!?

Well...yesterday was my birthday. The day itself was fairly normal...a work day filled with tons of meetings and conducting interviews to hire a new team member. After I got home, we took the fam bowling, which was a riot. Jason wanted to bowl without the "bumpers" up...and he actually did pretty well. He scored a 41 (which was pretty comparable to the score Julia old pulled down with the bumpers up for her).

Each of the kids had their own fun style that was a riot to watch.

Andrew had his own little warm up dance followed by a run up the floor to give a solid throw that was literally like pushing the ball through the air. With his strange style, his rolls were amazingly straight. He had the bumpers on but most of his shots never used them. He managed to pull off a couple of strikes and spares with his ultra straight shots.

Julia had the bumpers up and she wanted to be a big girl and throw the ball out there rather than setting it down and pushing...it landed with a thud at her feet and then slowly rolled down the lane bouncing along the rails by the end. She had some great shots and I think she even ended up with a spare on one frame.

Jason, as I mentioned above, was intent on not using the bumpers, because the bumpers are for "little kids." His shots usually had severe angles that pulled or pushed his ball into the gutter before the halfway mark. But he did begin to compensate for the angled shots by turning his body or standing far to one side. When he compensated correctly, he ended up with some great shots. He pulled off a couple of spares and had many shots with 8 or 9 pins knocked down. I was truly impressed.

Lynette and I alternated our skill. She actually started off the first game very solidly with spares and strikes while I spent most of the time in the gutter. Towards the end of the first game, her wrists were tiring so her scores were dwindling and we ended up fairly even in the 80 range. The second game continued the trend...her scores went down while mine went up. I actually had a good streak going for a while and missed a turkey by 2 pins. My final score of 134 isn't anything that will warrant a league manager calling me, but it made me feel good that I might be able to pull back to my old averages of 160-170.

My parents and my brother and sister came along as well and had fun bowling alongside us. We don't do as many things like that together with extended family anymore, so it was nice to get together like that.

The second game was a lot longer than the first since the kids were getting tired and bored of waiting between turns. They spent a little time in the arcade with Lynette in between turns.

Overall, it was a fun night and it was hilarious to watch them play. We got a Wii for Christmas and they've loved Wii Bowling...what's funny is that their real life bowling style is very similar to their Wii style. Next time we'll have to take video to compare. :)

Today we'll be doing a little more playing and tomorrow we're having the extended family over for a big dinner.

All in all, it's been a very good birthday. :)

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