A fun and productive weekend!


A fun and productive weekend
By Allan Olson
They say all work and no play makes for a long day. This past weekend was full of work and play.
Friday was a great evening for baseball, and even though the home team lost, it was still a lot of fun to watch.
The work started on Saturday morning. It was time to do some “deep” cleaning in the house, so we did. All the kids had chores to help with, and for the most part, they did. Abigail apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and so was sent back there. It turned out that she really did need to go back, as she fell fast asleep with little complaining about how unfair it was that she was back in bed. About an hour later, she woke up in a much better mood (although she was still largely unproductive in her cleaning effort).
After lunch, with the house looking in better shape, it was time to head outside to start on our “hay” field. Since my wife started working on the lawn Friday night, I needed to get it finished. Our grass had launched itself to a rampant start, and the yellow weeds were literally taking over the yard.
Nikolai is a year older, and I was hoping that he could mow the lawn a little bit straighter than last year. I gave him the good push mower, sectioned off a flat chunk for him to mow and headed off toward a trickier part of the yard with the older, not-so-good mower. Of course, we were in opposite corners of the yard, as far away from each other without being in the front of the house. I had barely gotten started when I saw that he had shut his mower off and couldn’t get it started. I walked back over and got him going again. Then I got my clunker started and made a couple rounds. I saw Nikolai was stopped again and trying to get his mower going. Slightly frustrated, I headed back over to help him out. This time he had hit a big ant hill that stopped the mower. I got him going for the second time and asked him to please try not to shut it off again.
He finished his first piece – a little crooked, but good enough. I got him going on another chunk, and he finished that even faster. When I checked on that one, I could tell he had hurried a little bit – there were some patches of grass missed. But I wasn’t going to make him re-do it; rather, I got him started on his third piece.
I finally got two of the tougher, thicker areas of grass mowed, and by then the other kids decided they wanted to help mow. That, in itself, is an experience. Alivia thought she could do it herself, but found she didn’t have the strength to push the mower on her own. Using the good mower, I showed her how the self-propelled drive works and we both hung on, nearly running behind the mower. She thought that was a blast, and made sure to tell her sister about using it when it was her turn. In this case, thankfully, it doesn’t always engage, so I didn’t need to run for long.
That evening, we dined on potatoes grilled in the oven (prepared by my wife) along with steaks on the grill for the adults and corn dogs for the kids (although the kids had eaten some of the corn dogs still half-frozen before I got them on the grill). “We like them this way,” Marcus said.
Mother’s Day
I cooked breakfast on Sunday – French Toast and sausage. I had no kids helping, which made it easier. No, it wasn’t a gourmet meal, but it was edible. Mom continued the Shrek movie marathon with the kids. Sunday afternoon, we both finished the mowing. The old mower decided it didn’t want to start anymore, so I finished with the good mower. All that was left was the trimming and the front ditch, very minor parts of the big yard, and then we were all done with the mowing.
Sunday afternoon we went geocaching for the first time as a family. It was fun! We found our first geocache close to Cass Lake, failed at finding another one near Wolf Lake, and managed to find a total of five of seven attempts on our voyage that included a trip around the Pike Bay Loop. The kids enjoyed looking for the “treasure” boxes as much or more than we adults did. We found our last treasure box of the day at Knutson Dam and headed home to cook burgers on the grill to end our fun and productive weekend. This weekend, hopefully, will be spent fishing on Lake of the Woods.
Please be safe on the lakes this weekend – wear your life jacket, keep the kids safe, and remember to take a picture to preserve a lifetime memory.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week. Remember – watch out for school buses on the road. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.

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