Circus 2015

Yesterday was our third annual visit to the Ringling Brothers circus.  We had told Dominic around Wednesday that it was circus week and he'd been talking about it non stop since.  He was SO excited.

First up, a walk through the animal area.  If you have never seen elephants lined up getting a bath, you haven't lived.   First they have the elephants lay down and they use a leaf blower to get all the straw off of their backs.  Then they line them up in a line and fire hose them down.  The elephants LOVE this and open their mouths to catch the water, lift their legs up to get their armpits (leg pits?  whatever) washed out, and generally wiggle with excitement.

Then onto the Camels.  I know I thought it was odd too, but this year the circus has camels. 

Notice the sleeping tigers behind Dominic.  They were BEAUTIFUL and definitely on the dozey side. 

Then we went indoors and found our seats.  One of the cool things about this circus is that they have a preshow where you can wander around and take pictures with the actors, watch some stuff in advance, etc.   This lovely lady ended up being my favorite clown.  Dominic was amused too.

And this clown managed, much to his consternation, to get him to put on a red nose. 

Now we are getting used to it....

This might be my favorite family picture ever.  Dominic installed the nose on Daddy.

Slightly before the first intermission, Dominic declared he had to go to the bathroom.  So we climbed over half a row of people, took him to the bathroom and then he looked at me and with the sweetest voice ever said "i want popcorn".  And i decided that if ever there was a reason I carry activated charcoal in my purse this was it.  He was ecstatic over his $5 bag of popcorn.

Overall, Dominic did ridiculously well.   It was very loud and there lots of strobe lights and fireworks to add to the excitement of being the most extreme show on earth.  At one point I realized he was plugging his ears so we put Daddy's earbuds in to minimize the sensory overload and that worked just fine.

After we left the circus, we went to dinner, at which Dominic attempted to get Daddy to wear the nose.  That didn't work so well. We tried a new restaurant, Flatirons grill, and were delighted to find an extensive gluten free menu.  We will be going back there.