Celebrating a 9th Birthday with Friends

Last of all, we had a small birthday party for Joanna this afternoon. The girls had such a good time at the bowling party two weeks ago, and I was pleasantly surprised with the party package prices. The bowling alley allows you to bring in your own cake and ice-cream, and you have unlimited bowling for a two hour block. Joanna invited three friends and, of course, Ruthie & Abby. I had been careful to try to prepare Joanna in advance when it comes to social graces. For instance, I suspected that one of the little girls would not bring a gift, so we talked about not asking where the gift was or why she had not brought one. We also talked about saying thank-you and being nice about all the gifts even if she did not particularly care for one of them. So far, so good! Well - I missed one subject entirely, and it came back to bite us on the backside!! We picked up two of the little girls who live close to us, and Joanna went up to the door. When her friend, Julianna, got in the car, Joanna asked her if that lady was her mother. The answer was `yes,' and Joanna replied with "Why your mother look so old?" I just about croaked! I tried to cover up with an explanation about how this mom was about the same age as me, and that most of the other kids have younger mothers, blah, blah, blah. When Joanna persisted, I finally had to tell her that that was not a nice thing to say, and please apologize to Julianna. She did, and we went on to other matters. I can only hope that Julianna forgets about this one!

Note the picture of Bob walking down the gutter lanes. Even with gutter rails, the girls managed to lob balls on the opposite side of the gutter, or better yet, Abby rolled her ball so slowly that it stopped completely about one-fourth of the way down the lane. Bob made about 7-8 trips and even lost his shoe in the gutter one time!