Day 17: Nicolas' First Time Bowling

Well, after a very exciting day yesterday, we were all exhausted!!!  We slept in a little this morning and spent much of the morning just hanging out in our room.  We got ourselves around , had lunch, and headed back to Monte Casino for the third time this week, this time to take Nicolas bowling.  He had never bowled before, so we were excited for him to try it!

The bowling alley was a lot like home.  It was a small alley, only 12 lanes.  We thought we had paid for 3 games each, but it turned out we bought 3 games, one for each of us.  They had a big party coming in, so we'll plan to go back another day to practice more.

The lightest ball they had was 7 lbs, so Nicolas threw it two-handed.  After two gutter balls, he decided the bumpers might be nice.  Here's a clip to show how well he did!

And how about an action shot:

Not that we were keeping score, but I did win! :)  I hardly broke 100, but for me that's pretty good!  Since we were only able to play 1 game of bowling, we decided to take Nicolas to the arcade.  Here he is playing fruit ninja:

How excited will he be when he finds out that we have Fruit Ninja on the xbox at home??  He had a great time playing games in the arcade and was pretty pumped to turn in his tickets for a little fighter jet and 3 small dinosaurs!

After we left Monte Casino, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home.  Then it was time for our fish to get back in the water. :)  He is swimming across the pool with confidence now!  He even swam under the pool vacuum hose in the deep end today!  He still is working on getting comfortable treading water on his own, but I bet he'll get it before we know it!

I made tacos for dinner tonight because Nicolas had told me he'd never had them, but once he saw them he said "Oh those are tacos.  Yes, I've had those before."  Ah well.  At least now we know he likes them!  While you can make tacos in SA, they aren't the same.  Nicolas also convinced us to buy smoked beef flavored potato chips which Kevin and I both agree taste like what we would imagine dog treats to taste like.  Kevin also says they smell like the chews that Penelope takes, which could add to the reason we think they taste that way.  Thankfully, I don't think smoked beef flavored chips have made it to the states yet. :)

After dinner, we did homework and then watched Chicken Run.  Ok, I slept through most of it. :)  We don't have any big plans for this weekend other than swimming and church.  Monday we are going to Pilanesberg, which is a game reserve that has all of the Big 5 animals in Africa - elephants, rhinos, buffalo, lions, and leopards.  We plan to stay overnight there so that we can do both a morning and evening drive as those are the times the animals are most active.  We're really looking forward to it and hope to get some amazing photos to share!

Hope you all had a great Black Friday!

Laura, Kevin, and Nicolas