A Clean House

Marcus – doesn’t mind climbing the trees to explore possibilities for hiding new caches. It’s helpful to have four kids eager to climb and a lot more limber when it comes to exploring these trees that blew down in the storm three years ago.

A Clean House
By Allan Olson
It’s a house of madness and my kids are creating it, the summer schedule with all the time on their hands are catching up to them and the time they spend at home versus at school is also showing its wear and tear on the house.
Over the last two weeks we’ve tried to have an entire house clean at the same time but it never fails – we get one room clean and then another gets trashed. If we get the downstairs cleaned – the upstairs suffers in the process or vice –versa. The kids seemed to be destined to make the downstairs their jungle gym. Several times a week – or possibly a day they need to re-clean a mess they just made, usually consisting of their toys or pillows, blankets etc to jump on. This weekend the kids cleaned their mess up once again –but like usual it didn’t seem to last long.  We’ve explained to the kids multiple times that if they took 30 seconds to clean up after themselves it wouldn’t take near enough work at the end of the day to clean up the mess they made. Instead – like most kids they continue to leave a wake of disaster in their trails behind them and depending on the type of mess we can usually pin-point what child deserves the job of cleaning it back up. 
Clothes are also a never ending battle – unless we physically make sure they put away each item of clothing – well it could be found in the wash clean and unworn the next time they clean their room.  Of course as a parent it’s easier to get frustrated by these problems but we can only hope that someday they will learn.
We finally took to escaping the house on Saturday evening, going out for a walk on the MiGiZi trail looking for a few places to hide some geocaches. The trail was great but the bugs were greater – in particular the buzzing state insect which flocked to us the minute we stopped walking. Thankfully, we only took a mile chunk of the trail and we finally gave up looking for unique hiding places and concentrated to a fast walk to the waiting vehicle.  After that we drove down various roads plotting, planning and occasionally hiding one for a future visitor to the area. After we finally arrived back home I fired up the weed eating machine and did some trimming to the more visible areas of the yard as requested. I finished for the night just in time to dodge the incoming rain showers and just as the last of my weed string was at the end of its usefulness.
On Sunday – we stayed close to the house most of the day again – trying to seek some cool in the raging heat. The evening found us playing some baseball at Ferris Park with a few other kids – until the lighting decided to move in. We abandoned the field and made our way towards home watching the wind howl and the storm move closer. Thankfully – the storm moved on and the worst of it missed us completely, hopefully the rest of the summer storms will be as kind.
The plans for this weekend include a camping trip, seeing some bears, finding a few caches, touring a mine and likely hitting the lake for a little bit of swimming. If we are really lucky –we will even see a moose or some other uncommon animal sightings.

I hope everyone enjoys their summer vacation and is able to spend some time on the lake and in the woods. Thanks to everyone for reading, and as always, please be safe while enjoying your favorite outdoor recreational activity and on the lakes. Remember to take pictures to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

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