Nontraditional Mother's Day Tradition

My mom and Bethany

My brother Scott and Hope

We accidentally started what we hope will be a tradition for Mother's Day. There are no corsages included, but technically we did eat out.

Ashlyn was in need of some batting practice, so we decided to make a trip to our not-so-local batting cages 45 miles away. The only day that would work to go was Sunday...but that was Mother's Day...would my mom understand if we ditched the family for the afternoon and practiced batting instead? Also on site are bumper boats, go carts, mini-golf and laser tag, so I decided to just invite the family.

Well, no one had ever thought of doing that before. My family has never played mini-golf before, not even when I was a kid. We got one of my brothers in on it (the other had to work), made plans to pack some BBQ for lunch and we were on our way!

What a blast we had! It was overcast and threatening rain, so we had the park mostly to ourselves. Ashlyn & Hope used the batting cages for a while, then a few of us adults stopped yelling advice and stepped in the cage ourselves! I hadn't hit a ball in a few years, it was fun-although I don't know how they do it with those cumbersome helmets on! Meanwhile, my parents and brother took the girls in the bumper boats & go carts-even Jaika got in on it. She's ruthless with the boat's water gun-she even squirted the attendant!

We wrapped up our play with a family round of mini-golf. My sister in law has some mini-golfing skills! She let my dad take over her club when she got tired (she's still recovering from colon cancer), which leveled the playing field a bit. In the end, Shane was the champion, and I came in second. He gets bragging rights until next year when we will do it all over again.

Yep, that's right, we all had such a good time, we're planning it again for next year. Next year, we'll remember to bring napkins, since after eating BBQ sandwiches, we looked liked we'd been face painting. Also, we'll scout out a park near by instead of having a tailgate party in the parking lot-or we'll remember our lawn chairs. Soon we'll have this thing down to an art, all the while enjoying each other's company while ducking from Jaika's water gun stream!