The Circus

Sunday afternoon we had a family outing to the zoo. Now, before we went, I honestly was trying to not expect too much. First of all, it was in a theater, and second, circus's tend to be on the carnie side. Also, I was not sure how Evan would respond to the circus since fear of clowns runs in the family and he had a very adverse reaction to Santa Claus, but the boys were excited to attend their first circus. It was put on by the Shriner's and was a fundraiser to raise money for the Shriner's Hospital. We got there plenty early and were the second ones in line. As we were standing and the clowns were entertaining, someone yelled, "make way for the elephants!" And sure enough, coming up the side walk were four elephants. They are so big that the only way for them to get inside was to use the front door. The largest of the elephants even had to crawl through on it's belly. They walked probably four feet from us and the only thing between us and then was a 1/4 inch yellow rope strung up to keep us back. It was amazing and the boys mouths hung open as these huge animals walked by. We got inside and I could tell that this was not a carnie circus. It was very well organized and these were professional circus folk. All of the acts were amazing and it was a very impressive show from the tigers, to the trapeze, to the clowns (which thankfully were not scary clowns and did not come in to the audience), and of course the elephants. They boys were in awe and sat on the edge of their seats the whole time and clapped and cheered. It was really fun!

Here come the elephants! This is the one that had to crawl through the door to get in.

Enjoying some snacks waiting for the show to start. Evan does not like cotton candy, like his dad, and settled for popcorn.

Mmmm...cotton candy!

Elephant party line

That is multi-tasking

Miniature horses

Evan laughing at the clowns. The clowns were really quite funny and they did not have their faces completely painted. It was enough to tell that they were clowns, but not freakish.

This girl did some painful looking stuff!

Eli stated that this was his favorite part

These two were something else. They did this all without a net! One of their tricks was the girl hanging from this handle-thing, and the guy held it with his teeth. I told Eli that is why we need to brush our teeth so that they are good and strong.

My favorite, the tigers! Right at the beginning two of them started fighting and the trainer poked them with a stick and said "no, no," which seemed like it would be rather ineffective, but they stopped and did what they were asked. Their roaring was so loud you could hear it over the trainers 80's routine rock music.