"My Crazy Kids"

Home Woes By Allan Olson It’s going on nearly two years now since we bought our first home, and for the most part the repairs have been minor, although there is some remodeling in our future plans. There have been some challenges these past few months. I’m not a fix-it person, I’m a break-it person. When it comes to home repairs, don’t call me. In October our furnace refused to come on, and a new thermostat didn’t solve the problem, so I had to break down and call a heating pro. A day later, I had heat. Thankfully, it wasn’t terribly cold yet when this happened. Another problem surfaced on Monday morning, December 17. I got up at my normal time, early in the morning, expecting a nice hot shower to jump start my day, to be followed by a quiet breakfast before waking the children. I turned the shower on, and nothing happened. Panic set in. I quickly checked the bathroom fixture – nothing. The kitchen sinks produced the same amount of water – zip. The bathroom yie...

Allan Scissorhands By Allan Olson This weekend was mostly quieter than ones past or coming up, but we still found time to have some fun and spread a little Christmas cheer. On Saturday morning we woke up to the thrill of everyone’s favorite winter weather: rain – oh, joy! That didn’t wreck our plans for the weekend, since we didn’t have any. I left the yard just once to empty the garbage, venturing out onto the icy, snow-covered back roads and returning home without a problem. The roads seemed fine, as long as I wasn’t stopping or taking off. That afternoon cabin fever started to set in, and I felt the need to go outside. Since Marcus had just got up from an afternoon rest, I asked if he wanted to go with me on a photo shoot. The two of us enjoyed a walk around the backyard and out to the lake, taking random photos all around of the ice- and snow-laden trees. We also managed to shovel off our decks and had a brief snowball fight. The snowball fight idea caught on, and he wa...

Caching and Hockey Weekend By Allan Olson Last weekend was a busy one. The most unusual thing about it was that a large portion of it was spent watching hockey. I think I watched more hockey last weekend than I have in the last several years combined. The hockey started on Saturday, but the fun started on Friday. I took a day off – aside from checking the mail (and the email occasionally) – I was not working. I put the kids on the bus in the morning, returned home for a nap and then had breakfast. After the wife and I did some work around the house, we decided to do some geocaching on our own. We headed into Cass Lake just before noon and hit the Pike Bay Loop trail. It was just mom and me and Bob (the dog) who couldn’t stand to be left at home alone and jumped in the van without hesitation. A bunch of new caches on the Heartland Bike trail were posted that morning, but the wife said we weren’t going to do that trail. I said, “Okay.” I really was okay with it, because I wan...

To tree or not to tree By Allan Olson It was another weekend jam-packed with fun and of course, when dealing with children, some frustration as well in my household. A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were having a very serious discussion about the benefits of a real vs. artifical Christmas tree. During all the years we lived in our three-bedroom mobile home, we had a small, artificial tree, always saying that when we moved into a house that would change. Last year it did change. That was the first Christmas in our new house. I cut down a tree at my parents’ property at the end of deer season and stuck it in the snow at home for another week, planning to put it up after Thanksgiving. We were excited. Finally, a real tree. That excitement quickly waned as we grew sick-and-tired of the needles falling off, and Abigail always moving the decorations around, knocking more needles off, or someone just brushing too close by the tree or even, it seemed, just breathing on it (halitos...

Thanksgiving Weekend By Allan Olson From my point of view, it was a lazy weekend. I did as little as possible, other than help to keep the dishes cleaned up after all the meals over the weekend. Our holiday company arrived Wednesday evening, when the pies were just beginning to bake. On Thursday morning, Thanksgiving Day, the cooks in charge (my wife and her mom) started the rest of the meal preparations. This year I did not try to make several pans of rolls and clean the oven twice in one night on Thanksgiving Eve. Lo and behold, the oven rewarded us by functioning perfectly, cooking a delicious turkey along with other fine fixings to go with the day’s feast. At dinner time, we gorged on a scrumptious ham, a mouth-watering turkey, moist warm pan bread and all the rest of the fixings a person could ask for on Thanksgiving. The only thing missing was Lefse. The meal went very well, with no spills or messes from either the kids or adults. After a short break, the...

A warm geocaching weekend By Allan Olson With the weather in the 50s, it was hard to stay indoors on Sunday – so we didn’t! After all, winter is knocking on the door, and it could soon be -50, and nobody wants to be outside in that! To kick things off, the two boys both got sick. The old­est was first; it was at about 2 a.m. on Friday when he woke me up, so I went to clean the mess – likely my least favor­ite thing in the world. I would rather field dress a deer than deal with vomit. The next son came to us at about 4 a.m., shortly after I had fallen back asleep. “I’m sick,” he said. “Did you make a mess?” I asked. “No,” he said. “So you made it to the bathroom?” “Yes,” he said. “Good – go to the other room and sleep, and get a bucket.” He left the room and I rolled over and went back to sleep. After all, the alarm would be going off in less than two hours. Thankfully, by Friday eve­ning all the kids were feeling much better. On Saturday we spent the morning cleaning to get ready for...

A birthday weekend By Allan Olson This long weekend went by in a flash. With no school Thursday and Friday because of conferences, the kids were at home driving mom nuts. They were supposed to be cleaning their rooms and making preparations for our youngest child’s fifth birthday. Before I left for work on Friday, I informed the kids that if their rooms weren’t clean when I got back, their toys would go to a new home. Several hours later, I returned to find the rooms not cleaned – especially the girls’ room. I delayed as long as I could before carrying out my threatened punishment. I gave them more chances than I probably should have, but even that didn’t matter. The girls room was still a mess, and the rule was that both rooms needed be cleaned. While I might have been convinced to leave the boys’ toys in their room since they had their room mostly done, they let it be known that they were unhappy that I was taking anyone’s toys away, so I removed their toys as well. I hau...

A hunting weekend By Allan Olson On Saturday I was one of about 500,000 in the “Orange Army” hoping to be lucky enough to harvest a mighty whitetail and stock some venison in my freezer for the next year. I was really gung-ho and rarin’ to go on Saturday morning – until I got to my stand. I enjoy the thrill of the game and a successful hunt but, sitting in the stand until daylight, hoping to get lucky enough to draw a bead on an animal is really a boring game. You sit there and sit there, often all for naught. However, when a deer does make an appearance, all that waiting is quickly forgotten. Well, I’m going to be honest – I waited from about 7 a.m. until about 8:30 a.m. before I got my chance, and then I blew it. As the song from “Bananas at Large” goes, “My fingers were so frozen, I couldn’t pull the trigger.” My fingers were definitely getting cold, although I did manage to squeeze off a round (or three) before my prey disappeared in the brush. About seven minutes later i...

Road trip up north By Allan Olson It was another road trip this weekend; this time up north to Lake of the Woods to attend the confirmation of one my many awesome nieces. She sent the invitation to us last week, and after some discussion, we decided that we should attend this special event for her. We were awakened at 6:15 a.m. on Sunday (15 minutes prior to my alarm going off) by Alivia, with this announcement: “Daddy, it snowed!” Well, usually just a dusting of snow will get the kids excited, so I didn’t think anything of it. I went downstairs to start waking up the other children. When I glanced out the window, it certainly appeared to be more than just a little snow. Although it was still dark outside, I was going to give it the benefit of the doubt, at least until I opened a door to peer out. After I got sleepy bones Marcus out of bed, I did open the door and was very surprised – I was actually going to have to get the shovel out of the garage so the kids and ...

Another Long Day By Allan Olson In October of 2010, my first “Long Day” column was written about what was planned to be a simple trip to International Falls but ended up with a deer hitting our van, then the dryer we were hauling to get fixed tumbled off of the back of the trailer about 15 miles after the deer collision and, adding insult to injury, the washer on the load also suffered damage from the sudden stops along the way, thanks to other animals, rendering them both useless. Well, last Saturday was an­other “Long Day.” This one involved no deer collisions – thankfully – but instead in­cluded a whole host of other problems revolving around a “simple” tire change. On Friday night we de­cided we would participate in the Northstar Geoseekers highway cleanup in Bagley on Saturday, since we were heading there to visit a friend anyway. We were on the road by 9 a.m. on Saturday morn­ing. We made a few quick stops in town and then we were on our way. We had hoped to find some g...

Fall weekend adventures By Allan Olson Where to begin on this weekend’s activities? It was all such a blur of fun; it’s hard to remember it all! Friday night was the quietest. Even though momma was away, daddy still fed the kids and made them work on cleaning their rooms – a most dreaded task for any child. While they did that, I made a pumpkin cake and enjoyed listening to a football game. My brother arrived with his three kids on Saturday morning, and from that point on everything was all in fast forward. The kids all immediately jumped on their bikes and started riding like the wind. They decided to take one break, hiding in the house to look at the computer or television. We fixed that problem in short order by kicking them back out of the house – so they biked some more. I decided that we should go for a couple geocaches – the weather was perfect! My brother was game, so we fed the kids and headed for the woods. There were a couple of caches I had wanted to ...

 Fall cleanup time By Allan Olson   Last week’s “snowstorm” convinced us that, if nothing else, the season is definitely changing and like it or not, we could soon be knee deep in snow. Things were relatively qui­et at our place this weekend. On Saturday morning I took pride in losing two games of chess to a 10-year old neph­ew. Following his departure, we headed to town to shop for a few grocery items and new shoes for the kids. We’ve de­cided that next spring we will be investing in some boots for the kids for our geocach­ing adventures into the woods so they don’t trash their good shoes. Upon examination of their footwear, we discovered that of the three youngest, the shoes of two had holes and the third wasn’t far be­hind. Nikolai’s shoes were already replaced earlier for the same reason. I suppose I could make them go barefoot for a year to solve the prob­lem, but they might object to that, at least during the winter months. On Saturday afternoon, after attendin...

Our First Geocache Hide By Allan Olson We finally did it! We planted our first geocache for others to find after starting our caching adventures in May and logging 184 of our own finds. This weekend we hid our very own geocache in an area near where my wife grew up close to the Rainy River. We had been talking about it, and I’ve been eager to hide one for some time. We decided this weekend that it would be good to hide one in an area where there aren’t very many. Now we have the suspense of waiting for someone to find it! On Saturday night we did some research and hid the treasure. We gave a niece the coordinates to find it, and after a little bit of searching she located the hiding spot. The name of our geocache is “Rapidly Waiting,” which hints at the location of the hide. For readers unfamiliar with the activity of geocaching, I’ve included some background information: Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants n...

An Amazing Weekend By Allan Olson The weekend lived up to its expectations and perhaps a bit more – it was amazing. Friday evening, nearly Saturday in terms of time, my cousin arrived with his wife and two children for the weekend of geocaching and we stayed up way past my bedtime until the early hours of Saturday morning visiting. Saturday morning was spent mainly lounging around the house while the kids spent time terrorizing the house. That afternoon I took my cousin on a geocaching run at some nearby caches within 10 miles of my house. Of course since the cell service was poor we relied on my memory to find most of them since we had already logged all of those. That evening was spent relaxing and gorging ourselves on a large meal topped with dessert and a relaxing beverage and we retired several hours early compared to the previous night. Sunday morning after breakfast it was time to pack the kids, the vans along with sandwiches and snacks for the day of geocaching. ...