"My Crazy Kids"

We Survived MEA By Allan Olson It was nice to have a long weekend without having to wake the kids up early, get them fed and dressed and off to the bus or school before a certain time. There was no morning drama – or at least very little of it that we had to deal with, as there were no time constraints on the morning. Of course, all that extra time together meant that there was also time for more fights, more time to irritate the parents because of the fighting or fits thrown because somebody wasn’t helping to clean, or someone else was being mean – and that was just the first two days off from school. To celebrate the extra family time, we got out the Wii bowling game again, and all the kids took on each other. It didn’t take long to determine who was going to be in close contention. Each of them have their own method of throwing the ball, and each of them managed at least one strike. The game was decided in the tenth frame with big brother Nikolai forging ahead of his youngest sister...

Are my children perfect? By Allan Olson Last weekend we took a trip to town. At our previous digs a few miles outside of Bemidji, a trip to town was a normal occurrence. At our present location, a trip to town is an exciting adventure for our family – or at least it is for the kids. The children, for the most part, spend their days shuffling back and forth from home to school, and that is the extent of their week. When we stay home all weekend (which I prefer), they have to be content playing in the yard or trashing their rooms. On this trip to town we visited only two stores in a span of several hours, and the kids – and the stores – got on my nerves. It’s not that they were doing anything terrible, but the little nuances that only a parent perceives as bad started to bug me. Whether it was Alivia, who spun the sunglasses case too hard (resulting in the majority falling to the floor), or the incessant questions from all of them asking “Can I have this for my birthday?” (o...

The Weekend By Allan Olson By all accounts, it was a great weekend to spend at home, aside from leaving a couple of times for work-related functions. A lot of work on the house was accomplished. This last weekend marked my wife’s and sister-in-law’s annual pilgrimage to a friend’s home in the larger metropolitan area south of here. That left my brother and I in charge of the kids – all at my place. This year we weren’t all crammed into a tiny trailer; we actually had room to breathe, and the kids had plenty of land to roam. The bonus was the surprise addition of my wife’s older niece, who came to help out with the kids as well. That meant my brother and I could leave all seven of the kids (ages 3-11) with her and go fishing. The weekend work started on Friday afternoon when, with the aid of my brother’s pressure washer, we started spraying down the siding of my house, trying to get it looking cleaner than it had been in many years. The kids, home from school, soon were playing outside ...

Total Drama House By Allan Olson It seems like there is always drama at our house. We can’t escape it because the drama is created by our kids, and escaping them is not an option, because they always manage to find us. The drama is occasionally created by us, because we issue unfair demands on our children. We cause undue and unfair stress on them by asking them to do strenuous tasks, such as cleaning their room. Okay, I admit that is a strenuous task. On some occasions when they start on this project, the toys cover the floor and you would hardly know that there is even carpet in their rooms. Some of the other horrible tasks we project on our children are things like clearing the table. Does that mean I have to wash it, too, they ask. Frustration builds. Yes, washing the table is included in that. Why do I have to all the work? It never fails, whether it’s one kid or all four kids working on the project, each of them thinks the weight of the world is upon their shoulders, and they mu...