Looking a lot like Christmas

We went to the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus at Conseco last Thursday at the invitation of my cousin Patrick, who works with the show as a stage hand. And that is my cousin Patrick, not my brother Patrick. My brother Patrick would be much more likely to invite me to a seminar on the current tax codes and I don't think tax seminars feature aerialists or gaily trotting white ponies with blue plumes on their heads, so I'd have to politely decline. Or maybe not politely. It all depends, doesn't it?

Anyway, I have lots more on the circus in another post, but it was just one of those perfect evenings we got to enjoy as a family where every moment was more fun than the moment that came before it. I hadn't been to the circus since age ten (my parents took me to Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey in old Market Square Area in downtown Indianapolis, which I don't remember nearly as much as I remember seeing Van Halen in that same venue with my friend Julie about twelve years after the circus) and it was just delightful. The two hour performance zoomed by, and when we walked out of Conseco, the most beautiful snow was flying thick in the air.

Since we were downtown anyway, we decided to take the girls to see the "tree" on Monument Circle, a treat that we were able to pull off only because we now have our TomTom GPS device and were able to find our way from the field house to the monument -- a distance of maybe two blocks -- without getting hopelessly lost and driving the wrong way on a one-way street, or mowing down a pedestrian coming out of Nordstrom's laden with Christmas shopping....

So there you have it -- my shot of the monument on the circle (along with a small portion of the SUV in front of us) with the Christmas lights and the blowing snow and although you obviously can't hear it now, we were playing a Johnny Mathis Christmas CD in the van. It was a lovely, festive, happy evening.