Circus Maniacs

Most sundays our kids entertain themselves building forts with blankets or by playing games together. This Sunday the boys prepared a Circus for us to watch, but they had to wait to perform until Daddy got home from work.

Here is the sign annoucing the "Circus Manieacs" and telling the audience where to sit. We got greeted by clowns welcoming us up the stairs.

Our show began with the clowns playing a chase game, then crazy clowns came out, and A did a juggling act. A was the ring leader and master of ceremonies annoucing each act. His name was Amusing A....

R did not want to be a clown but was a super hero. His name was Rocking Rock. His favorite part was the fishing scene which they used our banister and stairs as a fishing pond. They caught a clown hat. R kept fishing even after the other boys did more performing.

S was (Stumendous S.....) and jumped around and danced through many performances but his favorite job was using a toy gun and pretending to shoot candy into our mouths between performances.

T was "Laughing Larry the clown" and did the sack act where he pulled things from his pillow case sack and did funny things with them. He also did a little animal training with the alligator (ie A in costume)

It was fun to see their creativity and watch them as we saw their personalities shine in what they choose to do.

Fishing in Jan

Every year they (the state of Texas) stocks the pond in the park near us with rainbow trout. Toby is always watching for the date so he can take the kids fishing. It is nice to be able to fish ony 15 minutes from home. We went last Saturday and we caught nothing!! Not good for my born fisherman husband. We talked about why we might not have caught anything....since most years we catch 8-10. Others around us were catching fish. He thinks is was his bait. It is old. They do not sell this stinky type of trout bait in Texas since trout are not native to here. They breed them other places and bring them in to our ponds, where they are either caught or die when the water gets too warm.

So Toby gets some worms and we take more marshmallows (we had some Saturday but most got eaten by kids) and try again on Monday morning. It was MLK day so no school but we only took 3 kids with us since the other 2 had other invites. And within 5 minutes S had caught the first fish. He was so happy dancing and chanting "I got the first fish!" Each kids proceeded to catch 2 or 3 more (a couple too little to keep) and we ended up taking about 9 fish home in 2 hours time. It was cold but they kept catching fish.

Toby had the best catch of the day, 2 fish at once. He actually caught someone's stringer that held 2 fish, one trout and one big catfish that had probably pulled it out as he swam away. WE asked around and no one claimed it. It might have even been from another day since the trout did not look too good. Still Toby had never caught 2 fish at once. Something he can treasure in his memory. We had a good time.

Toby cleans and even cooks his fish (since I do not enjoy fish!) So he made fish for dinner while I added some Mac and cheese for the kids. Then I enjoyed a Taco salad from some leftovers!