The Big Apple Circus...NYC style

I have ALWAYS loved the circus.  My grandparents used to take me to Barnum and Bailey in Little Rock, Arkansas. Of course, I wanted to be on the trapeze and wear the sparkley outfits and be caught as I flipped through the air while the audience gasped! Alright, I'm back now. I really wanted the sparkley outfits. I even tried to convince my family that we HAD to travel over to Venice,FL and go to trapeze school for the day!  How much fun would THAT be?? Apparently not enough to warrant the 3 hour trip.  I can usually convince them, though.  Like I did for the Silver Spurs rodeo last weekend!  ANYWHO...I bought tickets for The Big Apple Circus the night before the Macy's Parade.  We had been watching "Circus" on PBS and it featured the behind the scenes lives of people in the Big Apple Circus, so we felt like we knew them!  It was GREAT!  I wish we had been down at ringside, but LORDY the $$$ for those seats were "cost prohibitive" to say the least.  I still managed to have a wonderful time as did the family!
Here is "Grandma"!  I love him.  Such a nice guy and again...felt like I knew him already!

But this was the act that floored me....

 AND THIS!!!!

That's right...goats riding horses.  I was STUNNED.  That trainer worked some magic!  How did she do it???  I envisioned her sitting at her farm in the Ukraine, looking around, taking inventory.  "Let's see.  I need a new gig.  What do I have?  Goats, Horses, a couple of dogs, chickens..." Really.  How did she train 'em?  I was blown away.  So the next day at the parade, there they were lining up right in front of us!  We weren't suppose to go up to any of the floats, celebrities etc., but I couldn't help myself.  Shocking, I know.  So here they are...
That's her on the far left.  I told her she was a genius and blabbered on about training goats and how did you get the horses the let the goats ride.  Geez.  No Composure.  See the guys on the far right?  Those dudes could shinny up a pole and hang there fast as lightening. (bonus points for clever comparison).  Here is a pic of them!  Reminded me of the movie Jumanji---so frenetic, but really energetic and happy!!

Sorry for the overexposure!

OK THEN there were these girls...when they piled on top of each other, I couldn't tell where one began and the other ended!

Very overexposed, but I couldn't miss photographing it!

So that was GREAT! Here is a pic of the boys in front of the Lincoln Center fountain after the show...

In silohouette...they were thrilled.

What a great time we had!  The boys loved it and were telling the pizza team about it the next day! I fell asleep dreaming of sparkley outfits and being 20 lbs lighter. When I swing from that trapeze in Venice, FL. I will post the picture, people. Better start lifting wts....like my butt off of this chair and finding a sparkley outfit in black...with Spanks.