19th birthday bowling celebration!

Last week was a busy one, and though we celebrated Molly's big 19th birthday, I haven't posted about it until now. Bowling was it's own blog post that I wanted to save until I had a bit of time to write about it. After her "no dance Valentines day dance", Molly still wanted to invite Spencer along for her bowling and PF Chang's birthday celebration. She had received gift certificates when she graduated from high school and we needed to use them. This was the perfect opportunity!

I love these modern bowling alley's. No smoking allowed which makes it feel clean (except maybe where you put your fingers in the ball to bowl.... and maybe the shoes too) :) But that insight comes from my germ-phobe husband. I hadn't thought twice about bowling and then eating my nachos without washing my hands in-between! Don't tell Molly...she'd be running around handy wiping every ball in the place if she knew that was an option. The icing on the bowling alley cupcake was that THEY input our names and programmed the bumpers to go up when both Molly and Spencer bowled, and went down when the rest of us bowled. That saved a good half hour of programming struggles and we could start right away.

I want you to see what a typical photo session looks like with our kids. Spencer would be looking at me and as soon as I clicked to take a picture, he'd turn his head. He finally stayed put the third time  and as you can see, Jack is feeding me grief and laughing. We aren't picky about natural smiles or even eyes open. We just like them looking in the general direction of the camera :)

Success!!

For me, growing up bowling was a fun family activity that we did maybe once a year during a camping trip. Brooke looks like he has been bowling since he could walk. He throws it down the lane with such speed and loud crashing and spraying of pins at the end, that he looks like he should have chosen it as his career. Must have been a lot of beers and fraternity hang out time in college? He's good at most bar games. But we haven't really taken the kids bowling much and that was apparent the first time our athletic son rolled the ball down the lane. Brooke and I shot a look at each other like "WHERE did he learn THAT style?". Jack rolled it backhand, or back spin might be a better way to describe it? Kind of like you'd toss a bag in Corn Hole. It looked weird and acted weird for the whole game too :) There was a big bet riding on the game between the boys and whomever lost had to clean the others car, so Jack wasn't about to try and learn the correct way to roll the ball. Maybe next time we take him out?

Molly took to it quickly. She would watch to see when it was her turn and in one fell swoop from the chair, to quickly grabbing her ball, to running up to the line, to rolling it down the lane all took 1/2 second. She used the heck out of the bumpers too! The ball would Z down the lane and knock a few pins over at the end. After her first few turns, I was amazed to see her leaning her body in the direction that she wanted to ball to go. She'd even wave her arms trying to magically move the ball the correct direction to knock over more pins. It appeared that she REALLY understood the game and cared about the outcome. She would smile and high five us after each turn.

Spencer, on the other hand, looked like he would have rather been anywhere else but there. He would slowly get his ball, walk up to the line with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand on the ball. He'd move his arm about 1/4 inch and drop the ball with a loud THUD directly at his feet and it would ever so slowly creep down the lane. Spencer would stand there and look back at us, look around at the others bowling, and hardly ever looked down at how many pins would be knocked over. The folks on the lanes beside us would patiently wait for him to move before they would bowl since that is the appropriate etiquette. They quickly learned that it was okay to go as Spencer was going to be there a while and we had said "It's okay". Then he'd walk back wanting to sit down. "No, you have one more ball to bowl". And he'd go through the process again. Brooke tried to get him to move his arm and really wing it down the lane and also told him to take his hand out of his pocket. The winging never got faster but he DID take his left hand out of his pocket the rest of the time. Needless to say, it took a full hour to play one game. It wasn't until we had 5 minutes left of our time (and were told this on the scoring monitor above) that Spencer lit up and started smiling and engaging with us again. His face said "THANK GOD this is almost over and we can go eat. Why does this family take me on outings like this?".

Left hand in pocket

Molly, Spencer, Jack, Brooke, Kathy

Molly beat Jack! But she WAS using bumpers and he wasn't. I was thrilled to break 100!

If you are my FB friend, you know how monumental this cupcake is. Here is what I posted on her birthday:

This cupcake represents SO much growth in our daughter. Kind of embarrassing to admit that this is THE FIRST TIME EVER we have made cupcakes together (since she really didn't care to participate before). No surprise she picked pink cake AND pink icing. She cracked (decimated?) the eggs, she used the beater, she messily put the batter into the tin cups, and she iced them all beautifully by herself adding the sprinkles at the end. The sky is the limit my sweet 19 year old. Happy Birthday, Molly!

SO excited when her friend Maddie brought birthday flowers for her.

Molly's favorite song in the world is the "Happy Birthday" song. She loves to sing it to anyone and lights up when it is sung to her. She sways back and forth and a few of the words come out of her mouth. So she heard it at FSL at work, at her cupcake celebration at speech therapy, AND at Special Olympics basketball practice that night. And probably a few other times in the car driving to all these places. It was the perfect 19th birthday.