Off and away!

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 smarter than his father. Of course, it’s great that he can help me out on the job taking photos, and if I could get him to take notes and write stories, I could just collect the money and make him do all the work – right? This week at the Take a Kid Fishing event, I was busy and he saw a photo opportunity – someone with their biggest fish of the day – so he grabbed the extra camera and took the photo along with a few others, all without being asked, and without my knowledge, until after the fact.
On Saturday we attended the 18th Annual Chippewa Triathlon. This was the third year he has accompanied me, and this year I took my nephew (also 10) with to watch these amazing competitors. At the beginning my nephew was content to just watch and not take any photos, but pretty soon he was getting into it, too, and he and Nikolai were content sharing a camera for a little while and before I left, I thought about grabbing the extra camera, but I didn’t. When we got to our favorite spot to take pictures – where the participants enter the second culvert – my nephew got excited and wanted to shoot some more, so I told Nikolai he had to share. No problem – he just took my new camera away from me! I guess I had to share, too. From that point forward I took very few pictures, and let the boys click away. Click they did, shooting over 1,000 frames combined – thank goodness for digital cameras. Of those, Nikolai had 64 frames of the same person coming in to the finish line and my nephew had 67 – crazy kids. That evening, I edited the photos and found some really good ones (and some really bad ones) and deleted the majority, leaving fewer than 400. I will likely delete more.
The rest of the kids showed up at Norway Beach to watch some of the runners cross the finish line, and watching them made me realize even more that they are growing up much faster than I could’ve imagined.
On Sunday it was time to do some geocaching, but the weather didn’t cooperate. It started raining before we got to Cass Lake to hit the trail. Instead, we decided to try a couple of caches that weren’t on the trail. We headed down the Cuba Hill road to find a cache that hadn’t been found in over two years in the experimental forest. We knew going in that cell phone service would be sketchy there, which would affect our GPS. The hint gave a pretty accurate clue on where and what to look for; some of us went deeper into the woods, but my wife found the cache close to the road. While tramping around, Alivia got a little scared when she was startled by the flutter of wings and found she had come within 20 feet of a mallard duck – it was quite amusing.
The next cache we wanted to find looked like we might need at the very least waterproof boots, so we passed, even though my nephew offered to go in barefoot. The next one was one we had tried to locate a couple of weeks ago. It was named Michigan Dime, which I have since learned is a pop can. After extensive searching by my wife, nephew and Nikolai, my nephew made the find, just as I got out to help (thankfully, I didn’t have to get much wetter). With that, we were pretty much done for the day and headed home to get out of our wet clothes and shoes.
Since my birthday is fast approaching and it’s Father’s Day this weekend, I hope to find time either for fishing or geocaching, but my plans are mostly undecided at this point. We will be returning our nephew home this week, and with a new niece expected any day, it’s very likely my wife will be making that road trip north, and if the stork cooperates, she will be able to accomplish the mission with one trip. Oh, and some German Chocolate cake is also in store for this weekend – or perhaps Peanut Butter cheesecake. Either one is going to taste great!

Thanks for reading, and remember to be safe on those lakes while enjoying the summer and be sure to spend some time with kids. Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe weekend. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com

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