Last Wednesday night Zoe and I finally got to go to the circus. It was something we’d been anticipating for almost a year, since Molly had gotten us tickets as a Christmas present last year. Unfortunately, as we were about to walk out the door we realized the camera wasn’t working so I don’t have pictures yet. Our first stop though was at CVS to pick out a new one. Zoe was really excited about that since it meant that we now got to go three places instead of just the two we had been planning on. We picked out a blue camera that Zoe would proceed to spend the rest of the night asking me to use.
After that quick stop we made our way to Four Points pizza for a bit of dinner. I told Zoe it was going to be very fancy just like the King’s Crown in the Fancy Nancy stories. Fortunately it was plenty fancy for her. She wanted cheese pizza, I ordered 2 hot dogs, and we split the fries that came with them. She really wanted to sit at the stools looking out toward the road, which I’m sure added to the fanciness.
After finishing dinner we made our way to the United Center. Apparently when they said that preshow started at 6:00 they actually meant the door are unlocked at 6:00 and the preshow begins immediately. When we pulled in about 5:30 I thought that would give us a bit of time to walk around, find our seats, and make our way down to the floor. It turned out that the 20 minutes we hung out in the car though was one of the most fun times of the evening. Zoe crawled up into the front passenger seat with me and explored the entire front seat. She tried out every button, flipped every switch, and discovered every mirror. It turned out her favorite thing to do though was play with the volume of the stereo. Eventually we just decided to crank it up while we danced and played the drums.
Eventually we walked across the street and got there just as the doors were being opened so we were able to walk right in. We stopped to take a couple pictures in the lobby and made our way down the the floor. Zoe was in complete awe of everything going on around us. There were three main performance areas set up and we gradually made our way around to all of them. Some favorites were the dog riding on the horse, the strong men (clowns), the elephant, and the jugglers. At about 6:45 the started clearing off the floor so Z and I went for a walk around the concourse to see all the toys and treats they had on display, and then made our way to our seats.
Our actual seats were in a perfect place, right in the middle of one of the sides of the floor and about halfway between the aerial performances and the floor. It was pretty cool to hear Zoe’s stream of “wow’s” “did you see that’s” and “look at that’s” as the show went on. I’m not going to try to list all the amazing things we saw, but I will mention that I’m pretty sure Zoe’s favorite part was when a motorcycle drove up in the sky right in front of us. Her jaw literally dropped.
Toward the end of the first act Zoe started to say she was tired and tried to lay her head down. A few M&M’s perked her back up though and the sugar (cotton candy) we bought during intermission ensured she’d be wide awake for the rest of the show. As we were starting to drive back home I gave Zoe my phone so she could call Molly and tell her all about it. It was pretty cool to hear her version of everything she’d seen and done throughout the night.
