Bowling with Kim and her girls

We had an unexpected bonus visit while in the Chicagoland area -- Carl's daughter Kim was able to get a flight up to visit her brothers and she arrived the day before we were supposed to depart... So we picked them up at O'Hare and spent some time together before taking them to Steve and Shay's house where they would be spending the night...

We ate lunch and then went to Main Event to try bowling... 

Kim picking up a spare

Lianna preparing to deliver her shot!

McKenna considering how she wants to direct this attempt

Patti trying to remember her bowling class lessons from college

Carl showing good form!

Our scores after one game -- you may see that Carl just squeaked out as the winner by getting two strikes at the very end of the game! I was consistently at the bottom of the pack! The photo behind our scores is one of Lianna being silly having her picture taken.

The bowling alley sold the games by an amount of time -- we signed up for 60 minutes, and got through one game (10 frames) plus a few more frames in a second game...

Totals for all of our frames

Some interesting things to note:

• This facility (Main Event) allowed you to turn on/off bumpers on the lanes. I probably should have turned them on, but I was really trying to remember the techniques that I used to know how to do! Everyone else used them at least some of the time, though McKenna only used them for the first few frames of the first game (electing to try to challenge herself), and Carl didn't turn them on until towards the end of the first game.
• Last year, Carl and I tried duckpin bowling (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/05/duckpin-bowling.html). He had been concerned about bowling 10-pin that it might aggravate his shoulder. After duckpin bowling, both of us had painful knees, but neither of us had any particular pains after this bowling outing. We both used 8 pound balls -- they had 6 pound ones, but we couldn't find any 6 pound balls with large enough finger holes. 

Good family fun!