Enjoying Fall

 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 roads I travel along with the sometimes unplowed roads I hit in the deep of winter convinced me that I had better search out a 4WD. So after some conversations with people it became clear that the Honda Pilot should be my next choice – for the 4WD factor and passenger seating. We passed many dealers en-route to our destination and even a few that we had marked for a possible visit, however seeing as the distance was great and the time was limited we went to the one dealer that had five  of the same vehicle on both ends of our price range. We visited a few minutes with the salesman and told him what we were looking for, he pulled a couple keys and got the vehicles ready and told me to test them out. So my wife and I took the first one for a spin, which was the one we had marked as our favorite. Our niece sat with the kids at the vehicle to allow us the opportunity to test drive without the kids. On the next test drive we took we invited the whole family and they enjoyed exploring the vehicle and all its little buttons and pockets. Ultimately we settled on the first one we drove for a variety of reasons and went to complete the paperwork that goes with it. While the vehicle doesn’t have as much room as my minivan did in terms of cargo space, it’s still spacious for passenger seating and a road trip or two.

So with the adult business done, it was time for kids business as my niece suggested to a vehicle full that we should go to the zoo. I wanted the Como Zoo but I was outvoted and we ventured to the Minnesota Zoo for the first time in over 10 years. The kids enjoyed the visit, the first for the youngest three and the weather was right for it but in reality we thought the Como Zoo was better. Although Abigail really enjoyed petting as many of the animals as she was allowed to and over 95% of them were “adorable.” We set the course for home around 5 p.m. my wife and I and the three youngest kids in the new vehicle and the oldest and our niece in the Yukon.

Sunday plans were to sleep in – I woke up at 7 a.m. – I guess that was sleeping in, but wasn’t what I had planned, I was originally thinking around 9 a.m. would be good. I finally got out of bed about 8 a.m. and sat around until about 9 a.m. and then since I was hungry I started making breakfast – French Toast, Bacon and Sausage – it was good. After breakfast I messed around the house a little bit before deciding that I should go out and enjoy the warm day. So we went to town to pick up my mower from my brothers Sears store, grabbed a few grocery items in the box store for home and my niece who I picked up from campus to help her out with a few menu items. We finally made it home that afternoon and unloaded the mower from the trailer and started getting the lawn done for the first time in over a month.

That evening with the lawn finished and the yard one less dead tree, we started a fire and waited for the supermoon to appear and of course the clouds came out to block the view so we sat by the fire a little longer before taking a drive to find a better spot to view the moon. By the time it was done the kids were all past their bedtime and all of them were ready for bed and frankly so was I.

I hope everyone enjoyed the first fall weekend of 2015 as the warm days are quickly slipping by.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Remember to take pictures to preserve a lifetime of memories. And thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.