In Southern California, we don't get much in the way of "weather". Our weather consists of "slightly colder than 80 degrees F", and "slightly warmer than 80 degrees F". Sure, we get the occasional rain storm now and again and it's usually BIG news in our neck of the woods, but true "weather" like the rest of the country experiences is rare. Now sun, sun we know about. Ask a Southern Californian about sun block and they can go on and on about which brand to buy, which SPF you need, and so much more. I guess a good comparison is that Eskimos are supposed to have tons of word for snow, well, Southern Californians have the same thing, but with sun.
Having said that, we had one of our rain storms the past couple of days and it was an exciting time here in the Super Mega Household. Princess K had to look out the sliding glass door every so often and announce in her loudest voice that it was still raining and then would proceed to ask me the whereabouts of her rarely used umbrella (probably in the same place as her used ONCE snow gloves for all I know!). Upon picking up Super Michael from school, the rain was still coming down in a fine mist and the sun was poking out here and there. This produced a really nice rainbow that just happened to appear like it was terminating right near our house. Now, me being the world traveler that I am (NOT!), have seen one or two rainbows in my life and I didn't think anything about it, however, I failed to realize that this was probably the first "real" rainbow either of my kids have ever seen. They were pretty excited about the whole thing and just stared at it trying to figure out what colors made the rainbow and were just mesmerized by the natural phenomenon. We got home and they both had to rush to the windows to watch the rainbow as it faded over time.
The next day, today, the rainbow was all that they could talk about. Princess K, being three, couldn't understand why the rainbow wasn't still there, so Super Michael had to explain to her that rainbows only come when it's raining (we're back to 100% sunshine today) and he explained how rain came about. Super Michael was excited to tell his teacher about the rainbow they saw, and Princess K was actually excited to go to daycare to tell her teacher about it. I laughed as I dropped her off and heard her explaining in great detail all about the rainbow and how it was over our house and exactly what colors made the rainbow.
So, this is a little glimpse into the life of children that grow up in a place where there is absolutely NO weather. Heck, we even have snow brought in/made for our kids to play in at school so our kids have a chance to see what snow is actually like.
Our trip up to Oregon last month was the first time that I had seen actual icicles, so I guess I'm not far behind my kids having grown up in Southern California myself. Now that I think about it, this is probably why EVERYBODY and their brother move here. Everybody you meet here is from somewhere else.
What do kids in less weather challenged parts of the world think as fascinating as what my kids think of rainbows? Reading other blogs about people experiencing severe ice storms and power loss because of these storms has really started me to think that we're pretty spoiled out here.