***Warning! Numerous photos in the following post! Proceed at your own risk!***
This morning, we ventured out with my parents to Veteran’s Park in downtown Milwaukee to check out the Circus Parade Festival. The Circus Parade used to be an annual event, then took a pretty long hiatus, and is back this year. It’s happening tomorrow afternoon, and initially I thought it would be really fun to take the kids down to see it. But then I started hearing about all of the people camping out for 43 1/2 hours to have a good spot for viewing and decided it would be better to check out the wagons and animals beforehand, and then watch the parade on TV! Besides, I don’t like clowns or circuses! (I like parades because the scenery keeps changing, and I can ignore the clowns, so the Circus Parade doesn’t really bother me.)
So we got downtown around 9:15 this morning and checked it all out. It was a gorgeous day, about 82 degrees, with a nice breeze and hardly any clouds (hence the sunburn on the backs of my shoulders from where I was carrying the backpack that rubbed off my sunscreen!). We saw horses, the fancy wagons, animals like llamas, goats, kangaroos and ostriches, and firetrucks (which we can see anywhere, but the boys were still excited!).
The boys fed the animals, and it was so cute how the food was in ice cream cones for feeding. It made me happier, too, because I have a slight phobia of feeding animals. GERMS!
Most importantly, to my mom, were the elephants. Riding an elephant has been on her “bucket list” for a while (she’s really not that old!). That, and riding a camel. We bypassed the camels today since she can ride a camel at the zoo. But we made sure we found those elephants.
We wandered around by the lakefront for a bit, got some great shots (if I may say so myself!), then headed to Bastille Days for some lunch. We had to hike up a pretty steep hill, and the boys totally rocked it! Caden even offered to help my parents up at the top, after Noah offered me his hand to help! Andy and I were just at Bastille Days on Thursday night to “storm the Bastille”, which was a 5K run through downtown at night. It was a fun run! But I skipped the crepe that night in favor of a beignet, so I was craving a crepe. The boys got to eat ice cream under the “Eiffel Tower” and we exposed the boys to one of the many festivals in town.
Then we took another route around the Milwaukee Art Museum and the gorgeous Burke Brise Soleil back to our car by the circus festival grounds.
It was a ton of fun! Exhausting, but really fun. This is how I want to spend my summer!
Wow, you should be a Milwaukee Tour Guide!
Why do those people have nothing better to do for 43 hours? That is crazy, that is more time than people wait in line for a new console, or even a new iPhone.