The twins turn one.
True to form, the twins have a cold on their first birthday. That is why Lachlann looks like he would rather be asleep and Olif looks like he doesn't want to be there. They suffered through "Happy Birthday" in which no one who could sing actually did. The parents helped blow out the candles.
At this point Laurie interrupted with "Take their shirts off!!!" and the race was on.
Laurie attempted a head start by trying to smear frosting on Lachlann's face. Chris just let Olif grab the entire piece of frosting himself.
It looked like either tactic could win.
Olif quickly demolished the entire cupcake and took an early lead. Notice the two-handed smooshing technique. Lachlann is still being aided my Laurie, Chris has intervened to remove the messiest bit from Olif, perhaps being sportsmanlike here.
They both let the kids taste the gooey stuff, and it was all over.
While Olif actually tried to eat his, Lachlann resisted and spread it all over. He studied his hand for a while, then tried out the demolish technique.
And shows off the winning hands. And face. And sternum.
As A Matter Of Fact, I Do Control The Weather.
I am not superstitious. I don't believe that rain dances cause rain. I believe in natural causes, with the occasional divinely caused miracle. But I now believe that I control the weather.
Years ago, I began to notice certain trends that coincided with the nationality of exchange students living with us. That being: both times we hosted girls from Korea, there was record setting cold and snow in our town. (I also noticed that, while they found other things to complain about, they never complained about the weather! Possibly because it was milder than what they were used to.) So I began to think backwards:
The Czech Republic has mostly snow in the winter. The year our Czech girl was with us, we had snow on Christmas Day for the first time in 40 years.
The best we could do for Christmas two years later, when we hosted a Chinese girl from Dalian, was ice. But this mirrors her climate also.
Then there was the German girl from near the Black Forest, in the mountains. Although the German climate is generally mild in winter, this girl loved to ski and we did get more snow than usual.
All this is interesting, and perhaps stretching it a bit, and I thought no more of it until, the year we hosted our Dutch boy, the Yakima river flooded (which is more or less normal) AND the Columbia river flooded (which is most definitely NOT). This is really tricky, because there are 10 dams upstream of us! (The Yakima also flooded when the Czech girl was living with us, but I think that data point may be in error. We'll go on.)
The next year we had a Norwegian girl -- from above the arctic circle -- for the month of December (she was between host families) and it snowed ONLY in December.
So, we decided to host someone from a warm climate, because people were complaining about winter. We chose a girl from Taiwan (it could have been any country near there) where the winters rarely get below 50 F (9 C). And our winter rarely got below freezing. It was definitely warmer than normal. The problem: there were LOTS more bugs in the garden.
I am really not sure I want to find out what will happen if we host someone from the Southern Hemisphere.
