Circus

We had an awesome family adventure to the circus! A friend staying with us watched Diana at the house so it was just the "big kids" out for a late night. We got 6th row tickets which made everything incredibly close, especially the animals. To prevent splurging on $15 cotton candy, I brought lots of snacks the kids never get. Michael downed at least 3 Capri Suns.

 

A little nervous for the start! Michael on Capri Sun #2

Nicole with the little orchestra in the background. It was cool to sit near them and see all of the behind the scenes type stuff they did. The musicians were very talented and played for a long time! The head guy played a trumpet, talked to the people behind the curtain with his microphone and had a headset for his little orchestra. Two pianos and a drum set in a soundproof glass booth as well as some other percussion.

To start it off, the ringmaster sang the national anthem while an elephant paraded a circus lady around the arena.

For the big intro, they had horses, elephants, dancers, and everyone come out to give us a teaser of all the fun. There were four big elephants and a baby. So so so cute! It was pretty neat to see them up close.

Dancers above and clowns below along with horses racing around.

The horses were my favorite part. It was incredible to watch people riding two galloping horses at once, or to see the crazy tricks performed while riding bareback. The men were incredibly althletic to do stunts like going under a galloping horse all the way, or jumping off and on these huge horses.

The lion tamer was a brave brave man. He had 3 tigers, 3 lionesses and this big lion. The lion was practically lazy he was so sedate. Not so with the other ones, and it was crazy to see how tenuous a hold even a guy skilled like this could have. One of the lionesses really was aggressive and once even backed him against the outer mesh. His reflexes were really fast or else he would have needed some serious stitches. Then he said "are you guys scared? not as scared as I am." The rest of it went without a hitch with all of the jumps, making them snarl, pose etc... It was interesting to see how low key the lion was, as well as how they all just seemed to be tolerating the tricks. I don't know what salary would be worth risking them getting fed up with fooling around and going for a real meal :)

These sky dancers opened and closed the balls doing a painful-looking routine, all without anything holding them up. There were landing pads in case they fell, but still!

Acrobats on the flying trapeeze. Good fun!

More high flying action.

The dog and small animal tricks were done in three separate rings and there was a lot going on at once! At the end this tiny little dog jumped from really high onto this pad the man was holding.

Eating popcorn (when Nicole lost a tooth a few days ago, the tooth fairy gave her a voucher for popcorn at the circus).

I feel like I missed so much, but here are some of the acrobats jumping to get three in a row.

An acrobat flipping onto a chair- they had two at once doing the same trick.

The elephants were just so huge! I can't imagine riding one or being so comfortable with them! They always had extra trainers on hand. Being so close I could just imagine if one just got spooked or something and went wild. The music was fairly loud the whole time, the animals didn't seem affected though.

 

Michael's favorite part, by FAR, was the motorcycles in this tiny cage. While preparing, they had to be up on the side to even fit before they started.

 

They eventually fit 8 motorcycles in, and they were going so fast. Once was going from top to bottom while others were going in what seemed a horizontal figure eight. It was hard to tell, though, because they went so fast. Michael was cheering SO loud and kept pointing and yelling for me to watch. Jacob was trying to follow the motorcycles with his head and was moving his whole head and shoulders side to side and around and around. It was hilarious.

 The theme was dragons and each of the acts contributed to the theme of how dragons have strength (strength men), heart (motorcycles), courage (knife guys), etc.

At the end the dragon came out and the ringmaster sang the theme song again with a firework finale. We all enjoyed the evening so much! We got home around 10pm and the kids were exhausted but had the time of their life. Us too :)