The Greatest Show in El Paso

I've been remiss lately, so this is going to be a nice long post to make up for lost time. Seems like someone always needs me to do something these days, or I need to do something for myself...hard to make computer time. But, gambarro! (Which is not gibberish...it actually means "keep trying" in Japanese.)
Anyway, here are some of our doings recently:
We heard a circus was in town, so I was determined to take the kids. Noah had been seeing videos of children going to a circus & had been wistfully saying, "Mama, I wish I could go to the circus"...hint hint. So we kept it a surprise until the big day. He was very exicted. As well he should have been...it turned out to be an exciting day.
On our way there, as it turns out, we had a very near accident on the freeway, courtesy of some nimrod who had...get this...strapped a refrigerator to the tailgate of his hooded truck. So the fridge is basically haging off of the tailgate, just strapped with some bungee cords around the sides of the truck. THANK GOD Jeff spotted this, as you had to kind of look closely before you realized what this idiot had done. We merged directly behind this guy to exit the freeway, & Jeff saw what he had done & slowed way down, getting as far away from it as he could. The thing was literally swinging in the breeze, as the guy was doing about 60. Well, the inevitable happened...it fell off & bounced all over the 2 exit lanes. Again, thank God we had seen it and weren't right up behind him, because it could have all been over for us in a big way. We don't think anyone was hurt. You win the booby prize if you can guess where the guy was from & where he was going with that thing.
Anyway, that was some excitement we could've done without. But the circus was great for the kids. It was a very small affair, a travelling thing, with only about 12 performers in all. They all doubled & trippled up doing different things. The kids loved it, of course. They can't tell the difference between what's a professional act & what's not, they were just happy to be there. I felt kinda bad for some of the lady performers, actually. You know how in a circus you see all these model-looking, muscular, fit people in basically g-strings & pasties, up there twirlling around in the sky with, like .2% body fat? Well, they had the g-strings & pasty part down, but unfortunately (or fortunately, if you run that way), they had had a little more for dinner than your average acrobat, if you catch my drift. Most of them were these little hispanic girls, maybe 4ft on a good day with high heels on, and just not what you would expect to see in those getups. I think many of them looked kinda uncomfortable too.
One act that I thought was pretty amazing was when they took 4 dirtbikes & rode them around at what seemed like at least about 40 MPH in this little metal sphere type thing, like two collanders put together. I mean, there wasn't really even room for them to park side by side at the bottom of it! Pretty thrilling stuff. They had great timing...if they had been even a little bit off there would have been a pretty bad accident in there. I thought that was the best act they did. Noah liked it when the acrobats "flew" on their ropes, and Dillon liked the balloon we got him.
Oh yes...a huge highlight was that Noah got to ride ponies and an elephant! Doesn't get any better than that. I have pics, but unfortunately our camera was uncooperative, or else I'm just a bad photographer. In any case, I will post them here for your enjoyment.

Firstly, some pics of the kids:

Noah at lunch...observe the food around the mouth.

Dilly at lunch. If you look closely, he is looking rather gritty. This is because he took his peaunt-butter besmeared hands and RUBBED THEM ALL OVER HIS FACE & HAIR. I had to shower him afterward.

Dilly "Dorkyface" Doss

Hamming it up with Miu the Possessed

"Dorkyface" II

And now the circus pictures:

The Ball of Danger in which great feats were performed.

Daddy & Dilly with the prize balloon

After the elephant ride, the best pic I could get with our crapcam

A nice shot of the elephant's butt & Noah there on the end.

Noah on the pony ride