A Scrapbook Entry - Stonefire Pizza, Early Summer 2007

I am perilously close to finishing another book review to submit for publication, in addition to an article for an industry trade magazine. There's also a writing contest offered by the local newspaper I intend to give a go, and I'm going to redo my submission packet and try again to get my book published.

In other words, even if all of the above wind up in failure, it'll be the most serious effort to date in my quest to get published. There's an honest chance this next month might produce more rejection letters than in the last 5 years combined.

But all you need is one 'yes' . . .

Anyhow, I'm going to plop some of that stuff on here, and some posts about a philosophical discussion that recently took place, and possibly a piece of short fiction, and the election of course, etc. etc.

Diarrhea of the keyboard is what it is folks.

{oh, yeah, one thing: that 'blank' entry of awhile back was intentional. It's now the (very) rough draft of a new blogroll, and I'm linking to it on the sidebar}

But before all of that, I'd like to journey back to 2007 for another family pictorial, this time to a family trip to Stonefire Pizza in late summer. Why post it now? Lis plans on taking them there again tomorrow.

Correction, it had to be early summer: Lisa was obviously in her last trimester and Smiley looked awfully young.

I'm going to skip the creative retelling of exactly what/where the place is, and blatantly steal from their website. I figure since it's advertising (in a way) they shouldn't complain too much.

"The 37,000 square foot center seats 460 people in four differently themed dining rooms in its all-you-can eat buffet area:

• Northern Woods, a quiet dining room
• The Fan Club, sports-themed with nine television screens showing ESPN sports
• Toon City showing children’s cartoons
• Discovery Play, a dining room with children’s pretend play activities

Additionally, there are eight private birthday rooms.  Including the party rooms, there is total seating for over 620 people.  The family entertainment area occupies half of the center and features bumper cars, a Bouldering wall, a three-level interactive foam ball play Ballocity unit, four lanes of mini-bowling, a children’s Frog Hopper ride, 90 redemption and ride-simulator games and a redemption prize store. 

The all-you-can-eat buffet features an extensive selection of foods, including a salad bar, soups, 16 different pizza selections, Asian and Italian foods, a children’s buffet area, desserts and an extensive selection of drinks."

Cliffnotes version: It's a bigger, more upscale Chuck E Cheese.

I kind of got shafted on the fees on the way in. I paid for a lot of upgrades that turned out to be unnecessary, but live and learn. [it was also jam packed, setting off the worst of my 'get a head count of the kids!' paranoia, but I will go no further with that because I stand by my mantra: this isn't a medical blog ;)]

We ate in the Discovery Play room, where the kids donned aprons to play with water toys on a long table

Then they painted their faces

The food was OK but nothing to write home about (better than Chuck E Cheese, tho', and I dig Chuck E's pizza). For once Smiley seemed a bit annoyed, at least for the camera

But soon enough we were off to play again. We split up, with Lis taking the girls and Smiley and I taking up residence in a room devoted to a large set of play tunnels.

The girl on the left in the following pics is one of YaYa's best friends, and since the time of these pics the girls Mom and Lis have become quite close, and her Dad is the guy who helped me tear down my friends shed in the fall. I'd forgotten they were there that day, as we ran into them purely on accident.

Lu rode the merry-go-round

Smiley and his Pops hung out together, since he was too small for the rides

YaYa tried her hand at the bumper cars

and then both girls rode the Hopper, again and again.

There's a rock wall there, and I don't think YaYa quite met the height requirement, and I know her footwear was against the rules, but a few words to the kid in charge and she was off to the races

the family watched spellbound

Video of this exists too, but I'll spare you that :)

As the day ended and closing time neared the place cleared out and Lu set up shop in the pretend pizza shop

I really like this shot:

There was a whole room devoted just to giant Lego-type blocks, and Smiley and I spent quite awhile there, right up to closing.

at close this one poor kid was put in charge of picking and stacking all the blocks -hundreds of them - and out of sympathy the family stayed and helped for a few minutes

By the time we walked out the kids were ready for bed. It turned out to be a pretty enjoyable time!

Tags: Stonefire Pizza, YaYa, LuLu, Lisa, Smiley

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