Possible Broken Finger, Chinatown, Fireworks... New Years Eve, Oh What A Night!

Here I am, getting ready to head out to Chicago with the kids and Louis to see the New years Eve fireworks. It's 7pm, and I had not made dinner yet because we had a late lunch. Louis mentions he wants to head to Chinatown for dinner so I start to race to get the kids ready so we can head out the door by 8 o'clock. Of course the computer slows me down a bit and it's now 9pm when everyone is walking out the door. Excitement is building as I run out with Zander to get him buckled in his seat, thoughts racing through my head... did we bring everything? camera, check, tripod, check, 4 kids, check, sparkling grape juice, check, slam the sliding door on the mini van while reaching out to open the front passenger side door, CRUNCH! Silence! YEEEOWWWWWW! re-open the back sliding door to remove my now mangled finger, bend down holding mangled finger in other fist to hopefully stop pain, que the screaming and crying.... followed by bellows above me from the girls also crying hoping I am ok.

I seriously thought I had broken my finger and was half expecting it to just be hanging there by a thread of skin. It wasn't thank GOD! Louis got out of the van and took me inside to get me some advil and to rinse my finger with water and peroxide and bandage me up. We don't really keep splints on hand so we grabbed the closest possible thing. a baby spoon heehee I must say while it looked ridiculous he really did a great job of taking care of me in my time of need!


As soon as I was all fixed up we headed out to Chinatown where the food was VERY yummy!

Afterward we drove around to see where some good parking spots were and found our favorite spot by the Planetarium closed off =(

We drove around a while longer and found a really good parking spot around 11:30pm which surprised us.


here is Lanie and Martie sitting out of our moon roof, Zander on Louis' lap looking for the fireworks and Wes was getting ready to come with me to set up the tripod for fireworks shots =)

 


at midnight we drank some sparkling grape juice out of tiny Ed Debevic's Sundae glasses
  


mine was waiting on the dashboard...
 


a long exposure pic to show where i set up the tripod (probably a little too close to the traffic, especially being New year's eve and all...


and the FIREWORKS!!!!



  
  
 


Some more long exposure shots of the Wrigley Building aound 1:45am to show how busy it is on New Years Eve.
Check out the helicopter path in the second one...