Snow storm #2 and circus

A week or two ago I saw that the circus was coming to town (well, to Roanoke, but close enough). Unfortunately the tickets were way expensive for 2 adults and 2 kids because they charge you all those damn fees with each ticket. So I was on craigslist and saw someone was selling 2 adult and 2 kid general admission tickets (meaning you can use them at any of the 4 days of shows), so I offered her $30 less than I would have had to pay and was able to buy them from her. Score!

So they were in town Thursday night through Sunday. Blythe had gymnastics Thursday night and then Braden was away at a swim meet Friday night through Saturday night, so our only option was to go on Sunday, which was fine.

Enter horrible snow storm #2 of the season. Our snow started late Friday night and kept snowing all the way through Saturday. When most of it was done Saturday afternoon (during Ethan's nap time), I headed outside to do some shoveling. We had about 11.5 inches at that point and I felt pretty good being outside and getting a bit of a workout. NOTE - it did not feel so good yesterday when my whole upper body was sore (guess carrying Ethan around everywhere isn't as much of an upper body workout as I thought).

My motivation for getting it all done on Saturday was so we could make it to the circus on Sunday and not waste the money we had spent on the tickets!

While I was outside for a couple of hours and Ethan was napping, Blythe made herself busy inside. Unfortunately, our snow was powdery and fluffy and no good for sledding or making snowmen. You couldn't even make a snowball. And it was 11 degrees outside, so I don't blame Blythe for wanting to stay inside! She was quite proud of her accomplishment indoors. I thought it was quite creative too, until I came in from shoveling and just wanted to lay on the couch.

It didn't come as much of a surprise, but the swim team had to stay Saturday night in West Virginia due to the snow and bad road conditions. So this meant Braden wouldn't get home until later in the day on Sunday. Bummer.

Glad I did the shoveling on Saturday when I did though. I was still dead set on getting out of the house Sunday morning and making it to the circus though. So we invited the Freels (Amy, Ashley, and Luke) to join us. The roads weren't too bad, especially once you got on the highway and we didn't have any trouble making it there. It was certainly worth it. No trapeze artists, but otherwise they had everything I would expect at a circus. Blythe and Ashley seemed to enjoy everything. Ethan and Luke were more interested in the tigers, elephants, dogs, and horses (oh, and motorcycles) than the tight rope walkers and others doing death-defying stunts.

They had a really long intermission where some wealthy, young kids got to ride elephants and ponies (or they at least had really cool parents who were willing to pay $10 a pop to ride an elephant for 2 minutes). Meanwhile my kids spent the whole intermission begging to. "I wanna ride da horsey". "Mom, how come they get to ride the elephants?" I just explained it was too expensive. Later when Braden got home, that's the first thing Blythe said about the circus. "We wanted to ride the elephants, but Mommy said No because it was too esspensive."

We did splurge on cotton candy and popcorn, which most of the kids loved. Ethan wasn't fond of the cotton candy and even when looking at pictures later, he said "I don like dat duff".

Anyway, I'm certainly glad we were able to get out of the house and get the kids to the circus. Wish that Braden had been able to join us though, but was glad he and the team went the safe route and didn't drive through the snow.