Bulls Game

Our Pastor at our Church knows a guy...he used to work at a Parish/school in the city and knows someone who works with the Bulls. This guy helped his old school get a lot of basketballs because they were an inner city school and couldn't afford them. So while he worked there, he got to know him pretty well. Apparently this guy gave our Pastor a bunch of tickets to the PreSeason Opener and the Pastor offered them out to the school. We got an e mail saying they would have a lottery because there were a limited number of tickets. I wasn't really sure how it would work, so I went ahead and put all of our names in, thinking maybe one or two would get chosen. Turns out he had 100 tickets and not many people put in for them, so we all got to go! It was a school night and kids had activities, but we felt like it was a good opportunity (that doesn't come around often) and would be fun, so we went for it. The kids got excused from school around noon, so I picked them up and they ate lunch in the car while I drove downtown. We picked up Paul from work and headed down to the United Center.

They had open court from 2-4.  We sat in the stands and watched the older kids play scrimmages for the first hour.

People thought we were crazy for bringing Matthew, but he was a champ!  We like doing things as a family and this would have been too long to leave him with a sitter anyway.

After the scrimmages ended, the little kids got to run around on the court for about 20 minutes.

We had to tear Ben away from playing basketball with his friends to grab a quick picture of all four of them in center court!

Matthew goes in for the dunk.

After that, we got to watch the players warm up and the dancers warm up from the first row, which was pretty neat.  Matthew decided this was a good time to take a quick snooze.

Then we had to clear out of the stands.  I wasn't sure what we would do until game time, but there was actually a lot to do.  They had a really great face painter.

And balloon maker - nice Bull horns Ben!

Even Matthew got excited!

We walked around the whole United Center and found the trophy case showing the 6 Championship Trophies the Bulls have won (remember back to Michael Jordan).

Game time was approaching and the kids were getting excited!

Super fans!  Our seats were close to the top, but we had a whole section of seats for our school, so it was fun to sit as a group.

Game time!  Look at how intensely the boys are watching the game!

We had dinner there too.

It started to get pretty late and Matthew was getting antsy.  Luckily, the way our seats were situated, I could stand up with him and not block anyone.  And Paul took some cute shots of Matthew at his first NBA game.

It was getting late, but the best part about sitting with everyone from school was that everyone was in the same boat.  We had told the kids we would stay until half time.  As soon as the half time buzzer went off, a ton of people from our section got up to leave.  Walking out with a bunch of kids from school made leaving a whole lot easier!  It was a really fun experience and if they offered it again next year, I would surely put in for it again.  I think more people will put in for it next year though!  I snapped this picture about 5 minutes after we left the parking lot to drive home!

Matthew was such a trooper - what a great fourth child!!

Go Bulls!