Summer Fun

Summer Fun

By Allan Olson

If last week is any indication of how the rest of the summer is going to be, I think I’d like to fast forward until September when school resumes and some normalcy (if that exists) returns.

We celebrated the kindergarten graduation of Marcus and Abigail last week and Nikolai finished his final day of third grade on Friday. With that, it is now the beginning of a busy summer for us.

On Friday night we had a fire and a enjoyed a game of dodge ball in the back yard. We eventually succumbed to sleep, after trying to watch a movie, with all of us (even the kids) proving too tired to watch the whole thing.

Saturday was another very busy day. Some of us slept in – making it until at least 7 a.m. – and then the day began. While the kids were busy, I decided to make use of some “spare” time and work in the garage. I began moving boxes, sorting more stuff, and doing some general cleaning.

I was just getting further into the “mess” when I was told it was time to head to Bemidji for some geocaching.

While my wife went one direction to another appointment, and my brother went to another destination with Nikolai and his cousin Mike, the younger kids and my niece Makaylah headed down a bike trail in search of our first cache. We were 0-2 on our first attempts at a couple of microcaches. We were almost certain that one of them was in the lake, since we couldn’t find it hanging on any of the trees or anywhere else.

We finally scored on our third attempt – or rather, Abigail did. I told Marcus to check out the metal pole in the field of grass, and he said nothing was there. Makaylah and I kept looking, but we were going in circles. Meanwhile, Abigail went to examine the pole. “I found a magnet,” she exclaimed as she was playing with it in her hand. It took a second to register, and then we realized that she had found the geocache!

“I found it, too,” Marcus said. “I just didn’t want to take it.” Perhaps he was embarrassed that his sister had found it in the same spot where we told him too look. Or another plausible explanation was that he actually did see it, but unlike his sister, was not about to move anything from anywhere without permission.

Excited that we weren’t going to be shut out, we moved on.

Our next three stops were all microcaches, and we found them all with very little effort, aside from the amount of walking it took to get to those places.

Finally, we were able to escape the heat when mom arrived to pick us up. We were nearly to Nymore, having starting near the hotel on the lake.

We met up with the rest of our party and hit two more stops. The first was the skate park, where three treasures were hidden.

We split into two teams and took off. My team found the first cache, and moved on to the second. My brother (the favorite uncle) had the youngest three in tow and our niece babysitter Makaylah. She crossed a log and ended up in a mud hole and got soaked, but she found the cache. The rest of us were amused at her misfortune. We headed toward home after finding those three caches, and stopped at one more park where two more geocaches were hidden.

We decided to make a race of this one. We started from a spot that was nearly identical in distance and took off with the same teams as before. My team had the smallest cache and the furthest distance, and we made it back to the vehicle first. A clear victory, we thought. The boys and I decided to go help the others, and after searching for at least 20 minutes longer, we gave up. That cache defeated us – for the time being.

After a quick trip to a couple of graduation parties, I returned home to grill some steaks. They were awesome and, surprisingly, disappeared quickly.

After supper, the older boys, Makaylah, my brother and my wife headed out in search of another four caches. They found a couple and climbed a challenging hill.

Much to the disappointment of the youngest three, they had to stay home with dad. I started a fire, and the kids and I enjoyed the cool summer air and the nice warm fire. The others returned, and we started another game of dodgeball. We wrapped things up at midnight after a few games of euchre.

Nobody moved fast for a long time on Sunday. That evening, after supper with some guests, we started another game of dodgeball. It was an earlier bedtime on Sunday, with all of us kinda worn out from the weekend.

If every weekend is going to be this much fun, we will definitely be spoiled when winter returns – but probably in need of much rest and relaxation!

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. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.