We survived Corwin’s birthday party. It started with two hours of bowling. I thought that was a bit long, but the first hour went by before I noticed. After about 1½ hours some of the younger set got tired and gave up on bowling. Luckily they were all on the same lane. About this same time Corwin started asking me when we would be opening presents. However, despite this most of the kids lasted the full two hours, although there were signs of general flagging by then. We had only one hand injury, one of the girls left with ice on her hand. I’m not sure what happened - the first hour was a frantic whirl of activity for me.
Corwin won the first game in his group, beating Megan (who is pictured here taking a breather from the intense pace of the competition) by a single point, 96 to 95, even though Megan was leading (by a single point) most of the game. However, Danielle bowled 111 (but don’t mention this to Corwin - it was his birthday party after all). Corwin scored well despite his technique. At one point I corrected him to start from in front of his lane instead of starting at the next lane over and running sideways. They were playing with bumpers so there were no gutter balls and this technique would cause the ball to bounce back and force across the lane several times before it impacted the pins.
Most of the kids threw very softly, so there was often a long wait before the ball got to the pins. One of the got the ball to stop about 5 feet in front of the pins. Several of them bowled on the wrong lane, despite the active lanes having the pins lit up and the inactive lanes dark. One time a pin rolled far enough forward that the pin catcher didn’t get it. We just played on and it was soon back in place. Despite all of this several strikes were scored (Corwin got two strikes himself).
After the bowling we went off for cake and present opening. That ran a little long - we had 45 minutes allocated but we would have done better to plan for 30. Corwin received many fine presents, although we didn’t let him open them until we got home. He’s off now exploring the wonders of the modern toy cornucopia. I think the other party goers had a good time as well.