By Allan Olson
It’s hard to define when exactly the weekend was
in the last two weeks, with the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in the
middle of the week pretty much messing up everyone’s work schedules.
We had a house full of company beginning New
Year’s Eve and lasting until about noon on New Year ’s Day. That company
included a total of nine kids ranging in age from six months to 16 years, along
with five adults and one dog. It was a madhouse affair with kids running
everywhere, but it wasn’t too bad since they spent the majority of their time
downstairs while the adults and the oldest and youngest kid spent their time
upstairs. I got to spend lots of time spoiling my youngest niece (as I write
this I’m expecting my first great-niece to be born), until she got smelly and
fussy, and then I handed her back to her designated babysitter for the weekend.
I enjoyed my time with her, getting her to laugh and smile, and recalling when
my kids were that little and cute, and didn’t fight and argue or talk back.
However, both my wife and I agreed that we were sure glad we were done with that
stage when the little one woke up fussing the next morning. I felt a little
guilty that I should go attend to her, but I was not her babysitter, and soon
Grandma had a bottle ready and she was content again. Once it was really time to
get up, I took my turn at spoiling her some more, like any good uncle would do.
While I was doing that, Abigail, always the mother hen, kept trying to take her
from me, wanting to spoil her little cousin.
Once our company departed, I asked Marcus and
Alivia if they wanted to go find a newly listed geocache with me. After
initially agreeing, they changed their minds and said “No, thanks.” I was okay
with that. I was tired and wasn’t going out alone; a nap was in order. A couple
of hours later I was awake again and reading when Marcus, apparently bored, came
and asked if we could still go. I looked at the clock – it read 2:30 – and I
said, “Sure.” Nikolai quickly joined in, “Me, too!” I told them both to get
ready, and by 3:15 p.m. we were heading down the highway toward our destination,
near Lake Plantagenet south of Bemidji.
We soon arrived and headed off on our quest to
find the new cache. We started in one direction, but soon discovered that it was
the wrong way. We looked in a nearby culvert to see if that’s where it was
hidden, and the boys spotted it nearly simultaneously, with Marcus just a
split-second faster to verbalize his claim. The boys jumped up out of the ditch,
crossed the highway and tumbled down the other side of the road (Nikolai,
literally). When we reached the other end of the culvert, we found that it was
blocked with grates, so the boys raced back to the other side and crawled all
the way across to the end where I was waiting to take their photo with the new
cache.
Back in the van, I looked for another cache to
locate in the chilly -15 winter air. I located one that was a possibility
nearby, and we took off in that direction. I made a wrong turn on a dead end
road, so our destination time was extended a bit, but we eventually made it to
the location. From the road it was another 600 feet through the snow to the
cache. The boys said, “Let’s do it!” So we did. Thankfully, Marcus spotted the
little cache sticking just out of the snow, and we had our second geocache of
the night. When we got back to the van and were warming up again, Nikolai said,
“No more,” but Marcus said, “One more,” and I agreed with Marcus, so I looked on
my app to see if there was another cache close by.
We soon arrived at that spot – it was another
remote boat landing – and started our 400-foot trek through the snowy woods to
the cache site. I made the find this time, and we all headed back to the warm
van again. This time we were definitely done. We had only been caching an hour,
but the sun was setting and the kids had school the next day – well, they were
supposed to, but the cold persisted and school was closed. Regardless, it was a
great way to spend time with my boys in the great outdoors, and we had a lot of
fun.
I went to the CL-B basketball game by myself on
Friday night; the kids stayed home where it was warm. Saturday was mostly a
leisurely day until the evening, when the boys and I went to work on cleaning
their room. Eventually we were able to find the floor, after we got the toys,
clothing and other stuff all picked up. We also took some time to straighten
their bookshelf and vacuum the now-visible floor.
On Sunday morning we receive notification that
our niece was in the hospital and ready to have her baby, but by Sunday evening
we were all still waiting (especially the parents!).
This week my wife will leave me for her annual
two-day fishing trip in memory of her father; my plans for the weekend (if the
weather actually warms up, as predicted) could include some more winter
geocaching.
Comments
Post a Comment