"My Crazy Kids"

Geocaching in the Foothills By Allan Olson Another weekend flew by as the fun stacked up all day on Saturday and a moderately productive day on Sunday. The weekend plans were made to hang out with other like minded individuals (geocachers) by starting out the day cleaning our 2-mile stretch of highway between Park Rapids and Menahga. With that morning event set for 9 a.m. knowing we would need only about two hours to clean the stretch of highway several of us made plans for the rest of the day. Prior to leaving the house that morning I stocked up on sandwich meat and water along with a few snacks, I also bought donuts that morning as a bribe for them not to complain so we were ready to cache for the day. Our target was to finish off where we started last fall – back in the Foothills State Forest near Pine River. After some online discussion we finalized our plans and the route we would take. The plan would have us skipping several caches along the way – but doing this knowing...

Photo: Nikolai and I after the canoe trip through the river and on Three Island Lake, near Turtle River. Weekend Canoe Trip By Allan Olson Every weekend I try to find something fun to do – at least for one of the two days and this weekend, Nikolai a friend of ours and I ventured out for a canoe ride. On Saturday morning I started out by cleaning my van – a full 30 minutes later, I finally accomplished this task, then it was time for the weekly garbage run that took another good sum of time while I filled the van with bags of garbage and made my run to the dump.  With the morning work out of the way I had a delicious ham omelet breakfast prepared by my wife and then set to grabbing a few supplies I would need for my adventure. While the original plan was just for myself and a friend to go, Nikolai also ended up joining the party and truthfully it was a good thing he was with as he proved himself helpful a time or two. Our first stop was to meet someone who wou...

Weekend Activities By Allan Olson I really think that maybe we are doing things wrong in life – the weekend goes by in a blur while the weekdays tick slowly by. There is never enough time in a weekend to do all the fun things a person wants to do, let alone all the “chores” that need to be done. The last two weekends have been so busy we haven’t had much for down time, its run here and run there and before we know it’s after 10 p.m. Sunday night and it’s time to start the work week. Prior to discussing the weekends activities of myself and my crazy family – I need to back up a little to April 1, since I failed to mention it in last week’s column with all the Easter activities. First – I hope everyone enjoyed our April fools edition; it truly was a lot of fun to put the stories together and listen to the reactions from people after. In my house, I’m not much of a ‘prankster’ I love to tease my kids but I don’t play pranks on them. This year on the first day of April...

Easter Weekend By Allan Olson Our weekend adventure this week included a road trip to International Falls and Baudette, along with a birthday party and Easter dinner and of course we managed a little geocaching in the mix as well. Friday evening as we were preparing to head north the next morning I decided to check and see what geocaches we could find on our route and how much time we were going to have. I punched in the area that I was going through and started studying the map, by the time I was done I had two scenarios planned based on the amount of time we would have. The first scenario – the one I favored would have us traveling backroads to International Falls – roads that I’ve never traveled on and haven’t had a reason to until geocaching. The second route was to just grab one or two along the normal route to I. Falls. The next morning I pitched the ideas to my wife, our plan was to leave by 1 p.m. in time for the 4 p.m. birthday party, she was fine with th...

#6076—The kids enjoyed the hike to find this lonely geocache, despite the windy conditions that made the actual temperature feel a little cool in the afternoon sun. Enjoying the outdoors By Allan Olson My incessant need to keep moving and be busy took over again this weekend as the family was kept busy over the course of Saturday and Sunday with very little screen time for us and plenty of outdoor activity. The weekend started with Friday night which resulted in doing some cleaning in the house, I informed the kids that they needed to clean a few certain areas before the television or computer could be used. They eventually complied and that evening they had a couple hours of screen time before I sent them to bed at their normal weekday time. Of course – if they had listened to me earlier in the day and not made my crabby at them then they would’ve enjoyed a little extra screen time. Saturday morning – I slept in, by a whole 30 minutes, I made it until the la...