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.