Easter Weekend at home

Easter Weekend at home

By Allan Olson

For the first time, we stayed home on Easter Weekend. In all my life, I’ve celebrated Easter with my family and, after I got married, with my wife’s family as well.

This year, we decided to stay home. We had no visitors of any kind over the weekend, but we still managed to have fun. All by ourselves.

While the weather could have been nicer, it wasn’t snowing or raining, so we managed to enjoy the outdoors most of the weekend.

Friday evening was spent not doing much of anything. We went for a walk and not much more.

On Saturday, I decided to break out the old mower and try to clean up some tall, brown, grassy weeds outside the normal mowed area. After checking the oil and putting in some gas (I didn’t fill it up because I wasn’t sure if the mower would start or if it would be effective at the job), I set to work. While I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, it was at least as difficult, even more than I thought it would be. The mower worked, even though it took several runs over the same area to mow it down noticeably. I was working way too hard for a holiday weekend, and the dust from the grass was wreaking havoc on my allergies.

I had about given up on the task at hand when I noticed my girls sauntering over to visit. Parched and tired, I shut the mower down and sat on the grass to wait for them. The girls both had apples in hand, and I asked Abigail for a bite. Kindly, she let her dad take a bite of her apple, which helped my dry throat tremendously. We played on the grass for a bit, and I decided I was done with the mower. They walked back toward the house with me, and I put the mower away.

That evening I started making rolls with the kids. Usually this is a fun, simple and carefree process; I just go with the flow. This time, however, things were different.

I haven’t made rolls since Thanksgiving, the day the control board in our oven burned out and left us without an oven for nearly a month. Rolls were made a little over a month ago, but I had little do with the process that time, as my nieces did most of the work.

This time, it was all me, and of course the kids wanted to help, too. I let Nikolai start things out. He had trouble rolling out the dough and really had one messed up. No problem; I gave him another one to do.

Then Abigail’s turn was up. Being her normal flighty self, she decided to not really participate, and left in mid-process. Marcus was quick to help, and ultimately finished all the remaining loaves except the final one, when he said, “I don’t want to do it, you can.” Abigail returned wanting to help, but I chased her away because she had left the work before, and now I wanted it done. She really didn’t care, and left to play some more. Now usually, I get everything for the caramel prepped before starting on the rolling of the dough. For some reason(?) this time I didn’t. I would start putting the ingredients in the pan and then forget about it while I was helping the kids rolling the dough. In between helping with the rolling and doing the cutting, I did manage to get the ingredients for the caramel into the pan, and I stirred it a couple of times to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Then I got busy helping the kids, and when I looked back at the stove I realized I had completely forgotten about it. Thankfully, it was just bubbling away (not over) and it hadn’t scorched.

Finally, I got the rolls ready for the oven, which is usually the easy part. Since the hour was late, I tried to make two pans at the same time, like my mother-in-law showed me. For some reason, that only seems to work for her, or for me if she is nearby. This time, I burned one pan, and on the other the caramel completely stuck to the pan. I was crabby. My wife earlier commented online, “It is quite funny listening to Allan panic over making rolls with his kids (without the help of the nieces.)” When she saw me scraping the rolls out of the pan, she just said, “I’m going to walk away now.” I think she could tell I was not pleased with the outcome of the project.

I finally finished that project, cleaned things up and went to bed.

On Sunday morning, the kids got up to look for Easter eggs. More than once, someone would ask if the eggs were downstairs (even though they were all downstairs when mom hid them) or outside. Finally, it was dinner time, which featured a meal of mashed potatoes, ham and pumpkin cake made by Abigail, along with Oreo cookie pudding made by Mom and Marcus. It was a marvelous feast for a family of six.

In all, it was a fun weekend, consisting of walks, playing in the yard with the baseball, messing around outside and, of course, fine dining.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week. Remember – watch out for school buses on the road and please be safe on those cold lakes. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.

P.S. I notified my nieces of my deep appreciation for their assistance in making rolls. Of course I will let the kids help again, and next time I hope to be better organized. Despite the fun, quiet weekend, I think next year it will be nice to be with family again.