Circus! Afro! Circus! Afro!*

A couple of weeks ago I received a flyer in the mail saying the Shriner's Moolah Circus was coming to town.  The flyer also said there would be a circus parade in historic St. Charles on the 24th.  I've always wanted to see a circus parade.  Not so much a circus, just a circus parade.  In movies they're always filled with elephants and clowns and pipe-organ trucks and it's all so magical.  So on Saturday we told the kids we were going on a surprise adventure.  This sums up how my kids felt about waiting for their surprise.

The parade started and it soon became clear that this was not so much a circus parade as it was a Shriner's parade.

I don't know much about Shriners.  My only experience with Shriners is that time my man-child boyfriend was acting like a moron, so I decided to show him he's not the boss of me by sneaking into the backroom of a bar and interrupting a Shriners meeting with a sexy table dance.  Other than that, I haven't seen a lot of Shriners.  Based on our parade experience, I now know that Shriners are old guys who wear fez', drive tiny cars, throw boring parades, and own children's hospitals.  (And because they do that last thing, we'll forgive the rest.)  Now you don't have to go to Wikepedia.  You're welcome.

There were plenty of clowns, too.  I don't care for clowns, but it turns out I adore clown funerals.

Some clowns gave out candy or beads.  This clown gave high-fives. 

Those little kids were having so much fun.  It was really adorable.  That's why I took a picture of them and not my own kids.

When I pictured a circus parade, I imagined elephants and ringmasters and cages on wheels filled with tigers.  This is the closest thing they had:

These two did a little skit that ended with the ringmaster whipping the leopard.  It was weird.

There were a lot of Shriner queens (or whatever they were), but this lady was my favorite because she was the sparkliest.

Eventually the parade ended and the kids could roam free like Laura Ingalls Wilder.

We did get ice cream after the parade, so Harrison wasn't Charlie Browning it for long.

On the way back to the car, we ran into some aging mermaids who asked if Chloe wanted to take a picture with them.  So . . . bonus!

*My kids keep quoting that line from this Madagascar 3 preview.