Our January Activities

This January has been disturbingly warm and dry in our area. We are very concerned about having enough water this year based on the lack of snow we have seen. Additionally, it has made it hard to go out and do the fun winter activities we love like sledding and snowshoeing.

Still, we have tried to do some other fun family activities. On the thirteenth we went bowling with a couple of Nate's brothers and their families. The bowling trip was actually our Christmas gift to one of Nate's brothers.

After bowling we headed to the BYU Museum of Art to see the M.C. Escher exhibit there. Since Austin has been learning about perspective during our art lessons this year, he was very interested in the way Escher's work played with perspective to trick the mind. He also really enjoyed the tessellations Escher created. Furthermore, it was interesting to see some of the wood blocks used to print Escher's work. We all enjoyed exploring the exhibit together.

Last weekend we headed to the circus. I had never been to the circus before. I remember as a kid seeing commercials for the Barnum and Bailey Circus and wanting so badly to go see it, but we never did. So, I was actually pretty excited to go see the Jordan World Circus event we saw some advertisements for. We ended up buying a family pass since that was less expensive, but it also came with more children's tickets than we needed. So, we let Austin invite his friend Sarah to come with us. Neither Austin or Sarah had been to a circus before either, so of all of us, only Nate had ever been to such an event previously.

We enjoyed watching tightrope tricks, motorcycle tricks, animal tricks, and other various acrobatic tricks. Both animals and people flew through rings of fire. Skilled horsemen hopped on and off galloping horses, hung upside-down off their sides, and stood up on their backs as they raced in circles. Daring ladies climbed up ropes and hung from them in various difficult poses. A speed changer went in and out of various outfits in mere seconds. Some ladies did tricks with hula hoops, and some hung high above the ground from rings or cloth ropes. Austin's favorite part was watching the groups of two, three, and four motorcyclists raced around in a spherical cage without crashing. He also loved watching guys fly from a motorcycle powered swing into the air, do flips and/ or shoot through a ring of fire before landing in a cloth. (The pictures from Nate's phone didn't necessarily turn out the best, but they give some idea of these stunts.)

Four motorcyclists zooming around inside the spherical cage together

Man flying off the motorcycle swing and through the ring of fire

I particularly liked watching the guys doing tricks on the horses. These tricks were far from anything I would ever be comfortable doing on horseback.

Rider jumps on and off a horse as it gallops around the ring

Watching the elephant and tiger tricks were also pretty cool. As were the other things involving animals...but then I have always been into that sort of thing. Nate especially enjoyed seeing a lama jump through a hoop. Some goats and dogs rode a miniature horse as it trotted around the ring at another point in the show, which started me wondering if I could ever teach a dog to ride a horse...

The tightrope tricks were amazing but made me feel incredibly nervous the whole time. One of the guys who was jumping rope on the tightrope actually did fall during his first attempt, but luckily caught himself on the rope and pulled himself back up.

We all had fun, though the kids were quite tired by the end of the show and quite ready to go home and get to bed. Sarah fell asleep during the second act.