"My Crazy Kids"

Another Wintery Weekend By Allan Olson It’s the gift that keeps on giving, this winter season (yes, to me it is still winter) that just doesn’t want to give way to spring. While I haven’t closely inspected the trees, it appears that they have yet to bud. However, some the squirrels are starting to run around, and the geese and ducks are starting to trend toward what little open water there is, and other animals are starting to appear from their winter hideouts. This weekend, it dropped down to a chilly 16 degrees overnight Friday, and for that I was thankful. We decided that the whole family was going to go to the big rummage sale in Bemidji on Saturday, but the only way that could happen was if our road froze. We were up and out of the house by 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, taking a chance that the road was frozen enough that our van wouldn’t get lost in the mud hole our road has become – and it was! Seeing that, we all piled into the van and headed to town for the ...

I’m Tired of This! By Allan Olson I’ve used this line for a lot of things, including when the kids are fighting: “Will you quit fighting, I’m tired of this!” or when they are playing instead of doing their work, like cleaning their room. My latest frustration is with the weather. While I know there isn’t anything I can do about it, even if I yell at it and gripe, it still doesn’t matter. I watched the snow as it started to fall – again – on Sunday evening, and I all I could think is, “I’m tired of this!” I also know that I’m not alone in that feeling; you know winter has gone on long enough when the kids are tired of it, too. Look outside, I told the kids, as the snow really started to come down. “When will it stop?” Alivia said. “I can’t take this snow anymore. I wanna ride bike.” Nikolai yelled at the snow to go away last week, when there were just a few flurries in the air. For the last two months, all I’ve heard is “When can I ride my bike?” My answer is, “When th...

Family Weekend By Allan Olson It was a family affair for us last weekend; we spent the time together cleaning and going to town, with no extra company. We decided it was time for the kids to clean their rooms on Saturday; it had been too long of a hiatus. In the end we helped them a little, putting on the finishing touches. While they were hard at it, we did some cleaning throughout the rest of the house, too. Of course, there were the usual fights about someone not helping, and so some kids were assigned to different parts of the house in order to get some work done. The boys’ room was finished first, and since Alivia wasn’t making much progress in the girls’ room, the rest of the kids had to help her finish. Next up, we decided to go to the Festival of Nations in Bemidji, hoping for a multi-cultural experience for the kids to learn more about their nationalities. What we found was a loosely organized event that we found difficult to understand. Even though we had...

Easter Weekend By Allan Olson It finally feels like spring might actually reach the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota. It was so warm this past weekend that the snow was falling off our garage – so much so that it blocked the entry or exit of our vehicles. Yes, I did try to drive into the garage despite the pile of snow and no, I was not successful and no, I did not push my luck for fear of damage to the vehicle. Instead, late Friday afternoon I enlisted the help of Nikolai and my nephew Mike to do some shoveling in front of the garage. We removed the heavy snow that fell off the roof and some more that they had knocked down. With that task done, I turned my eyes to the roof of my house and pondered if I wanted to climb up and tackle the snow that remained on the roof. I went in search of the ice cleats that I haven’t used in about three years and, surprisingly, they were right where I put them after we moved to the new house. I struggled to pull them on over m...