Circus Circus

We had a marathon play day last Friday.  We got invited by some friends in the ward to go to the Science Museum with their preschool group for free.  We couldn't pass that up so the boys and I spent the morning checking out the planetarium, dinosaurs, snakes, lizards, and outer space exhibit with some ward members.  Tate was in heaven being around so many kids.  He gets a little lonely here sometimes without friends to play with.  We miss his little Houston buddies.  He talks about them a lot.  Sometimes I tell him we're going to a park and he asks if Logan or Noah or Sam are going to come.  So sad.  We're trying to meet people but I think it's just gonna take a while to make some really good connections with people who have kiddos that Tate jives with.  Slowly but surely, right?

Friday night we planned to go to the circus.  We got a smokin' deal on a groupon type website a couple of weeks ago.  Tickets for all of us, elephant rides, and money for concessions or other rides all in a super cheap bundle.  It was great.  A pretty small-scale circus, which we expected for the price, but Tate loved it.  He's a big fan of the movie "Dumbo" so seeing a circus in real life was sweet.
We got there early and hit up some kiddie rides.  Tate went on the train a few times, of course.

 Next came the elephant ride. 

 Yep, there are 6 of us on that poor elephant.  Her name was Libby. Tate and I were both very excited to be so close to an elephant.  I love elephants.  It was a fast deal.  They piled all of us onto the elephant, led her around in a circle, then dropped us back off at the platform, but it was still cool.  Now we can say we've ridden an elephant.

Tate was holding onto the kid in front of him for dear life.  And he gave commentary as we walked in a circle, "I'm holding onto this boy.  This elephant is giving me a ride."  Yes, Tate.  That's right.

Next we hit up the pony ride tent.  Tate had even more fun riding his pony, whose name was Gustavo but Tate called him Gus (Guth), than riding the elephant.  He had this big grin on his face the whole time and kept talking to himself under his breath. "I'm just riding this guy.  I'm just riding Guth."

We had a brief encounter with a clown.  Tate was unimpressed.

Then it was off to the show.  

The show was pretty small-scale but we had a great time.  They had some cool juggling, tight-rope walking, animal tricks, trampolining, a motorcycle on a high wire, and some other cool acts.  I'm so glad we went.  I hope Tate is getting old enough to remember fun things like this, and I'm glad we're able to find them and do them together as a family.  It's much more fun to do things for our kids now than to do things for ourselves.  Watching Tate's face as he watched the circus acts was worth all the hassle of getting us there.