The Circus Came to Town

Every spring the circus comes to town - the Shrine Circus that is. Local Shriner's are the clowns & do crowd control & sell tickets. Local school kids sell concessions. They have it every year during April vacation from school. I can remember going when I was younger with my class from school even.

I took the two older boys a while ago. B remembered it, but N was only about two years old. He was very antsy & we walked the halls a lot during that show. Thankfully I went with a good friend of mine so B got to stay & watch with her and her two little girls. Her dad is a Shriner and gave us tickets.

This year someone at my MIL's work gave me tickets. I gave away two of them to another friend so she could take her boys. Unfortunately they couldn't go on the same day we were planning to go, so I took the boys & headed there all by myself with them.

The performance was a 1-1/2 drive away to the "big city." The doors open an hour before the show. All tickets are "general admission" so there is no guarantee you'll get a seat so everyone tries to show up early. In fact, my goal was to be there at 1:30 for the 3pm show. We got there about 1:45. By the time we parked & walked down to where the line was forming, it was close to 2pm.

We did end up with great seats but we did move to the other side of the civic center and up high so we could look down on the action and look straight out at the aerial acts. So now we are waiting for the show to start. Did I mention I was there with my kids and one of them is only four years old???

The organizers must have realized there would be a lot of impatient children in the crowd so they brought out the elephant & gave the kids rides. It cost $5 & they just went around this part of the ring area. My seven year pouted for quite some time when I told him we were not going to go ride the poor elephant.

We did get a snow cone & some cotton candy. They all shared this with the promise of McDonald's for supper.

The show started right at 3pm. I enjoyed the acts for the most part. They had a really cute dog show that started things off. The aerial acts were good but even I was starting to tire of them by the end. It was a two hour show but that included almost a 45 minute intermission.

The act that came out after intermission was really fascinating. It was an archer. He shot balloons that his assistant held in her teeth against the targets. They, of course, did the whole "William Tell" thing with the apple on her head. Their final act was a relay of sorts. He shot a target which shot another crossbow & continued in such a fashion until it finally hit the target - where his assistant was, of course, standing.

Overall we had a good time.

Our bird's eye view.

The worse part of the entire time was getting out of the parking lot after the show was all over. It took me twenty minutes to get out of my parking spot and back out to the main road. It only took me five minutes to get in there.

My guys had a really great time and that's what it was all about. I so enjoyed watching J in the beginning - when he wasn't tired of sitting - getting so excited about everything. The elephant about put him and N over the top! Their reactions were better than watching the entire show.