kajukenbo, bowling, and race cars

I didn't write about our fantastically busy Saturday. It was something.

So, on Friday, Archie and I got home from the party at about 1am. He and the twins had to be at the dojo for belt testing at 7am. We had decided that Cha and I would stay home -- it's started to get cold and onlookers have to stand outside for the test. Archie said he'd get the big girls up and ready. I was slightly skeptical, but he seemed to get them up without too much trouble. I woke up a little when Archie got up, but went back to sleep. The next thing I knew, Charlotte was awake, which meant that I had to get up and feed her and keep an eye on her. Arch and the girls were headed out at that point. (He said he went in to wake them up and they begged for five more minutes of sleep, so he set the timer and they got up without incident.) Archie and the girls came home several hours later with new belts. Yay!

Then the girls and I went to Target to get some presents for a birthday party. We were in and out in no time with a Care Bear, a book, and a Hello Kitty craft-y thing. Then off to the party.

It was at a bowling alley and we had a ball. I haven't been bowling in ages. My folks did belong to a league and I bowled in an after-school program in middle school, so I'm not a rank beginner. (I did impress the girls with the fact that I can run up to the line, stop, and release the ball, as if I really knew what I was doing.) It was cool, though, because they have bumpers that can be set to go up for the frames of specific bowlers. The adults could bowl and the kids could have the benefit of bumpers during their turns. Lou was -- no surprise -- pretty good. Bebe made me cringe every time because she was throwing the ball and it would crash onto the lane. Cha would walk up, put the ball down, and then push it. Then she'd stand there and wiggle and twist as she watched the ball head for the pins.

After pizza and cake, we took the girls into the arcade and the twins and their friend played Dance Dance Revolution -- wait...EXTREME! It was extreme, too. Extremely funny.

Charlotte found a racing game -- the kind where you sit in a seat and drive the car through a course. Her legs weren't long enough to reach the gas pedal, so Archie stood next to her and worked that pedal for her and she became this little racing fiend. She was kind of good! She did run over a lot of her opponents. And she went flying over quite a few barriers. But she never crashed and she loved it. I hope her enthusiasm for speed and daring fades before it's time for her to get a driver's license and get behind the wheel of a real car. Or we may have to get her involved in Formula One racing. There's always the option of drag racing, though. Then we could tell her about Shirley Muldowney and how they share the nickname of ChaCha.