a date to the circus

On Friday I took my 10 year old nephew, Noah, to the circus. I have been planning this for awhile. When I found out the circus was coming to town I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for a nephew-aunt date. I love that Noah is old enough to do this type of thing now. He has autism and only in the last year or so has he had an attention span that would allow him to enjoy a sit-down show like this.

Noah had never been to the circus. And all he knew about it was that there were going to be elephants. Ugh - it's so fun to experience something like this with a child for the first time!

I picked him up in the morning and he was SO excited. One of his favorite things to do is email. He had been emailing me for a few days leading up to Friday about the circus. It was super cute. When I showed up, he was all ready with his little digital camera in hand:

We had so much fun! Our seats were amazing! I was able to bring my Canon 5D mark II with my 50mm 1.2 and got some great shots!

I couldn't believe some of the acrobatics:

And the steel ball with the motocycles was UNBELIEVABLE! There were 7 riding around in there at once!

The elephants were of course beautiful. Noah's favorite part was when one of them pooped.

At intermission I let Noah pick out a snack. He was so cute and excited - I was tempted to eat HIM as a snack.

And the whole show he was sitting next to me shooting away on his little plastic camera. I can't believe that images come out of that thing. They're only 640 pixels wide but it takes decent photos! Most of them were blurry but he got a few good ones -- even one with flare!

Watch out photographers - I think we may have some more competition in a few years:

So much fun! All in all it was one of the best dates I've been on in a long time!