Today the kiddos came home from their first overnight trip to Granny and Granddads. From all accounts it was a rousing success including a trip to the fair, pancakes at a restaurant and sleeping in sleeping bags. Granny and Granddad fulfilled our requirements for babysitting, they returned both children alive. On the way to drop the kids off at our house Granny and Granddad passed one of the kiddos' favorite local parks, which we call the squishy ground park, because it is paved in a squishy rubber material. It's a very nice playground with two play areas and the holy grail of playgrounds, restrooms. Eddie Haskell asked if we could please, please, please go there tonight. UberGeek and I had hoped to pack a picnic dinner, put the kids in the stroller and run up to the park down the street from us to get some exercise. Still, Eddie Haskell's eyes were pleading, his will was strong and we had missed the kiddos. We went with his plan, packing the kiddos in the grocery getter and heading to his desired park. We had a great time as expected but then it was getting late and we had to grab some dinner. We decided to head to nearby Broadway Pizzeria on Baymeadows Road.
We sat down at a granite topped table in the restaurant, oh how I love granite, and our server 
greeted us quickly. I looked over and at a table near us, a family was sitting with two dolls in doll sized table side high chairs. I walked over because I just had to know where they had purchased them. The lady of the table explained that she worked for the restaurant company and Broadway had several of them available for customers' children to use. She went on to say my daughter was welcome to bring her doll to dine table side next time. Then she asked her daughters to bring our kids over some toys and games from Broadway's enormous chest of goodies for kids. Now you are talking about a seriously family friendly restaurant. She introduced herself, and I noticed that her daughters appeared to be twins. Suddenly I was pretty sure I knew who she was. The name was familiar from my local twins club, which I'm a member of, naturally. We introduced ourselves in the flesh and it was like old home week. We have actually communicated via Yahoo email group for years. We chatted for a while about social media and how it might benefit Broadway, until I realized at some point I probably needed to order food.
We ordered our meal and then proceeded to color the kids placemats and play various games. 
Then I heard someone say my name and I turned around. There was my friend TC, whom I hadn't seen since the Disney Princess Half Marathon. She and her son had come to Broadway for a mother son evening out. She said that she and her husband began their ventures to the restaurant during the days of 25 cent beer night and it later morphed into a favorite family spot for meals. She sat directly across from our table and we did our best to chat over the partition about the state of Duval public schools, our kids, when we were having the momento, beer and scrapbooking night and other similarly exciting topics.
Our food was delivered and it was delicious, Eddie Haskell had the chicken fingers, which came with his favorite side dish, curly fries. The rest of us shared a pizza topped with ham and the signature Broadway bread, you have to ask for it. Things got quiet and some serious eating was going on, everyone enjoyed the meal. Finally we packed it up and headed home, ready to get the kiddos to bed. Fine dining post preschool playground style!
