Under the big top!

 On Thursday we went to the circus.  I don't know who was more excited to go, me or the kids.  =)  Luckily Jason only had to work until 11:30 so he was able to go with us too.  Yay!!

Before the circus and before the preshow we headed over to go look at the animals.  Ian was so excited to see the elephants.  They had a new baby elephant too.  The elephant was 1 day older than Ian.  =)  It was born January 19, 2009.  It was so cute!  Ian kept saying "more, more."

Brenna was being a turd and wouldn't let me take many pictures of her so this is one of the few ones.  Luckily, it's a picture that I'm in too and those are few and far between.  I think I need to start sticking my hand in the picture so that I can have some part of me in pictures.

We got to see all the miniature horses, a few lamas, the elephants, and a few of the tigers.  I couldn't get a good picture of the tigers since they were behind the fences.

After seeing the animals we headed to the preshow.  They had some of the performers out on the floor and people could talk to them and they did a few performances.  Ian got to play catch with a clown =)

Ian loved this part.  We got to get up close to one of the elephants.  They even had the elephant paint a picture.  

If all else fails, He may have a job as a clown or a ringmaster, or maybe even an elephant trainer =)

Maybe I could give both kids to the circus =)  I asked Brenna if she wanted to join the circus, she said "No, they don't have training wheels for unicycles."  What a funny girl!

Jason even got into it a little bit and tried some clothes on.

The only picture Brenna wanted with a clown was with the girl clown.  Before we went inside she was so excited to be able to see the clowns and then when we got in she was being a scaredy cat.  You never know what kinds of things will freak her out.

They got some tatoos =) 

The clown in green had spiky hair =)  These were some of the cool clowns. 

The guys that walk around on stilts were pretty funny.  They were dancing around and everything.  I can barely walk in heels, let alone on stilts.  He even danced around while holding a baby.  Ian was so excited when he gave him "fives." 

This was the beginning of the circus.....and then my camera said the battery was low.  How lame!  even though I let the camera charge all night.  But I guess that wasn't too bad since the pictures I took after this didn't turn out since it was too dark.  Some of the highlights:

• They had 7 motorcycles going at once in the metal cage!  That is insane!!  Plus, one of them was a woman. =)
• They had the tigers stand up and walk and jump.
• The trapeze attempted to do a quadrouple somersault but the catcher didn't catch him in time.  Good thing there was a net =)  Doesn't everyone go to the circus secretely hoping to see the trapeze or high wire act fall?
• The hire wire act was pretty good too.  They had 4 people, 2 guys, 2 girls.  The older guy was the best one out of them.  He didn't even have a line attached to him to catch him, just in case.
• They had "pirate" acrobats.  It was set up that there were dueling bands of pirates.  One group would set up a trick, then the next would.  They had people jump onto giant teeter-totters and launch someone into the air onto the shoulders of others.  I think at one point they had someone launch up5 people high.  There was also a guy that did it with the giant stilts.  He did it once with both stilts, and once with only once.  That was pretty cool.  There a few girls that did it too.
• They had the "strong" people.  They a girl and guy that were awesome!  The girl did a backbend and the guy balanced on her stomach with one had!  Talk about abs of steel!  There were also 2 guys that did some cool stuff too.  I think one guy did the "chair" position, had the other guy balanced on him and then turned around.  I do the chair for 10 seconds and my legs are killing me.

Ian started to get a little tired, but he snuggled a little bit, got a second wind and was back to being a goofball.

Ian's favorite part of the night!!  They had all the elephants out!  He was so excited.  When they left he got a look on his face like his heart was breaking and asked for more.  It was so cute/sad.  They they brought out the baby elephant again and he was happy.  When we left that's all he would say, "elephants, more."  

I love being able to do things like this with my family.  I know they probably won't remember it, but since I have the pictures, I can tell them all about it when they get older.  I remember I went to a little circus when I was little.  It was just in Morgan, so not a big one.  But I remember I got to ride an elephant =)