Miniature golf.

Well, it didn't go as well as bowling. But it was still fun, I'll give it that. Jim loved the idea, and all of us were ready for an outing. Alas, we had the bad idea to go at like 11 am, when it was both hotter than Venus and dead smack in the middle of Lottie's naptime. Also, Jim's excitement wore thin pretty fast and he started looking for alternate ways of amusing himself. Four-year-olds are good at that.


Most of the day looked like this, with Ilya painstakingly trying to instill good golfing form in a semi-cooperative but mostly uninterested Jim.


But look, it's almost like he knows what he's doing, right? Temporarily, anyway.


Lottie could only shake her head in dismay.


Don't let the expression of good cheer fool you. She was a raging tyrant by the seventh hole.


Even getting to push the stroller didn't appease her for long.

Long story short: We left after the ninth hole so that the baby could take a nap and the rest of us could recover some sanity. Oh well. Maybe next year.