"My Crazy Kids"

Tired out... Marcus and Alivia were tired out Friday afternoon after putting in several hours of work and they took advantage of the short but slow trip back to their grandparents from the landfill by taking an energizer nap in the rickety old truck. Photo by Allan Olson.   A Father’s Love By Allan Olson This Father’s day weekend however wasn’t about me, but rather about my own father and my mother also since it dually affects her as well. The weekend plans were set pretty firmly the week prior when one of my brothers discovered that my parent’s basement had flooded while they are on vacation. For reasons unknown their sump pump failed to kick in and in a week’s time 2.5 feet of water took over the basement. While the basement wasn’t finished, there were still two rooms downstairs and of course years of miscellaneous stuff, that was taken over by the water. My oldest brother and family were down the next day and pumped the water out and used the wet-vac and h...

Summer Weekend Fun By Allan Olson The weekend was a blast, we as a family were busy all three days of the weekend but, it was a fun three days. It started out with a movie date for my wife and I on Friday as we celebrated another anniversary, my wife’s mom and our nephew came down to stay with the kids while we went out. We took in the movie Spy and left their in stitches, we found a dining establishment had a quick bite to eat and made our way home. On Saturday, I spent my time covering the Chippewa Triathlon with Nikolai and my nephew Michael hanging out as well. That evening, we filled up the mowers and got started with the mowing, with all three of us doing something to help with the process. We worked until after 8:30 p.m. and still didn’t get the lawn finished, while there was still some daylight at that time; we had an appointment with the fire along with some marshmallows to roast and enjoy. We wound the evening down by the fire until the state insect finally ...

Photo: The kids enjoyed all that the fort at Grand Portage had to offer, including climbing in this lookout tower. North Shore Camping Adventures By Allan Olson Our weekend was spent – camping and exploring just a fraction of all the North Shore has to offer. As a kid I went as far as Grand Marais and as a family, we’ve taken Nikolai only to Gooseberry Falls – but that time frame was at least 10 years ago and the reminder of our family had yet to experience the great beauty of the great falls. We booked our reservations early this spring and while we were expecting it to be a little cooler than most of the state, even this was a little much for our hearty camping family. We arrived at our campsite Thursday evening  taking in a few sites along the way trying to dodge rain showers, our timing at the park was right on in terms of the rain as we managed to get our tents set-up before the rain came back. Of course the rain came back as we were finishing up and we dec...

Turtles in a half shell – turtle power! – Okay not really, but these painted turtles sure were enjoying their sun-bathing on a log in a local swamp. Photo by Allan Olson. Another weekend bites the dust By Allan Olson The appeal of the rural life is the sounds of nature and not the sounds of sirens and traffic, at our house most of Saturday morning it wasn’t the sounds of nature that we heard but rather the sounds of mowers. Thankfully, Nikolai is now old enough, rather big enough to keep the mower running and I set him to the task of completing the mowing that needed done, at least the areas I wanted him to get done. While he was working on that, I was running the weed trimmer, to get all the areas I couldn’t get close enough to with the mower. In addition, I also had a turn at the mower taking down some tall grass in areas that I didn’t want him driving on, in case something broke, that way it would be my fault rather than his and he wouldn’t get the blame for bei...