The Circus!

Cole and his buddy next door have very active imaginations, to say the least. About 3 weeks ago, they started building a "circus" in the basement. Now, neither one of them had ever been to the circus, so they really had no idea what a circus entails. (They have read books that talk about a circus and Cole has been to Circus, Circus in Las Vegas, but that is the extent of their experience.) Nevertheless, they developed games, booths, activities, and libraries (yeah, no idea where that came from). I didn't really mind because it kept them busy for several days and it was in the basement, so I could ignore the mess. Pretty soon they were telling others about their circus and telling them they would invite them to it when it was ready. I assumed that just like many of their other ideas, they would get bored with it and move on to something new. However, this never happened and last Saturday they started calling their friends to invite them to the circus that afternoon. At that point I panicked a little bit because I wasn't entirely sure what or who or any details that they had planned. Thankfully the first couple of people weren't able to come, so we were able to talk them into doing it on Monday, which was a holiday, so we could get a little better organized. I sat down with them and we made a list of who they wanted to invite and what food they wanted to have. (I figured I could do the food and they could do the games and we could all be happy! Plus I figured that if we provided good food, then everyone would love the circus, even if the games were interesting. And then, my little boy could be happy because everyone loved his and his buddy's idea!) So on Sunday, we delivered invitations,
and on Monday afternoon, we had the circus!
They even had a clown! (The clown did an excellent job being goofy, as usual. Everyone loved him and the lipstick came off...eventually!)
I apparently missed a lot of the games because I was socializing upstairs with the other adults who came to see what was going on! But they had a boy library and a girl library,
a hunting area where they shot bows and arrows,
a movie area,
and they tell me this one was a foot massage game.
They also had free time to play with toys.
Both boys did tell me the games did not go as they planned because they ended up having way more ball fights then they expected.
But they still enjoyed it and thought it was great!

Not to be outdone by the games, we had to come up with good circus food. Cole's buddy's grandma has a cotton candy machine that they borrowed. It was probably the hit food, as you can imagine.
Addy didn't really like the cotton candy. I'm pretty sure the fact that it made her hands sticky had something to do with that!Some circus guests enjoying the food.
We also had snowcones, even though it was like 30 degrees outside. (Thanks Aunt Katie!)
And, we had a decorate-your-own cupcake area.
All in all, I think the circus was a great success. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the boys were very proud of themselves. It wasn't even too much work for the moms, so they might get to do it again some day!