Lizards and Acrobats

What do lizards and acrobats have in common?  Not much, I suppose, except that we saw them both today! 

This morning, the kids and I went out to the playground by the apartment.  Layla was thrilled that the nearby international school had a group from their summer program there.  Josh was at a bit of a loss, since much of the equipment is too difficult for him.  I decided to let him ride his bike on this series of wooden paths right next to the playground.  They seem to join the parking lot to the playground (which, in turn, gets you on your way to other things).  Some of the planks are narrow and run down so we'd avoided it up until now.  But I'm so glad we checked it out today!  Josh loved navigating the paths and everywhere we looked there were small lizards (salamandars? newts?) scurrying about.  Josh must have gone around this circuit ten times hunting for lizards.

That's our apartment building in the background
and a funky industrial looking sitting area in the middle of the rock meadow. 

You probably can't tell them from the knots in the wood, but on the center-left plank, there are 3 or 4 lizards.
They loved this particular section of the path.  

In the afternoon we met up with friends to go to a free circus performance we'd seen advertised in an English parenting magazine.  I really didn't know what to expect; it was promoted as a circus by kids, for kids so I knew we weren't going to see the Ringling Bros!  It turns out that the Quartier Circus Bruederholz is for kids ages 8 - 18.  They train for a whole year for the summer performances.  There were no clowns or animals, but there were tons of impressive acrobatics by these kids - everything from tumbling to tight rope walking to unicycles, to all kinds of flips and holds on those big swaying fabric things that hang down from the ceiling.  I didn't take pics of the performances, but may get some from a friend at a later date.  

Joshua fell asleep when we were 2 minutes from the venue.
This worked out great since we had an hour wait for the start.
 Luckily we got there early to hold seats; it was packed!  
No clue if it's a Swiss thing or just for this circus, but everyone showed up with their own
paper, markers, and tape so that they could reserve seats.
 Having none of that, I simply trash-picked someone else's signs from an earlier performance
and borrowed a pen from another mom and we were good to go!

Between acts.

During intermission. 

Layla has now informed us that she is going to be in the circus and needs to go back to gymnastics so that she can practice!