At the beginning of the summer, I signed up for this program called Kids Bowl Free, which, as the name suggests, sends you free bowling passes every week. So, we finally got to use our coupons yesterday. While adults, unfortunately, do not bowl free, I had already promised to kick my kids’ little butts, so we were on for two games.

First, we took our bowling portraits. As you can see, the photo acting lessons are finally paying off.

I tried to teach them some technique, specifically, the classic through-the-legs roll. Instead they mostly adopted a shot put type move, which involved throwing the ball overhead, resulting in a giant thud satisfying/annoying sound every time.

Despite this, this was the final score of game 1:

Game 2 highlights included George “helping” an employee fix the bowling ball machine, Hazy getting bored of regular bowling and trying “crazy bowling”, and George melting my heart by adopting my late grandfather’s stance while waiting for his ball to go down the bowling-assist ramp. Seriously, every time. Oh, and I won.

Wouldn’t you know it, there’s an arcade at the bowling alley! We dance-danced, we skee balled, we beat the system.

Everything you ever need to know about beating the claw machine. Thanks, Nate!

But that was just the first half of the day! We’re dog sitting our friend’s dog, Damon, so we took the dogs to the dog park.

Then we ALL napped, and it was glorious. After our naps, we put our zoo membership to good use, and it was a banner day at the zoo. First, the feed-the-budgies guy told us the budgies weren’t eating, so he wouldn’t sell us food sticks, but we could go in anyway. Everyone was leaving because it was starting to drizzle, so some lady gave us her food sticks, and guess what? The budgies WERE eating! So, not only did we not blow $6 on two toothpicks with a 1/4 teaspoon of nuts on them, but we got some serious budgie action (which is not as dirty as it sounds, but does require a lot of Purell).

Then, we escaped the rain just in time to make it into the gorilla exhibit, and once inside, the new baby gorilla was in plain sight! Usually, her mom hides her.

By the time we got out of the tropical rainforest, it wasn’t non-tropical raining anymore, but there were some puddles to play in.

Usually, the lions are either not on exhibit or sleeping/drugged. This time though, we could hear one of them roaring from a mile away. And when we got there, he did not disappoint. He roared like the king of the jungle he is for like 10 minutes.

And then the other lion started roaring!

And finally, of course, we got another set of our 51¢ collectors’/suckers’ pennies and played at the super zoo playground. It was a good day.

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Note: This post was originally posted on Tuesday, August 25th, and then disappeared from WordPress existence. My search on the WordPress help forum has yielded answers like, “Change the permalink” and “Tap into the time-space continuum!” and other things I don’t understand, so I have instead retyped the whole thing, thanks to the email version my friend Nina sent me. Thank you, Nina! And thank you to my junior high typing teacher, who taught me how to speed-type.

I’m trying really hard to crush it in my last two weeks. So, today we went to a Stacy Peasley (what? you haven’t heard of Stacy Peasley?!) concert at Assembly Row, followed by the Minions movie.

If you go into the movie with super low expectations, then it’s poor-average.

Oh, did you think we were just going to a concert and a movie? What is this, a lame first date?

While George napped, Hazy and I cleaned a little and then built this thing, which is rated, “ages 6+” but should be rated, “Architecture degree and above.”

After nap time, we went to the Sprinkler Park.

Then, we drove to Matty’s work, where we have a long-running thing with the parking attendant, O, where we give our best gangsta “yeah-yay!” and he laughs his ass off at us. I handed off the kids like a couple of batons, and went for a girls’ dinner with my old CP girls.

Even though I haven’t mentioned it in a while, we’re still doing our 10-minutes of one-on-one time program, and both kids ended the day with 10 minutes today. Hooray!

I wrote this whole long post about our bowling outing on Monday and it has since disappeared. Boo! If anyone knows anything about wordpress, please let me know any tips to recover a lost (previously published) post.

So are the days of our lives.

You know what little people don’t understand? Having nice things! Like mixed tapes you’ve had for 10 years before you even met their father. I clearly need to work on my angry face, because the turds barely flinched when I turned into the Hulk after this happened. I was like, “Why would you do this?!” and Hazy was all, “We tried to play them and it got stuck. And then George undid that one.” Well, of course Generation Z doesn’t know how to play a cassette tape. I’m surprised they even put it in on the right side. Also, I love the explanation that George just felt like he had to F up a second mix tape because he missed out on f’ing up the first one.

After I put them in time out, practiced my angry face in the mirror for a while, and painstakingly rewound the one tape I could salvage, I decided we’d still do our fun day as planned, because 1) I’m apparently bad at discipline, and 2) I didn’t feel like I deserved to be further punished by spending a day doing nothing fun at home.

So, we headed to the Roslindale library (first time!) for some arts & crafts.

We decided it was a Treat Yo Self kind of day, so we went to Jimmie’s for a lobster roll (my 3rd of the summer) and some PB&Js (their 295th and 296th of the summer), and of course, ice cream.

I could not convince Hazy to take a nap today (she is 6, after all), so during George’s nap, we watched bad TV after a failed attempt to get her to watch Lilo & Stitch. Learn from my mistakes, Lego Friends has neither the coolness of Lego or the humor of Friends. It’s more like My Little Pony in human form.

After George’s nap, we did something very exciting – got stickers and mints at the bank, and while we were there, opened the kids’ first bank accounts. I’m thankful to JP Moms for the recommendation to go to the Bank of Canton (what? exactly) in Brookline, where they still give kids a passbook and a free piggy bank.

I’m the proud parent of a decinnaire and a vigintinnaire (look it up!) now. Don’t even try to rob them – all their funds are tied up in passbooks.

If you can think of any must-dos before the end of the summer, now’s the time to share them. We have a week and a half to cram in everything we can. Might even have special guest star, Dada, for a few days next week.

Yesterday, I threw myself an epic pity party because I had (and have) the worst summer cold. The party attendees were Hazy and George, who indulged me by watching TV and movies all day.

So I guess we didn’t do nothing; we did that TV thing, we exercised our OCD, we read some books, we walked Beatz, and we went on one outing.

Like I said, we did make one outing. We went to “downtown” JP to CVS to get some cold medicine, and stopped by Beatz’s daycare, Fancy Schmancy, while we were there.

So even though I felt like I got Georged yesterday, it was nice to cuddle with the guys for a while. Cold or no cold, we’ll be back to being ballers come Monday, because we only have two more weeks of our summer together.

Yesterday was Thursday, so we went to Oma & Opa’s. We did our usual stuff, with these notable differences: instead of worrying about the fish biting my ankles should I stand too still in the pond shallows, I worried about them biting my belly while I swam to the island across the pond.

And then later at the pool, George swam unassisted for about 2 feet. And by swam, I mean he moved his arms and legs as he rapidly sunk to the bottom of the pool, and then Oma and I made a big deal about how great he swam.

Then he got hugs and got treated like a king.

Usually, my dad treats us to a gourmet dinner, but this time I decided it was my turn. But when your dad has Voltaggio-like cooking skills, it’s a lot of pressure to cook something great, so I went with Plan B – lobster. And of course, I followed the most important rule my dad has taught me, which is, “Always buy an extra lobster.”

By the way, I know some of you out there actually prefer the claws to the tails. If you are one of them, let me know when you want to go out for lobsters together. We can work out a deal.

p.s. Last summer, I believe I had 12 lobster rolls. This summer, I’ve had two.

It’s true, on Thursdays we go to Oma’s and Opa’s. But on Wednesdays, we go to Grammy’s. We are so super lucky to not only have my parents nearby, but also Matty’s mom, sister, brother-in-law, and two nephews less than an hour away as well. This summer has been an awesome opportunity to spend more quality time with our family.

Every time we go to Grammy’s, it’s pretty awesome. I mean, there’s the pool:

But this time, Grammy pulled out all the stops. First, she brought us lunch at the pool. Pizza for the kids and a salad with like 10,000 ingredients for me. I don’t even think Mr. Belvedere did that for the Owens children.

Then, after naps, we had a SUNDAE BAR. Ice cream, whipped cream, hot fudge, and the cherry on top? Cherries on top! I didn’t take any pictures, because, duh, ice cream.

Then, the kids watched Toy Story and Princess Songs respectively (guess who watched what), and I snuck down to the basement to watch Friends with my nephew, who is seeing the whole series for the first time.

Grammy made us a wonderful dinner, and then – here’s the kicker – we had MORE ICE CREAM with MORE SPRINKLES. Grammy, don’t tell the kids I said this, but we would have come back even without the sprinkles.

When my friend Ariane and I were kids, we used to film our own talk show in her basement. It was called The Jamie Fairbanks show, and we took turns being Jamie Fairbanks. Nowadays, Ariane/Jamie lives in lovely Swampscott on the North Shore, and we spent the day with her today.  I told the kids on the way home about The Jamie Fairbanks Show, and I think Hazy was secretly impressed. George had no comment.

We spent the morning at Phillips Beach, doing our usual beach activities: jumping over waves, throwing sand or getting yelled at for throwing sand (depending on who you are), eating PB&Js, finding treasures, and cursing out the beach cart.

After the beach, I attempted to put George down for a nap IN THE SAME ROOM AS ARIANE’S BABY, which is pretty much like trying to climb the K2 with no training. But by some miracle, George went right to bed, instead of his usual 20-45 minutes of singing and giving himself pep talks (“You’re big! You’re a big guy!”).

After George’s nap (and while Ariane’s two little guys’ naps continued), we had some backyard fun.

On the way home, we had a brief shopping interlude.

It may not be as exciting as Legoland, but we had such a good time at Ariane’s, that Hazy said she was sad that they lived so far away, and wishes we could go back tomorrow.

You know how near the end of a fireworks show, they start shooting off the big guys? Like, all of a sudden it goes from BAM! POW! to  BAM BAM BAM! POW PASHOW! POW POW POW! Well, there are only three weeks of summer vacation left, so it’s time for the big guns. That’s right, Legoland.

If you haven’t been to Legoland, go right now. I mean, go online and book your tickets, print them out, and then go right to Legoland. It’s a big kid’s dream come true, but also pretty cool for kid-kids.

I haven’t seen them this happy since the time I told them we were having pasta with butter for dinner.

I think it was all too much joy for George to handle, because post-Legoland, we couldn’t get a smile out of him.

After taking them to Somerville’s Disney World and not even getting a smile out of Burgles, I decided I had to treat myself to a lobster roll at Legal.

We are super lucky to not only have Wingaersheek beach nearby, but also Crane. I’ve tried to explain the concept of being super lucky to Hazy and George several times, but I don’t think they’re grasping it yet. People who have temper tantrums about not getting to “try” a third dessert seldom understand gratitude (cough, cough, George). Yesterday, we went to Crane Beach with my friends Cindy & John and their three kids, plus Cindy’s sister, Christine, and her two  kids. Seven kids and four adults means a lot of counting and a lot of yelling, “Where’s <kid name>?” (because we call all our kids “kid name” when we get together).

We played tag in the waves; the waves are always it.

I packed a picnic lunch for all of us. I don’t usually have a PB&J, and as it turned out, this day was no exception, as “somehow”, “someone” opened the cooler, unwrapped my sandwich from its reusable sandwich bag, and left it in the sand.

Between playing in the “pool” formed by the tide, jumping in the waves, and making sand creations, we had a fantastic day.

Side note: Cindy has possibly the cutest baby in the world, and if I have a third baby, it will be largely Elizabeth’s fault. Exhibits A through D:

My own baby claimed he was NOT TIRED, but somehow fell asleep before we even turned off the road the beach is on.

I asked the kids whether they preferred Wingaersheek or Crane and they said both. I’m hard pressed to pick a favorite myself.

p.s. I packed up that shade tent in about thirty seconds flat. Thank you for your prayers.