After our schools Christmas break, my team of 12, 13 and 14 year old jugglers were given a few weeks to get back into the swing of things before doing a show.  Their first show of 2017 was last week at Hawthorne House, a nursing home in Freeport, Maine.  We don't usually do a lot of nursing homes come mid year, as we do a lot more with churches, youth groups and schools by now, but we accepted this gig, and I'm glad we did.

Hawthorne House is a beautiful facility in one of Maines more affluent communities. We set up in the living room,which was nice, but the ceilings were so very low.  This is a significant problem for jugglers, but they made the best of it.  Although a couple diabolo bounced off the ceiling, the rest of their juggling was the best it's been in several shows.  Arriving early to warm up certainly helped with this.  Josiah and Elijah did a great job half juggling clubs and the entire machete medley routine was all but flawless.

This was also the first LOL show that included our new rabbit, Cotton.  He is considerably heavier than his predecessor, Jeremiah, so Leah had some trouble producing him from his illusion, but he handled the challenge well and didn't break character.  But the biggest moment of the show came before we ever got started. JAcob has been trying so hard to reach 100 catches with three ball juggling so he could move on to clubs.  He's been close for a couple weeks, and I told him I thought he'd achieve it before the end of the month.  While warming up in the limited space of the Hawthorne House living room, surrounded by other kids all warming up, too, he did 105 catches.  I've never seen a kid so proud of himself; reaching the goal meant all the more because he had to work harder than most to achieve it.  When we got back to school, I had a few minutes to show him how to do clubs, and he signed out a set so he could practice at home.  Now he's just a hop skip and a jump away from doing machetes and fire torches!