"My Crazy Kids"

A Thanksgiving Week By Allan Olson Thanksgiving week, a day and ultimately a weekend full of food, oh glorious food, so much food we are in a food coma all week, munching on pies, leftover turkey and ham and so much more that goes with a large festive meal. For probably the last 10 years or maybe more, we have spent Thanksgiving at or near home, usually hosting a meal of some sort for us or a few more – sometimes many more. This year’s event promises to be a much smaller crowd of people and perhaps not as much food, but I’m pretty certain there will be plenty for leftovers. Our guest list will include our family, my niece and my mother in-law as of publication time and according to my niece and wife it will be a pajama party Thanksgiving. This sounded like a great idea to me as stretchy pants won’t be near as constricting as a pair of jeans after several helpings of pan bread, pumpkin pie, ham, turkey, mashed potatoes and likely a variety of other good food that will be placed ...

Weekend Party By Allan Olson This weekend was busy as always with a family of six to entertain, which is exactly what happened this weekend was entertaining. Saturday was the big day to celebrate Alivia’s 8 th birthday she invited everyone in her class – whoops, thankfully not all showed up but those who did including a former classmate who moved about 80 miles faway had a great time. The kids and adults who attended the party all had the opportunity to make some “mad hatter” party hats as some party favor. My wife did 98.9% of all the work in preparing for this party she mad the hats, found all the pieces of scraps in her collection and purchased a few other items to make the hats festive.   The remaining 1.1 % was comprised of a variety people pitching into to make this party a fun time for all. The kids had a great time making them and playing with each other for over two hours. The casualty of the days festivity –was the loss of Marcus’ retainer – he apparently to...

Hunting Tradition Continues By Allan Olson The first weekend of opening whitetail hunting season went by in a blur – especially when you start the day before 5 a.m. and often retire before 9 p.m. This weekend we enjoyed the warmest weather in probably over a decade and certainly the warmest I’ve experienced in several years. For the second time I was able to share my hunting season with my oldest Nikolai who has shown that the love of the sport and tradition is passing on to the next generation. Last year he was the first of his generation to harvest a deer and this season, he was the first of all the hunters to harvest a deer. On opening morning – we had no luck, but that afternoon we were back in the lucky stand and during the noon hour he took a shot at a young deer, unfortunately it proved to be a miss as we could find no evidence of any injury to the deer. We took a quick break for some grub and returned to the stand for the evening post – ready for action. The minutes t...

NightScreams By Allan Olson This weekend was only about half as busy as normal as I only left home twice over the weekend both on Saturday rather than running on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately I never headed out on a geocaching run over the weekend and while I suggested it once, I knew the work that needed to be done at home was going to trump it – that and just a little bit of the desire to stay home – knowing what the rest of the month will bring. On Saturday evening we did something very unusual for us on a Halloween night – we went out. I haven’t celebrated Halloween or went trick or treating in over 25 years when I was younger we went to church and had fun with games and friends but since adulthood and longer – we haven’t done much of anything. So this year, I decided that we would try the Haunted House – NightScreams at the Big Winnie Store in Bena. I contacted a friend about this place and she assured me that it was indeed a fun time. I discussed it with my wi...