"My Crazy Kids"

Go West, Young Man, Go West By Allan Olson Just like in the olden days, the call last weekend was to “go west” (for a one day road trip). No, we didn’t go in search of whiskey, women and gold, but rather to visit our new niece who has opted for an extended stay in the hospital, requiring more care than the smaller local facilities can provide. Since she was born, my wife and I have discussed making the trip to see her, but we were thinking about waiting until she got home – but we didn’t. We discussed it more on Friday night and finally, after a late night movie, we decided we would head to Grand Forks on Saturday, but on the way there and back we were going to do some geocaching and hit some rummage sales. Oddly(?) the kids seemed more excited about the rummage sale idea than geocaching when we woke them up early the next morning. We left home about 7 a.m.; my wife and I got about four hours of sleep before the 5:30 a.m. wake-up (it was a late movie) and then ...

 A Weekend of Memories By Allan Olson It really was a fun and memorable weekend – for that matter, there were a lot of fun aspects to the whole week. My wife and I celebrated our 14 th  anniversary on Wednesday; I had her and the kids ride with me on the paper route – oh, joy! – and that evening I had a meeting, but at least we were all together. We took our nephew back home on Thursday evening, and no, the stork didn’t cooperate, so a special trip will be needed to see the new baby when that happens. The trip north was quick; we spent more time on the road than anything. Prior to that road trip, we went looking for a recently listed geocache near our home. Marcus made quick work of it, finding the cache before everyone was even out of the van! We were able to claim first-to-find rights on that one. Friday evening was spent relaxing and not doing much of anything. My mouth was still a little sore from a visit to the dentist, so I didn’t feel like ...

Off and away! By Allan Olson Off and away is exactly how I feel this summer is going to go – very fast – which isn’t a terrible thing, since the kids are going to triple our food bill this summer, being at home all day, every day. During the last two weeks of school it really sunk in just how fast not only summer was going to go, but how fast my kids are going to grow up. My last child will make the transition from being a pre-schooler to being a kindergarten student in the fall; my oldest son will be making his way from the elementary to middle school when he enters the fifth grade; and my twins will be entering second grade. It’s just plain crazy how time has flown by. It was 11 years ago this week, close to Father’s Day, that I found out I was going to be a father. I was pretty excited – my wife even gave me a Father’s Day card for the first time! Flash forward: now I have a nearly carbon copy of myself – although hopefully he will continue on his way to being s...

Milestone reached By Allan Olson It seems that there never is enough time in a day or week to complete the projects that need to be done, and last weekend was no exception. On Friday afternoon, we had one goal in mind – we wanted to reach 300 geocaches by the end of May. To accomplish that, we had to find 14 caches, and since it was the last day of May we didn’t have much time – but by 6 p.m. we managed to reach our goal! To celebrate, we didn’t cook; we bought frozen pizza and had a simple meal (with little cleaning up afterward). On this geocaching segment, we made it a contest to see who could be the first to #300 where we would meet up. It was boys versus girls, and this time the boys won. On Saturday, I was hoping we could hit the trail again early to raise our cache total up a little higher, but the weather turned out to be not favorable for us to be out in it. The rainy weather, combined with the cool June 1 temperatures, made it a stay-at-home day. We almost...