"My Crazy Kids"

Grandparents By Allan Olson There is just something special about grandparents. Recently my grandparents have been on my mind; perhaps that is because of the usually overlooked Grandparents Day earlier this month. I was fortunate enough to spend plenty of time at my grandparents’ growing up. One grandma lived less than 10 miles from us, in the town closest to our rural residence. It was always fun to go to grandma’s house, even though she lived in a small one bedroom home on a small city lot. Over the years, it became our “hang-out” or in-between place while we waited for swimming lessons or baseball games or other various things we might have been doing during the year. Of course, we were also required to help with dishes, mow her lawn or go get her mail at the post office. That might’ve been the hardest task to master, as there was no simple key to her box. It was a turn the knob right, left, around and around backwards/forwards kind of thing. We learned to figure it out, eventually....

Sure shot or not? By Allan Olson While some people may believe that shooting is a “mans” sport, I am firmly not in that camp, especially since my wife is a better shot with a .22 than I am. Thankfully she has no interest in shooting any caliber higher than that or I could really be in trouble. More than once, I have taken out the .22 and plugged a few rounds into a target. Surprisingly, since I now have a place where I can shoot, I have only done this twice since we’ve moved. So a couple weekends ago (when the weather was still nice), after watching the show “Top Shot” (which I’m not), I felt the need to shoot off a few rounds with my 22 rifle. I got ambitious, found a board, drew a target on it, fastened it to a tree in the backyard, and let off a few rounds. Of course, the kids all had to have their turn at target practice. First up was Nikolai, he had trouble hitting the target since it was too high for him, so I used a milk jug filled with water on top of a box for his target. The ...

Changes By Allan Olson Changes in life can be hard on anyone, some changes are for the better and others are not always beneficial. The biggest changes in our life this year is the leap into homeowner ship. This meant we could no longer call our reliable land lord to fix something. We’ve had to fix several things since we’ve moved in to our new dwellings and more will be fixed or changed as time and of course the dollar allows. This change also resulted in a change of schools. We left Nikolai in his former school when we moved last spring because we didn’t feel it was right to make him switch schools. So we made the sacrifice and drove him to our former home so he could catch his same bus with his same friends to attend his same school. We informed him prior to the end of the last school year that he would not be going to that school again. Regardless of where we sent him, Bemidji, Blackduck or Cass Lake-Bena he would be attending a new school. As with most things he was ac...

Censored By Allan Olson It’s finally happened: I’ve been censored, at least by someone other than my wife. I came home from work last week, and Marcus began to talk to me about his recent regular yearly doctor’s appointment. He told me about the procedure, and how the doctor checked him over, looked in his ears and mouth, listened to him breathe, and all the other routine stuff he does during an annual check-up. His sister had the same stuff done to her, and they were both told they were good, healthy and normal (not sure whose definition of normal we’re using here) and all ready for school. Now for the censored part. I’ve been writing these columns weekly for just over a year, and on occasion I read them to the kids. Of course, if I have the kids with me in town, on occasion people will comment on them or on something I wrote about. Now, apparently, Marcus has decided that he can censor me. After he was done rattling off the various things about the doctor’s office, he i...