Seeing double in Twinsburg

When you have twins, it kind of feels like a celebrity status comes with them, at least for the first couple years anyway. You can't walk thru a store without a few people stopping you to ask questions, like the oh so cleverly disguised ones that boil down to "did you have fertility problems?" Or are your BOY and GIRL identical? (tip- they can't be identical for seemingly obvious reasons ;) ) Honestly, it never really bothered me to answer questions. I enjoyed talking to strangers about my kids, so long as they didn't try to touch them- germs! We also weren't in public much because of their prematurity, so I didn't experience it often enough to be overwhelmed by it. We also knew the trick of divide and conquer, each taking one baby into different parts of a store, if we were in a hurry. Anyway my point of this is that when you first have twins it comes with a "celebrity" status and as they age, that fades....and then you go to a twin festival....

I think my kids were just babies when I first heard about the largest festival of twins in the world being in Ohio. I just knew we had to make it there and with family in Ohio, it shouldn't be that hard. Three years later, we found ourselves unexpectedly 2 hours from Twinsburg during that first weekend in August when the festival is held. We drove there in rain that was pouring down so hard you couldn't see the car in front of you, we considered turning back, but pressed on. Twinsburg is such a small town that the festival website doesn't even give you an address, it's just "Twinsburg". From the center of town you just follow the signs, thru the parade route to the location. From the moment you park and start seeing pairs of identically dressed twins, everywhere, you just know this will be an unusual experience. Every set of twins from 5 months to 80+ years old wore the exact same outfit as their twin. So it's easy to spot them at a quick glance. This also makes for interesting people watching. Twins were taking photos of twins and with twins and just appreciating their uniqueness and their similarities all at the same time. People were asking to take photos of Asher and Journey and others gladly posed for photos when we asked.

These twin sisters are due 12 days apart with singletons (that's one baby each). Aren't they adorable?

After our first few interactions with people there, I quickly realized that this is the happiest place on earth! The atmosphere was just so joyful, friendly and warm that even after we had finished seeing everything, I just couldn't leave yet and we walked thru again. Journey loves seeing people on stilts. This is the second time she's seen one. She spotted him as soon as we entered the festival and asked me to take her picture with him.

There are contests for the most alike, least alike, youngest and oldest twins as well as for those that have traveled the farthest. There were maps where you could pin your hometown in a map of the US and the world. Here we're waiting to pin Las Vegas and found there was already another set from there, wish we could have met them.

Grandpa gave us money to buy some things at the festival so we came home with two sets of twin shirts and these twin buttons that received quite a few chuckles and comments- (referring to their birth order).  Asher's says "First Out" and Journey's "Last Out".

There were almost 1900 SETS of multiples (there are some higher order multiples like triplets and quads) registered for this year's festival. The record was 2789 sets in 1995! We will definitely return as the kids get older.