Thanksgiving, part 2

Another of our Thanksgiving traditions is to go bowling the day after Thanksgiving. This year we took up three lanes, and once again, Ruthie was the high scorer of the kids, and Grandpa Joe won overall.

Joseph definitely got into bowling more this year. Joe had to help show him how to roll the ball the first time...

but after that, Joseph knew what to do and was pretty insistent that he do it without help.

 I wore Madeline for the whole bowling session, and let her watch facing outward for the first few frames. Turns out, she was a good luck charm - I got a few strikes and spares! Who knew?

Benton and Claire had fun playing with the bowling balls, but generally were happy to hang out, pushing buttons on the scoring machines and toddling around after everyone.

Eventually Madeline tired of helping me bowl, and fell asleep in the Baby Bjorn.

 Aunt Lisa introduced Joseph to coin-operated candy machines for the first time in his life. To be fair, he may have seen these last year, but he wasn't as much of a candy monster back then.

The lighting is horrible, but I figured I might as well just get these posted before more time has passed. Joseph was fine sharing the candy with the other kids, but he still wasn't too sure if they were going to take his when it was his turn to bowl.

We had lots of fun, and managed to get the bowling in before the weather turned ugly. The boys spent the afternoon at the movies while the kids napped, and because they hadn't bought their tickets in advance, ended up having to see a later show than anticipated. Add in a few extra errands, and our evening plans had to be scrapped.

Luckily, Lisa had a great idea to take the kids to a McDonald's with a playspace for dinner and to burn off steam, as it had started to snow lightly and was too cold to play outside. We spent at least an hour there letting the kids play, and then put them to bed before the dads returned home with pizza and a peanut butter pie for our own dinner.

Madeline got way off her sleep schedule while we were in Detroit, even though we tried to keep her sleeping. Eventually, she wouldn't fall asleep unless she was being rocked to sleep, and even then fussed until she passed out. We also lost her long stretch, and it took a couple weeks after we returned home to get her back to sleeping better again.

Final day of our Thanksgiving trip report will be in the next post, as I've got a crying baby to attend to!