Every Christmas, Josh’s parents gift us tickets to the circus. Every year, Josh complains way too much about the getting ready/getting to the arena part of the day, we spend way too much money on plastic light-up toys that will ultimately break or be thrown away and despite all of that — we all have a really good time. I know that the circus is controversial and I don’t mean to diminish the discussion surrounding it, so let’s just make this post about our adorable kids and not the plight of the circus animals, okay?
We try to get to the venue an hour or so before the show, because there are all sorts of activities the kids can participate in. They do mini animal shows, you can dress up in the circus costumes, get your face painted and play in a giant bounce house. Some years we manage to find a great place to stand where we can see everything really well, but this year it didn’t matter what we did, we couldn’t see anything except other patron’s backs. We walked around for a bit, but ultimately grabbed a snack and headed back to our seats.
But not before we grabbed a few plastic red noses and overpriced spinny light-up toys. I told you that would happen.
As it turns out, we could see the pre-show much better from our seats than we could from the floor. Nana always get us primo seats and this year did not disappoint. We were super close to the arena entrance and got to see all of the acts as they first came in!
The girls also had a little money to spend on themselves and it took exactly six seconds for Tazzie to make her selection. She is currently obsessed with unicorns (we’re planning a unicorn/rainbow party for her birthday this year), so she took this opportunity to add to her collection. She is pretty and pink and we named her Cotton Candy. How adorable is that?!
We usually opt for salty popcorn or snowcones as our snack, but a man selling light-up cups of Dippin’ Dots passed by and my girls were sold. Ella had cookies and cream and Sophie had chocolate and there wasn’t a single drip left to be found. We’ve already discovered that a single can of spaghettios fits just perfectly in these cups at home (yes, I know that is garbage, but it’s one of the few food items I don’t argue with Sophie about). Josh & I were trying to stick with our LW365 plans, so we packed a massive water bottle and an RXBar each. Score!!
Since this is the last year the elephant troop will be touring with the circus, we watched in awe and barely took a breath. They are so beautiful to watch and my girls are enamored with every move they make. They will continue phasing out the animals, I’m sure, but we love the motorcycles and tight-rope walkers and acrobats, so I’m guessing we’ll be life long circus patrons.
And see how tiny Ella was in 2008 for our first EVER circus trip!
For some ABSURDLY ridiculous reason, I never posted about our circus visit in 2014 (maybe it was the snow that threw me off), so here are a couple of super cute picture of the fam from way back when.
