Since the movie concept was out, I suggested that we go down to some Museum ... we were originally thinking of the Field Museum. I did, however, want to stop off at the Chicago Cultural Center for a birthday run at the Art*o*mat machine there ... I treated everyone to a token (at $5 a pop) and was a bit disappointed that the machine was half empty! I don't know if that was a good sign (i.e. that they'd had a lot of paying traffic), or a bad sign (i.e., they're not servicing them in a timely manner), but I'm guessing the former, since it's only been five weeks since Daughter #1 and I went down there and almost everything in the machine was new since then. Anyway, both girls got little dolls from some Nepalese collective or something, The Wife got this strange painted piece of slate, and I got a little painting by a Janet Ebersold.
Anyway, since we were going to go down to the Cultural Center, I suggested that we grab lunch at the Au Bon Pain in the AON Center concourse, a couple of blocks away ... although it was a hot day I was feeling like some soup! The combination of that, and poking around at the Cultural Center after our Art*o*mat purchases, left us with a bit too little time to make our way on down to the Field Museum. The Wife had brought a change of clothes for The Girls "just in case", so I figured we might as well go over to Millennium Park and let them play in the fountain there (see my pics from my post on 7/23), which we did for an hour or so. Once we coaxed them out of the water, we headed up to gawk at the Cloud Gate some more (see pic below) and then went over to get some ice cream before getting on the El to head home.
The Wife had decided that we were going to go to Cafe Iberico, a wonderful Spanish tapas place that had been one of my Mom's favorites when she was still mobile enough to get out to "fun" places. Unfortunately, The Girls (especially #2) were really tired and were not the most stellar dinner companions, but we all ate more than enough and then came home for some birthday cake. Had a sad moment or two as we were leaving as I was almost into auto-pilot to try to get a place where the cab could come right over to the curb (standard procedure for getting my Mom into cabs before she was in the wheelchair), and it was not wonderful realizing that "I didn't have to do that anymore". I miss my Mom!
Oh, I forgot to mention one of my "prizes" in my earlier post ... it's a binocular-cam combination that I'd seen in several catalogs, and looks like it could be fun. I guess I still have another goody coming, as The Wife was quite pissed that something wasn't in the mail today (no, I don't have a clue). So ... that was the story of my 47th birthday!
Oh, here's that Cloud Gate picture (dang, this thing is so photogenic that it's going to be photographed a zillion times over the next decade or so!) ...