Ladies and Gentlemen! It's Circus Time!

There is nothing like a circus. There are circuses and then there are real circuses.

There are many "tent" circuses that come to the parking lot of the mall or Kmart or something like that. They are OK, but it is no comparison to the one and only Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey Circus.  We haven't been in probably 6 or 7 years and it was time again. We signed up for free circus tickets when our kids were young (you can get some here) and we have saved them since they were babies, and time to turn them in.  As an added bonus, the first day of the show, (normally Thursday's) all the tickets are half off. So we only had to pay for one full price ticket, and one at half off for our whole family since we had three "free" tickets that we hadn't used yet.

This blog post is video intensive, since it was dark inside, when I took photos, the camera lens had to stay open longer to adjust for the darkness, and of course due to the rotation of the earth, I moved slightly when the lens was open extra long and that caused the pics to be quite blurry.  The videos are not the best quality either, but somewhat better than the pics, so sorry!

If you arrive an hour early, you can go see some of the animals like elephants, tigers and horses that are in a holding area for a "behind the scenes" look.  We saw them giving the elephants a bath and it looked like the elephant was enjoying it!

We then went inside where they had a pre-show on the floor with clowns, jugglers, and many other things to see. As you can sort of see in the picture, it was very crowded!

 

We found our seats, not too far up, but not too far down either, and Hannah was still wondering where we where. She originally thought we were at the zoo, but then went in and sat down. What was going on?  Then the show started with the opening ceremonies.

 

 

 

We saw dogs running through hoops, catching frisbees, and doing tricks......

 

There was a guy walking upside down on the ceiling. . .

We saw elephants dancing and having fun .......

 

 

 

 

Of course we saw trapeze high wire acts . . . . . .

 

And not just any ole trapeze act, but a rare triple somersault trick!

Here's a shot of Hannah at halftime. She was very happy and glad to be at her first circus!

 

Had to have girls swinging by their teeth and hair and using sheets as swings too! What circus would be without that?

 

 

Motorcycles riding on wires  high in the ceiling . . . . .

 

 

Who can forget the "Ball of Death" where four motorcycles circle around each other all at once?!?  Dangerous?  Dumb?  Of course! It's the circus!

Wait, this is the circus! Four motorcycles? Na...how about 5?

 

Wait, this isn't just any circus! It's the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey circus! Five motorcycles? That's for amateurs.........How about SEVEN???

 

Can't forget about the tigers . . . . .

 

Then we saw the double, er maybe triple, or perhaps quadruple jointed men making our faces grimace with pain!

 

The last two acts were very creative and some of our favorites.  One was people jumping and riding very large inner tubes. Looked very very fun!

 

And the last were people jumping, twirling, and riding large swinging poles, like blades of grass in the jungle. 

 

 

And before we could catch our breath, a short 2 1/2 hours later, it was over. And as we all walked to the car, both Jacob and Hannah said it was too short. 

Dad agreed.

It was Awesome!

It's Soccer Time!

Yep, it's time for soccer again!  Last year only Jacob played. This year, both Jacob and Hannah are playing.  We are fortunate to get Jacob on the same team with the same coach as last year. He is a really good guy! He doesn't yell at the kids, and he only offers positive encouragement! 

Jacob has his games at 9am and Hannah has hers at 1pm. So the entire first half our next few months Saturday's are spent at the soccer field. These pics were all taken on their first game day.

 

Of course there was a geocache at the park where we played. So during halftime, Hannah and Dad went to find it. It was an easy find under a rock under a tree.

Back to the game:

 

Here are some pics of Jacob where I think he was mad that nobody was passing the ball to him....or he was hot....or something..who knows!

Here's a short video of Jacob in action. He is number 7 - hard to follow sometimes in this shaky video!

 

Now it's Hannah's game time!  Her team is just learning the basics, and sometimes look like a herd all running together. She is Number 3 (there are three 3's actually on her team) and she has the white headband in these pics and videos.

Lake Tahoe

Last year on Labor Day, we went to Lake Tahoe and this year we decided to repeat the tradition. This year however, we went up with Adam and Leslie and their family. We were glad they came along and we all had a great time!

We started by stopping off at Donner Summit State Park where there were some geocaches and a some history to learn about as well. We learned about the Donner Party and that the snow was a high as this monument when they tried to cross the summit. Most of them didn't make it over.

Jacob found a geocache in the obvious place-at the base of a light pole.

We then headed to the lake, where we met Adam and Leslie and their family for lunch.

 

After lunch, we went to NorthStar Ski Resort where they have mountain biking in the summer, and hiking. They let you ride the lifts for free if you are going hiking.  There were even some geocaches we found too!

Here is one Jacob and Josh found:

 

We saw some interesting pine cones...they grow UP instead of down. We thought maybe it was one tree that was that way, but we saw many many trees that had the strange pine cone.

Here are some slides of our hiking adventures:

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

 

 

 

On the way home, we hit traffic and traffic and more traffic (going an average of about 35mph all the way home!) from eveyone returning home from the long weekend from Tahoe and also from the Burning Man Festival that is held every year in Nevada. We saw this one truck that probably took quite a while to load all the bicycles on top of it!

Places We Want To Go

We came across this place and immediately wanted to go and visit.

It is called Swallow's Nest Castle and was built in the late XIX Century (whenever that was) and is near Yalta, in the South of Crimea (where ever that is). Actually with the help of Google, I found out it's on the north coast of the Black Sea in south Ukraine.