Under the Big Top

I had so much fun this weekend. The kids were mostly well behaved which always makes things better, my dad only screamed at anyone once that I can remember, I learned some crochet while Bree learned to knit a sock, we had good food with good company, and we got to go to the circus. It was quite different from my average weekend.

It is my humble opinion that my dad went overboard with the whole circus thing. We were in the second row of the ring on one end (across from where everyone comes in to perform). The ticket price on the stub was $45, but according to inside sources he actually paid $50 each when he bought them through ticketmaster online. Since there were 11 of us (Dad, Iza, Bree, Traci, Brandon, Danika, Lucas, Jeff, Me, Corey, and Ken) that's quite a bill, and that was just to get into the circus. My dad also rented a limo, and while I'm not certain what it cost him, I overheard him "discussing" with the driver that he had been told it would be $230. He may have ended up paying more than that... so that brings the bill up to $780 for the 11 of us to go to the circus. (The one and a half hour circus.)

The spending didn't stop there though. See, I'd talked up cotton candy to the little ones, so we had to get some. They had 3 sizes: $6, $9, & $12. These are the same size bags that I remember being a dollar or two when I was a younglet. I believe that around $40 was spent on cotton candy by the time we got out of there. We also had two tubs of popcorn, 2 large sodas, 1 medium soda, a few bottles of water, and an order of nachos... Let's see, we'll say $12 for the popcorn, $15 for the sodas, $9 for water, and I'll guess $6 for the nachos. So we had $82 dollars worth of snacks, give or take a bit.

Then on the way out the door the kids all needed toy souvenirs. They were all $16, and there were 3 kids so there's another $48. I mean, he spent around $1000 for us to go to the circus. And of course he's created three little monsters now, and they all want to ride in the limo again. Brandon wants to go to school in the limo, and Danika just wants to go back to the circus. Who knows what Lucas wants, he's only two and the happiest I saw him all weekend was when he was traipsing through the house wearing a pair of red high heels.

Still it was awesome, and we were so close to the action. Jeff and I managed to get some good pictures. It's hard when you aren't using a flash and a 4 year old is bouncing up and down in your lap, but not all of them are unidentifiable blurs. We also have some pictures from the house, like when Traci blew out the candles on her cake. Once I get the pictures onto the web I'll let you know so that you can check them out. Oddly enough, out of all the feats of acrobatics, strength, and courage that we witnessed, I think that my favorite were the performing house cats. I mean, I can't even get my cats to stop breaking glassware and they had these cats running on top of balls, and climbing around on ropes, it was really cool. That was definitely Danika's favorite part, and that's why those photos are the least in focus. Brandon's favorite part was when they brought out the cage ball that the motorcycles ride around in. I can't believe that they got 3 motorcycles rolling around in there at the same time, it was impressive.

Okay, back to work before I get busted goofing off.