Kids count down the new year with the bubbly

Some suburbanites celebrated the new year at the stroke of noon Thursday.

Hey, whaddya want? These are a bunch of preschoolers and kids still of single-digit ages. And maybe their parents like to hit the hay before the stroke of midnight as well.

But they did break out the bubbly at the DuPage Children's Museum in Naperville. No, no - not those tiny bubbles in the champagne glasses. Soap bubbles. The kind kids love to run after and pop.

It was the museum's annual Bubble Bash, complete with a noontime countdown to the new year led by Naperville's ubiquitous mayor, George Pradel.

And if the soap bubbles weren't enough for the kids, there was Bubble Wrap - that packing material that pops when you step on it. The younger set did so with delight, while dancing to music. Youngsters got to create and decorate bubble-themed cookies. And blow their own bubbles, of course.

There's more. The headline entertainer was "Bubble Man" Geoff Akins, a man who has found a way to make bubble caterpillars and bubble ice cream cones. He knows how to juggle bubbles and even put a child in a bubble.

How does he do it? Well, you had to be there.