Circus

I truly love the phase of parenting that we're in right now.  No one in diapers.  No one with a driver's license for me to worry about on the road.  No teenage drama.  It is a fabulous time of life.  Brandon has been asking (begging?) us to go to the circus for the past few months.  I'm not sure where that request came from.  We went when he was four and five, but haven't been back since.  I told Andrew, "We don't have many more years when our son is going to be asking us to take him to the circus."   And the girls are at such fun ages for it, too.  Andrew agreed and I got the tickets.

I intended to use them as stocking stuffers...but accidentally left them sitting in one of my favorite gift-hiding-locations.  Finally about a week before the circus, we did a treasure hunt for our Family Home Evening activity and the circus tickets were the prize at the end.  The kids SCREAMED with delight.

And the show did NOT disappoint.  All of us loved it.  I would love to go back.  Especially to see the trained poodles.  They were my favorite.  Andrew loved them, too.  Whitney's favorite was the tigers.  Caroline loved the tightrope walkers.  Brandon thought the trampoliners were pretty awesome.

I think they've done some remodeling at the coliseum.

They have MINIMIZED legroom.

In our long-legged family, that doesn't go over well.

So, the above picture is totally blurry

(circus lighting is not ideal for photography),

but it is a man hanging from the ceiling,

holding a noose-like rope in his mouth,

while a woman holds onto the rope and swings around.

How does he do that???

Apparently his mom didn't have the rule,

"Teeth are not tools!" in his house.

We loved this beautiful white tiger.

I think the last circus I went to had four or five tigers.

This one had a ton!  I think at least 10.

It made me a little nervous for the tamer.

Especially when the tigers would bare their teeth...like this.

Before they launched the girl out of the canon,

the ringmaster warned us, "Don't blink or you might miss it!"

Caroline held her eyes like this for the next two minutes until launch.

Trampoliners--a new addition since our last visit.

The awesome trained poodles!!

 I want more!

It blows my mind that they can get elephants to do this.

My other very favorite part of the night:

watching the kids reactions to every little thing.

Priceless.

You could tell how much the kids loved it
because for the next several days,
the circus came home with us!

We had our very own

 tightrope walkers

(not one, but two!)

 acrobat,

creepy clown,

 and tiger/jaguar.
(Tiguar?)