"My Crazy Kids"

An Adventurous Weekend By Allan Olson Now, by and large, I’m not an adventurous person. I’m not into risk taking or spontaneous decisions, as they would very likely backfire on me – so I just avoid them. This weekend, I made an exception. What an awesome adventurous weekend! The weather was nice as well, since it was above the donut. On Saturday, January 26, I not only had the opportunity to cover the 12th Annual Multi-Agency Rescue on the ice of Cass Lake, but I was given the chance to participate. This event is put on each year to give the local fire fighters a chance to hone up their life saving skills in the unfortunate event someone goes through the ice. Two years ago when I last covered the ice rescue, I was asked if I wanted to participate. I quickly declined. I’m not much into water when I can’t touch bottom and was apprehensive about doing it. This year, I decided that if I was asked, I just might do it – unless I backed out at the last moment. After watching them ...

It’s cold outside By Allan Olson Okay, one thing’s a given – its’ cold outside. All a person needs to do is step outside, and they might think, “Why would anyone want to live in this icebox?” The weather this past weekend has been downright “frightful,” but not all together unusual. I know in my lifetime, I’ve certainly experienced weather much colder than this. The weekend included battling “a cold” and “the cold,” along with a trek to Park Rapids for our first geocaching party of 2013. We enjoyed pizza, visiting and did a little shopping while in town. The strong winds and the below zero temperatures did deter us from joining some of the other crazy geocachers on a venture out onto Lake Belle Taine at Nevis to do some island caching. We figured between the wintry conditions and the fact we were driving a loaner vehicle (our van’s in the body shop) we probably shouldn’t push our luck and try “ice road trucking” – but man, was it tempting. On the way home we noticed that they...

 A Wintery Mix In keeping with my New Year’s resolution to do more fishing, we did some fishing last Friday afternoon. The wintery mix of weather that provided a gorgeous 50 degree day on January 10 soon showed its true colors when the skies began to dump rain on us. By morning the back roads were a frozen mess; school was delayed and then cancelled for most area schools. A little past 9 a.m. I decided that it was time to finish packing the van and load the kids and Bob the dog and hit the road – so we did. We covered the first 20 miles very slowly and carefully, until we reached the main highway. After looking at the passing traffic, we quickly realized that it was going to be a good ride north. The highway departments (county and state) must have been working hard Thursday night into Friday morning, as both Highways 71 and 72 were in prime driving condition. I set the cruise at 60 and headed toward the lake. After a short detour to pick up two nieces and a nephew, we he...

Happy New Year By Allan Olson By all accounts, the New Year’s weekend was the quietest we’ve had in our home in many years. We had no guests – just ourselves to put up with. We spent the weekend lounging around, playing games and watching movies with the kids. There were a couple of recent releases on our movie list – Ice Age 3 and the latest Madagascar – and both provided laughs for all ages. One evening I took out a deck of cards, and Alivia and I played a match game. Mom joined in partway through, and still managed to beat us both. The next afternoon, a persistent Alivia goaded me into challenging her to one more game and I was soundly defeated again. Out of a possible 26 pairs, she got 20! Apparently I need to work on my memory skills a bit. We also took some time to hide a geocache right in the Cass Lake area, with the plan of releasing it on New Year’s Day – except someone (that would be me) missed a number when writing down the coordinates, so the release had to be pos...

A Merry Road Trip By Allan Olson Christmas went by in a whirl this year, with about six hours of a 14-hour day spent behind the windshield of the van. We completed all of our Christmas baking on Saturday evening, baking the last of six pies for the family. Earlier in December we had browsed through various cookbooks for pies to fit selected family members’ tastes. We also made an extra pie for another relative who we knew would be joining us for Christmas. On Sunday morning we woke up early and got everyone fed and ready to rumble. We pulled out of the driveway by 8:30 a.m., and made it to my parents’ church at Lake of the Woods just in time for services. Afterwards, we feasted on a scrumptious meal and visited with family for a few hours (and opened a few presents, too) before venturing off to another Christmas party in International Falls. After partaking in more food, companionship and gifts, we were back on the road again. We headed for home, and had the van ...