The Holiday Day 5

I keep meaning to come back and finish this holiday series off - life keeps getting in the way.
Of course I don't mean to keep you all hanging - I'm sure you're all there just gripping your chairs and waiting with anticipation for the next day of my whirlwind holiday...No?

day 5 is pretty tame - we didn't go tipping cows or anything - it was kind of a lay about and just spend time with our family kind of day. We had of course reserved a lane at the bowling alley in the afternoon, just to do *something* fun for the kids.
Indeed they were much more excited about going bowling than they were about going to the children's museum.

Let me start by saying that my kids have never gone bowling before, unless you count Wii Bowling, which you can't really.

So the first thing we had them do was put the bumpers up to avoid gutter balls - No sense paying for a game of bowling with children screaming and crying because their ball keeps going in the gutter. We had warned them that *real* bowling was much harder and that the balls were very heavy and it's definitely not going to be as easy as holding the Wii remote - but they still insisted that they wanted to go.
We got the very lightest 10 pin balls we could find - 6lbs.
Got the 4 kids (Jayson at 16 mos was too young) registered and names put into the little computer thingy, and were all set to bowl - 4 adults, and 5 kids which means that in the chaos of putting bowling shoes on (why yes, you have to wear them, no I'm sorry they look like that, you just have to wear them) exchanging bowling shoes for the next size down, and then exchanging them back for that bigger size after all, and yes I know they feel funny but just put. them. on. we are paying by the hour, which at this rate will end up costing us 14,000$ - the most expensive bowling game in the world! Well we all had our eyes watching one kid, which meant that somehow, for 12 seconds one was unsupervised.

That one unsupervised one was Joey.

He grabbed a 10lb bowling ball off of the lane beside ours, and tripped on the little ledge up to the actual bowling lane and down he went.
My first fear was that he had dropped the ball on his foot - but as I moved closer, I saw that he had in fact, fallen face first on the bowling ball. My next fear was that he had knocked 1 or 6 teeth out, but couldn't see for all the blood that had filled his mouth and was dripping all over the bowling alley. I immediately just cupped my hand under his mouth to catch any teeth that might be falling out, and whisked him to the bathroom to get a better look while my sister ran off in search of some ice.

After determining that Joey has teeth stronger than diamonds, and that they were all present and accounted for, with no chips or wiggles or anything, next order of business was to see where the blood was actually coming from.
Judging from the swelling already starting in his lower lip, we determined that he had put his tooth through his lip when he tripped.
Lips bleed - a lot.
So much so that I started to think he might need stitches, and wondering how much it was going to cost up front (Thank God we bought out of country health insurance)
Surprisingly though, the bleeding appeared to slow down pretty quickly. In addition to diamond hard teeth, it would appear he also has super clotting abilities AND
he would not suck on the ice, but instead *wanted to go bowling!!!*
Is he a trooper or what? So the other kids had bowled his turns for half the game, so there was no telling what anyones actual score was - not that they cared, so long as they got at least 1 spare - Which each of the big boys did, so bowling was a ....success?
My niece won the award for the slowest ball. I think the alley must be sloped downward and the ball made it down the lane on pure gravity, because it took about 2 minutes, rolling v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y. until it practically kissed a pin....and it teetered and finally fell down - Huzzzzah, you'd never seen such a celebration. We must have looked a sight, us big people, guiding these little people on how to roll a 6lb bright green bowling ball down a very well waxed bowling lane.

After an hour we'd had enough - Joey looked like he'd been in a prison fight, and the kids were proud to have bowled their first real game.

It was a relief to go to bed that night.
Oh and we found out the hard way that Joey does NOT like Ambesol for pain relief, because it numbs the area, and his tongue and lip and he was not impressed with that feeling at all. Imagine putting Ambesol on your dog's tongue and you'll pretty much get Joey's reaction.

Spent the evening packing up all our stuff to come home - gathering our belongings from every room where little hands had helped stuff migrate.
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In the morning we headed out bright and not too terribly early for the drive home.

The big boys got into a tussle at some point during the week and somehow Matthew's fist (or elbow or head) ended up knocking Duncan's wiggly front tooth and making it very very very super wiggly.

It came out on the way home, so we had to keep his bloody tooth in a safe place for 10.5 hours.
The ride home was otherwise uneventful - although we notice there was NO snow all through Michigan until we arrived at the border, and then boom - snow! How does the snow know which side of the border to fall on???

and we came home to a tidy and COLD house (we'd turned the heat down to 60 degrees for the week while we were away)
Home sweet Home.
Another Family vacation to remember.