The Circus...

Our town's library had a deal going where if each kid read five books, they could get a free ticket to the circus.  The girls wanted to do it, and I said yes.  I knew this circus was shutting down (I didn't realize how soon- this May!) so I thought it would be good for us to go.  The girls knocked out their books super fast, and Miss M even had Tales of Beetle the Bard as one of her books.  Neither B nor I had ever been to a circus, so we were kind of excited.  Even with only paying for the two adult tickets it was SUPER expensive!  No wonder they have to go out of business...  There's no way we would have gone if we would have had to pay $150 for the girls on top of ours.

The night we went was super stormy, in fact as we got in the car a tornado warning came on.  So it was a tense drive across the water to the arena.  Fortunately for us, and so sad for the people in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, the tornado headed that way.  We had fun at the pre-circus show down on the arena floor.  The girls got teased by a clown, and we saw bike riders and a lady twirling from long purple fabric.  I thought in general the circus was good.  I personally would have liked it more with less glitz and glamour.  I mean, they had an actual sword swallower.  But he was on the floor with a billion other people with tons of other stuff going on.  I wish they would have one person come out, and say "This is _____.  He is from _____ and he has been swallowing swords since he was three."  Or whatever.  And then have the next person come out.  The whole thing was too... overwhelming.

For the description of the circus itself, I will use illustrations from a book Miss M made for our teenage neighbor, who is deathly allergic to tigers, so can't ever go to a circus.  Isn't that kind of an awesome allergy to have?  

There was a gorgeous black friesian who carried a girl around for the national anthem.  It was kind of weird- the girl wasn't carrying the flag.  That was up on the side.  But the spotlight was on this pretty horse.

The aerialists were awesome.  There were glow in the dark ones and mermaid ones and ones in balls.  No flying trapeze, but lots of other pretty girls spinning around up there.

The tigers were cool.  This is a view from above.

This guy was unbelievable.  His metal spinning ring of death thing.  

Trampoline guys.

The tightrope guys were incredible.  They of course didn't just balance on the wire, they made pyramids and all sorts of other tricks.

The silver sparkly lady getting shot out of a cannon was a big hit with the girls.

And we thought the camels were very cute.