Weekending it

This weekend was an even mix of productivity and fun relaxation with a good amount of treat splurging mixed in.

On Saturday we deep-cleaned the entire apartment. I typically have a schedule that splits the cleaning tasks every other week but on occasion I'll skip a week leaving everything for one weekend. Even with two people it's always surprising how long it takes to scrub the tub, change the sheets, dust, vacuum, and mop the entire apartment. One more reason why I don't want to own a home.

Saturday night we headed to the Circus!!

Going to the circus is a bit of a pastime for Dan and me. We've gone four times now. Once when we were dating and two times in 2015 (Big Apple and Ringling Bros). We didn't go to the circus at all in 2016 because we planned to go to the Big Apple Circus again only to find out that it was no longer in existence! Super sad. Then at the beginning of this year I read an article that said this would be the last year for Ringling Bros. They are ending after over 100 year existence! I know people have opinions about the circus and the use of animals. I will say, I'm not a huge supporter of that but we felt like going to the circus held good memories for us and we would regret not going its final year. Also, the baby needed to experience it, even if just in utero. So we got tickets.

We got to the arena late and the entrance was absolutely packed with people trying to get through security so by the time we got to our seats we had missed the first 15 minutes. Fortunately I don't think we missed much. The theme for the show this year was "Out of This World" with a space theme. It was a bizarre story line and totally unnecessary. One thing I read about was the circus has had a hard time innovating every year and keeping the interest of little kids for more than a few minutes. I feel like they overcompensate with basically two hours of sensory overload. It's difficult to take it all in as an adult so I'd imagine a kid would be overwhelmed. Anyways, the new spin this year was the performance was mainly on ice! Like, all the performers were on skates or the clowns were slip sliding around on the rink. All the acrobatic numbers and animal parts were on mats over the ice but there were a lot of new numbers featuring ice skates. Like acrobats on slits AND ice skates.

Inside those floating orbs were body contortionists doing crazy stunts while the orbs spun around. 

Three big things missing this year: no elephants, no rotating wheel, and no trampoline artists. The rotating wheel (or wheel of death) is my favorite so I was sad we didn't get to see that one more time. This year the elephants were replaced with dogs and pigs and lamas and goats. The pigs did next to nothing except wear Hawaiian leis. The dogs took turn doing various tricks.

See that little Terrier at the bottom of the picture above? He just wandered around for a bit doing his own thing and then pooped on the ice! No one noticed so the stage hands proceeded to roll mats over it and other skaters got really close to skating over it. I think because it landed on the ice it wasn't messy but I was pretty fixated on watching to see if anyone would pick it up.

The trapeze numbers are always some of my favorites. I wasn't able to get very good pictures this year but they were pretty good although three of them missed their mark and fell into the net. We'd never seen errors like that before so it was weird.

We got treats too, of course, overpriced popcorn and we shared rainbow dip n' dots in a light-up souvenir cup. And we left during the finale to miss the massive crowds trying to get out of the door at the same time.

We enjoyed our last circus adventure but are a little sad that the era of circus performers is coming to an end.

On Sunday we got to sleep in since our normal church service was moved to the evening for baptisms. We went out for breakfast to try a crepe place that opened this past year. It was our little anniversary treat since "February 30th" is our 2 1/2 year wedding anniversary. The crepes were delicious!

I got strawberry, banana, and nutella and Dan got almonds and honey.

After breakfast we did our taxes! Well, 98% of them. I have one thing left to do but otherwise it's finished!!!

That night we saw four people get baptized at church and I got hugs from all of them, even though I only knew one of them. I love post baptism hugs - soaking wet with hope and happiness. There was a pizza party afterwards and then we spent the rest of the night prepping for the week and finishing season 3 of The Americans.