Bowling In The New Year

My parents go bowling every New Year's Eve. I'm not sure why but we've done it as long as I can remember. And it's the one and only time all year that they bowl.

Anyway, this year we invited them to bowl up in our neck of the woods and stay the night to ring in the New Year. It was a really fun time.

Tessa was so excited to go 'balling'. I thought her head was going to explode. With help from the grownups she did pretty darn good for a 3 year old. At first she was a little upset that we entered her bowling name as "T-Bird" and reminded us that her name is T-E-S-S-A!

Charley mostly watched and got into the bowling action later in the game. He was more than a little bored by all of this, but I predict next year he'll be ready.

Tessa's hair blowing in the wind created by the ball machine

Charley's saying....hey guys there's an arcade up here with blinking lights and buttons. C'mon guys! Guys?

Finally Charley decided to roll a few balls too, with lots of help.

Even though it was well past naptime, they still both conked out on the 10 min drive home. Notice the death grip that Tessa has on her special bowling alley cup.

What else does a girl need for New Year's?...a steamed pork bun, party horn and fancy glass of 'champagne' (aka Vernors). We had lot of other snacky foods and drinks and toasted with the kids at the late late hour 8pm.

If you're wondering what happened after the kids went to bed, this is where I am lacking photo evidence. It appears that Mom is holding it hostage on her camera. Shouldn't we all harass her for their release??

We played hours of Rockband. Mom mostly played keyboard and after a few drum solos, Dad mostly sat and rolled his eyes at us. Then closer to midnight Mom decided to sing! In all of my 30 years I have only ever heard her sing hymns in church. She did great, especially on "Pinball Wizard".

Pictures! Pictures!

The low point in our performance was when Jeremy berated Mom and my's skills on the bass we had been sharing, only to find out that it was running out of batteries. Take that Mr. Highscore!

A good night's sleep would have been nice but we've decided Charley is cutting his two year molars because he was up screaming in the night (which is not like him). Perhaps the music from downstairs gave him nightmares?

Breaking all of our sleep training rules, he eventually ended up in bed with Jeremy and I because he simply couldn't be consoled. He awoke much happier, see?

This picture makes him look a little skeletal. I think he must have been sucking it in.
Jeremy made us all pancakes and coffee before the folks headed back home. And Charley didn't forget his morning container of yogurt, a must to get his day started.

And thus we began 2011!