Free Summer Fun!! (Better Late Than Never.)

It’s become a running joke with my friend Ashley and I that every time we’re getting together, we always ask each other what New! and Exciting! Thing! we can do with Ali and AJ.

Yet, we almost always end up back at the mall, or back at our favorite lunch places, or back at the Children’s section of the Library.

What can I say? We lack in creativity.

But Monday morning, when she called and asked me “What New and Exciting thing can we do today?”, I actually felt the ambition to take on her challenge.

I started searching the internet and my favorite Birmingham Mom Idea blogs, Magic City Mom and Birmingham Mommy, and then vaguely remembered hearing about a great summer deal back in my so-nauseous-I-wouldn’t-care-if-someone-was-giving-away-free-million-dollar-houses stage of pregnancy, so I searched for it, and found it: kidsbowlfree.com.

It’s a national summer program that allows kids to get two free games of bowling, every day Monday through Friday, all summer long at participating bowling alleys – you just pay for shoes.

And there’s not even a catch!!

(Granted, when I signed up for it, they wanted to sell me on a family pass for $24.95 for the summer, which would have been an AWESOME deal had I actually remembered and taken advantage of this a couple of months ago. But I didn’t buy that, so our outing cost us all of $3 each.)

Last time we took Ali and AJ bowling, we couldn’t find them six pound balls, so we had to help them quite a bit. But at Vestavia Bowl, there was an abundance of them, which, coupled with their 8 months advancement in age made it easy for both of the girls to actually bowl by themselves:

They had an absolute blast. There was much jumping up and down, screaming, cheering, high-fiving, and celebrating their bowls, whether pins were actually conquered or not.

But, of course, their balls took about fifty years to make it down the lane, so there was a lot of resting while waiting for ball arrival as well.

That’s when the extremely proactive and nice staff asked if we wanted a ramp, so we decided to give it a try.

That sped up the process quite a bit, allowing for more celebration time.

Ali and AJ both loved bowling, even when they started to become cognizant of their failures as well as their successes:

But despite those missed pins, I’m really glad that Ashley and I opted not to play, because between their ramp, their bumpers, and their mad skillz, I’m afraid that they would have easily beaten us. And admitting that would have been too hard on our fragile Mommy egos.

The program runs through September 6th – I REALLY hope to get to take Ali a few more times before it’s over (if you’re local, let me know if you want to join us!!). If you’re not local, Check the website to see if there’s a participating alley in your area – I know this information is woefully late to take full advantage of it, but better late than never, right?

This post wasn’t sponsored by anyone. After all, it’s a free program – I don’t think they’d be too interested in paying me to promote it with all those invisible dollars people are giving them.