"My Crazy Kids"

Busy Times By Allan Olson So why is it when you have company, or if you’re out of town, the time flies by extremely fast, but when you have nothing to do and the house is quiet, time drags by like pushing a car down the highway inch by inch? Well, I don’t have an answer for it, but last weekend flew by – all three days of it. My brother and sister-in-law and their family arrived at our house on Friday night, ready for a weekend of fun. We spent most of that evening visiting and hit the sack early. The kids were up early on Saturday, and as much as we wanted to ignore them, soon their demands to be fed forced us to comply. That afternoon we headed to the tubing hill, a group of two adults and seven kids ages 5-13. At first I tried keeping the younger ones close with an older cousin, but that plan didn’t work for long. Abigail and Marcus had just been tubing with their classmates on Thursday and had no intention of waiting around for anyone, and Alivia was just as determined. ...

 Five Day Weekend By Allan Olson Another weekend just flew by – and it was not just any weekend, it was one that lasted five days for the kids. It wasn’t spring break, summer vacation or Christmas break – when you add on the snow day it was sorta like conferences with an extra day. The children’s “vacation” started on Thursday with a day of terrorizing the house, throwing fits because they couldn’t sit where they wanted in the van, or some other silly reason. In all it was not a great start to the first day of vacation. And it was Nikolai’s birthday. He maintained pretty decent behavior; for some reason he wanted his birthday party to go off without a hitch. The fun started on Friday afternoon – at least for Nikolai and the two school friends he invited to his small birthday bash. They were both at our house by 3 p.m., and they got right to it, playing games and legos and Wii games, watching movies and I’m not sure what else. They played outside, way in the backyard, buil...

A Long Weekend By Allan Olson In comparison to the previous weekend, last weekend was quite unadventurous. I know I did as little as possible over the two days, while the kids had to clean the living room after they trashed it on their unexpected day off. They also ended up cleaning their bedrooms on Saturday – a horrible punishment for any child. For reasons I can’t understand, the boys were able to perform the simple task of cleaning their room very quickly. At least they said they were done. When I went to check, somehow I found more for them to do in their room, and eventually, after a few trips back, they did get the job done. The girls, on the other hand, wow! They didn’t put up as much of a fight, but they certainly took their sweet time. I would sneak downstairs from time to time and find that they were trying to watch television like the boys were allowed to after they were done with their room. I had to chase them back to cleaning their room. Then I would forget abo...