I just finished washing a load of clothes. Every single thing Marty & I, the girls, & Ty were wearing last night, to be exact. Every item of clothing that could soak up a smell, reeked of smoke. That's right. We took all 3 of our kiddos to the smoke infested bowling alley last night. I definitely had visions of the scene in Sweet Home Alabama: "Oh, you have a baby....in a bar." Oh boy, but fun was definitely had, even if we were breathing in toxins the entire time. The first game I actually beat my hubby! That truly never happens, so I took a picture just so we would have photographic evidence. Of course, he kicked my butt in the second game. Typical.
When we first got our lane we were lucky to have two families on either side of us. You know, you just never know who your "neighbors" are going to be when you get assigned a bowling lane. It's like when you're sitting on an airplane with an empty seat next to you and every person that starts to walk toward your aisle, you secretly have a judgement about. "Oh Lord, please let that person keep walking." or "She looks nice, and like she might be willing to listen to me ramble on about the novel I'm reading. I hope she sits down." It's a little like that. They tell you the lane number. You immediately scan the place to find where it is and to see what you're going to be surrounded by while you try and enjoy your family outing. There was a sense of "Whew...we got some families." Not only for our own sake, but also for the sake of other bowlers. We have small children. Three of them. They spill things. They cry. They don't know how to stay in their own space that is assigned to them. And occasionally their ball may or may not go into the lane it's supposed to go. And excuse us, while we drag this very small & unobtrusive thing up & down the lane making sounds similar to a fork scraping a plate, so our kids can just roll their ball down the lane. Hey, it helps to avoid the whole ball-going-into-YOUR-lane thing!
The last thing we would need next to us is a lane full of the "serious bowlers." You know the kind. They come in with their OWN ball and their OWN shoes in their OWN bowling bag. They pull out the wrist guard and the towel they wipe their hands with each time they're done with their turn. Oh, you know the kind. As we were just beginning our second game, the family to our left finished their game and left. And the next "neighbors" we had were you guessed it the "serious bowlers." Uh oh. I started to sweat. I started to think about all the things they must be thinking as they were scanning the place looking to see who their "neighbors" would be and saw our clan as Reagan's popcorn went flying all over the place and I was frantically sweeping it all under the chairs with my feet. They turned out to be very polite and understanding. Whew! And we didn't seem to bother them....too much. We finished up, returned our balls & shoes and headed out to the car to change our baby boy's blowout diaper all up the back of his clothes, so it WASN'T the smell of the bowling alley after all, and went on our merry way home. Fun was had by all. Even if there was crying and whining about having to leave and having not ever had a spare when everyone else in the family did. 
