The Circus!

We went to the Al Bedoo Shriner's Circus yesterday in Billings. It was INCREDIBLE, despite the pain and discomfort I had to deal with the whole time. They had wooden bleacher seating and it was god awful. I felt really bad because during intermission they had horse rides, elephant rides, and pictures with one of the brown bears. However, neither hubs or I were anticipating any of that, so we brought NO cash. I would have LOVED to have let the kids all get up on the elephant, or let sissy ride one of the horses, but I just didn't even think about taking cash with us before we left. So I figure next year when we go I'll take plenty of cash to get them rides and face paintings. AND we're going to get there WAY earlier to get better seats! The motorcycle sphere was wicked awesome, but kind of hard to see through LOL
I was pretty upset though- there was a little landing in front of the bleachers, where I, and many other parents, were letting our kids sit so they could see around the ball. We stayed on the bleachers, but the kids sat about 12 feet from us on this little area. During intermission, I took them all to the bathroom, as did most of the other parents, and when ew came back there were 6 adults who had taken all of the kids' seats on the platform! It was absolutely awful! How rude do you have to be to steal seats from little kids while they're in the bathroom?
I went and talked to one of the Shriners about it, and at first he was kind of "well, there's nothing really I can do..." til I said, "This is supposed to be for the kids, and these adults just took seats from them. It's just not right." And that kind of pushed him over. He says "You know what, you're right!" And that he'll take care of it. Sure enough, a few minutes later, another Shriner came and spoke to the adults and they moved, and a handful of kids (including my own) were able to sit back down so they could see around the motorcycle ball.

So that was the first time my children and I had ever been to a circus! They had 5 tigers (2 white, 3 bengal) that did a show. It was super cool! It was strange that the trainer would move his wand things around and the tigers would paw and bite at them. There were 2 guys who did a high-wire act, one of which did a spinning wheel show that was pretty cool... I'm not sure how to describe it. There was a huge metal spinning arm, and on one end was a wheel that he could stand in. The other guy would get the arm spinning, and he would do flips and stuff inside and outside the wheel. There were 2 elephants, they were so awesome! 2 bears, but only 1 did any tricks.. the other one just sat there and the ringmaster just kept hand feeding him.. so I'm not sure what that was all about. There was a dog show, that was awesome. Camels and horses doing tricks together. Juggling acts, women who were swinging from ropes and loops way up high, a clown show, and they finished off with the motorcycles driving inside this big metal sphere which absolutely BLEW my MIND! They did 1, then 2, then 3 cyclists, but when they went to add the 4th guy there was apparently a problem with the sphere and they couldn't do it. But I don't care, the first 3 were crazy cool!!
So if you get a chance to go to the circus, GO. Even if you don't have kids, or they don't want to go. It's SO very worth it! And for a great cause as well!