"My Crazy Kids"

 Marcus roasting a brat on Saturday, Sept. 27. Enjoying Fall By Allan Olson Everyone who lives in this great state of Minnesota knows the weather is as fickle as a little child and one moment/day it could be great and the next miserable. This weekend was about as perfect as it gets in terms of weather and we took advantage of it – sadly it wasn’t geocaching but fun nonetheless. Saturday morning found us leaving the house really –our destination Dakota Motor Co in Farmington. For a few weeks now I have been looking at vehicles and found several I liked en-route to the cities – but more importantly – ones that I liked and won’t hurt the pocket book as much as others. I’ve known it was time to be done with the van for a few months now but I kept putting it off, but finally I decided to make the plunge once again into vehicle payments. For years I had always said, I would buy another minivan in a hurry as this one has been great to me, but realization about where I live and...

The final weekend of summer By Allan Olson The kids at the site of the first vehicular bridge built over the Mississippi River, located south of Shevlin. The bridge there today is a replica of the original, but is still in the same location. Officially – at least according to the calendar, last weekend was truly the final weekend of summer, for most of us that weekend is Labor Day but the calendar folks disagree. Regardless if it was a summer or fall weekend it was a fun one. Saturday morning found us cleaning for some company we were expecting, including some dusting of shelves, cleaning off photo frames and other assortment of stuff on our various shelves. Other parts of the house were also getting done – including the floors, laundry and the entryway. All needed to be done regardless of company or not –but the motivation isn’t always there unless we are expecting guests. Around noon we found out our company wasn’t going to make it – I told my wife, “then we go ca...

I’m not sure if Abigail was giving Lily the pony a hug or just decided to use her as a leaning post. The kids had a fun day visiting the ponies, and Alivia proclaimed it was the “best surprise ever.” Surprise Destination By Allan Olson This weekend we hit the road, well at least on Saturday, we went on a one day road trip that was about two hours away in a little town called Meadowland, Minnesota. However, the journey getting there was slightly longer as we did some geocaching along the way. We left home about 8:30 a.m. and the kids were only informed that we were going geocaching and there would be a surprise for them later in the day. We took off heading east, but dropped south of Bena, we visited the little towns of Remer and Hill City before going steering closer to our final destination. Visiting those two towns was intentional as they both filled a goal on my geocaching adventures, the stop in Remer filled one of the pages on the DeLorme Map challenge I’m work...

Nikolai in his first kayaking trip on Lake Itasca.  Final Weekend of the Summer By Allan Olson Summer went by in blast and we had a lot of fun tearing up the highway this summer with all our camping trips and other adventures. Last week the kids returned to school and it felt like our lives might return to ‘normal’ whatever that is. This final summer weekend was a busy one. We had company planned for Saturday some time and our plans with them included visiting Itasca State Park. My brother and family along with one additional friend of theirs arrived for the evening – late on Saturday, they had planned to take in some water activities in Bemidji prior to coming out to our home but it didn’t work out for them. We visited for a couple hours on Saturday evening before I hit the bed. My wife and some of the kids were up until the wee hours of the morning playing a game so while I was enjoying my sleep – the rest of them were enjoying staying up late. Sunday morning I got ...

Marcus at a geocache we managed to solve 9in ordfer to find the final. A weekend at home By Allan Olson It’s been a long time since I could say, I stayed home all weekend, but this weekend as hard as it was, I stayed home all weekend. I left the house briefly on Saturday evening to grab a couple staples from the nearby store but that was it. It was really hard for me to not go somewhere and do something, more than once I thought about telling everyone to get in the vehicle and let’s go for a drive –preferably in search of a geocache somewhere. However, I let the urge pass me by more than once and continued on the task at hand – the much needed cleaning in our house. We started the weekend by forcing the kids to get their rooms clean, even though once their rooms are clean it only takes a few moments before it is well on its way to being messed up again. The other major tasks of the weekend were laundry, dishes and our bedroom. My wife and I spent what seemed like many ...