"My Crazy Kids"

Merry Christmas Abigail celebrating the last day of school, until Jan. By Allan Olson Even though I haven’t really felt like I was all full of Christmas cheer this year, when we woke up on Christmas Eve morning, I was ready to celebrate with my family. My wife and I woke up by 5:30 a.m. We just sat and waited for the kids to get up to open their gifts. Marcus was the first one awake – by over an hour – and he watched television with us, waiting for his siblings. Finally I sent him to wake the others up so we could get our Christmas done at home before heading north. When everyone was finally up, I decided to delay things a little by sending them all to shower, since they had made me wait all morning. I figured they could wait a little longer. They finally got to open their gifts and enjoyed them briefly. Then we made them eat something, and we were on the road before 10. Right on schedule.  I thought we would spend the afternoon on the snowmobiles, but my ...

A weekend of running Photo: Abigail finally got make her almond bark covered pretzels last weekend. I sampled plenty to make sure she was doing them right, so I can say with confidence that she did a great job! By Allan Olson This past weekend sure wasn’t very restful – most of it was spent on the go, either in the house doing baking and cleaning, or on the road heading to one town or the other, or a road trip north for our first Christmas celebration of the season. The craziness started with my wife heading out of town to visit a friend in the metro area on Thursday. Then there was the 2016 Big Bear on Friday, along with general Christmas baking preparation for the holidays. I headed into Bemidji and picked my niece up from work on Thursday evening, and stopped at the store to do some Christmas shopping. That’s not my forte, but there were some things I was in charge of getting. Of course, instead of getting what I was supposed to get for the girls, I got wha...

Traveling and baking It happened a week later than originally planned, but we have selected our Christmas tree, and it is now in the house and decorated. We even had the help of two extra kids in selecting the perfect tree this year. By Allan Olson It is a common theme for us during the month of December – we spend most weekends on the run and/or baking in preparation for a couple weekends of feasting and snacking on goodies. Things got chaotic on Tuesday when our oldest daughter, Abigail, went in for a tonsilectomy. It’s not a fun procedure, but she handled it really well. A week later, however, she is still struggling to eat “real food” and feeling a little rough from time to time. Hopefully, she will be better by Sunday and able to enjoy some seasonal food at our first Christmas celebration. Bright and early on Saturday morning (even before bright and early), my wife and I and the boys were up and on the road. The boys hopped on the bus and we followed r...

Weekend Road Trip A tired young man (Nikolai) and his dog slept during the long car ride from up north to home on Sunday, Dec. 4. – Photo by Allan Olson. By Allan Olson I think “weekend road trip” is going to be a common theme for the rest of the month – there isn’t a weekend that I won’t be traveling from now until New Year’s. This past weekend was a quick blast of fun and exhaustion all rolled into one.  We left home at about noon on Saturday and returned at around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Our first destination was the big town of Baudette, where we stopped and picked up my mother-in-law, then headed out east of town to visit her dad (my wife’s grandpa) for a couple hours. Since he has opted to remain in Minnesota, we have had the opportunity to see him more this year than most – his normal home in Colorado is just a little too far away for casual visits.  This was an unusually quiet visit. Visits to Grandpa’s in the past have typically been centered...

—My girls, Abigail, Alivia and I enjoyed our time at Bentleyville on Friday, Nov. 25. Food, Lights and Geocaching By Allan Olson The long holiday weekend of Thanksgiving was a whirlwind of chaos and hardly a moment of downtime during the entire four day weekend. The craziness began on Wednesday evening when as soon as I got home that evening, I began the process of making my ever so delicious caramel rolls. I got the dough raising and the kids working on some last minute cleanup before people started showing up. My niece and her daughter showed up to visit and since it’s been many years since I’ve put her to work making rolls – I had her pitch in. So – in reality I delegated and instructed and between Alivia and my nieces I didn’t roll out a single one. I just made the caramel and got the pans ready and monitored the oven so they didn’t burn. In addition to my chaos, my wife was making pies with her great niece – and in the interlude the kids were running all ove...

Hunting and Birthday By Allan Olson I had to give it one more chance, we had three deer hanging in the garage at my parents and seven tags left to fill, I had my opportunity once and failed – Nikolai had yet to have an opportunity and even if he was okay with it – I wanted him to have a chance. On Thursday evening – sometime after 7 p.m. I set the nose of my vehicle for the north country once again – I wasn’t going to get up early like the week prior, I wanted to beat the storm and be settled in before it got nasty. So with the vehicle loaded Nikolai and I took off hoping that just maybe we could knock down a couple deer with some well placed shots. Prior to our departure we learned that my younger brother headed north earlier that day in time for the evening hunt and was bagged his deer – a first in three years. A couple hours later once we arrived at my parents, we learned that he had led flying all over at three different deer – well he says he only fired four rounds but h...

Hunting Doldrums Photo: I took some time off from my deer stand to do a little road hunting, and while I found no deer to shoot on those drives, but I did manage to locate a geocache in an area I haven't been to in years. By Allan Olson Oh, we hunt, and we hunt, and we hunt some more. I could just leave this week’s column at that, because in all reality – that’s all we did. Last week was a busy one, but I “jetted” out of town Friday and didn’t look back, instead only forward to another weekend at deer camp. If I had looked back, all I would have seen was blackness; there wasn’t a spec of daylight in the sky by the time I left home. I crawled into bed at about 9:30 p.m. on Thursday and closed my eyes knowing that my alarm was going to ring at the very early hour of 4:30 a.m. I understood that I wasn’t going to be able to get north before daylight, but I also that if I set my alarm any earlier, I just wasn’t going to get up. And sure enough, my trusty old ...

The Hunt Continues… By Allan Olson It’s nothing new for me to head into the second weekend of deer season with nothing to show for it, but it’s a rather unusual occurrence for our whole hunting party to be without a deer – but that’s the way it is this year. We kicked off the weekend with 10 hunters afield chasing after the mighty whitetail. My dad and youngest brother each fired a few rounds off on Sunday morning, but those deer were equipped with either bullet-proof vests or some kind of force field, and headed off to play elsewhere. At least that provided the rest of us hunters with ammunition to harass the two that missed their opportunity. What’s great about this year for me on a personal note is having the opportunity to share the hunting experience with Nikolai. We have spent far more time apart this year on the hunt than we have together, but he is doing well and not getting impatient, just taking everything in stride. We hit the woods early on Satu...

Geocaching Road Trip Nikolai was cracking the combo lock at a geocache we found in Battle Creek Regional Park in Maplewood on Saturday. By Allan Olson It was a road trip to remember last Saturday. Nikolai and I were up and on the road before even the birds – but not the deer. We left home about 5:30 a.m., with our first destination being Bemidji, where we were to meet our ride to the big cities to the south. As I said, we beat the birds up, but the nocturnal deer hadn’t gone to bed yet and I had to hit the brakes a time or two on that short jaunt to town to avoid hitting them. We met at our pre-determined meeting spot just prior to 6 a.m., and were on the road and ready for a day of geocaching. For Nikolai and I, we were going to our first geocaching mega-event.  The day was young as we headed southbound for the big cities, but we had time to find some caches in a couple little towns along the way. Our first stop was near Motley; our driver remembered a ...

Our family spent some time hiking/geocaching in Duluth over the weekend. Our biggest accomplishment was hiking to the top of Ely’s Peak on Saturday afternoon. Hiking in Duluth By Allan Olson I would never have guessed that this late in the season hanging out near lake Superior and climbing several hundred feet high above the flat ground that we wouldn’t be freezing this time of year. It was crazy beautiful outside this weekend and it makes me wish we would have more nice fall weather like this last weekend. We left home early Friday morning with our destination to the big city of Duluth, with plans to hang out with my cousin and family all weekend long geocaching and playing games and whatever else we felt like doing. That afternoon the fun began, as my cousin and our boys all took off to play in the woods. We visited an area named Hawks Ridge, apparently right in the peak of bird watching season – in particular for hawks. We climbed and we trudged through brush ...

A Major Milestone Achieved My kids and my niece celebrated the achievement of finding our 2,000 geocache on Sunday, October 16. This particular cache, located in Polk County, was last found in 2012 . It certainly wasn’t easy to find this many caches, but we did it! By Allan Olson Our geocaching explorations have been very few and far between this summer but this last weekend, I had a goal in mind and that was reaching 2,000 finds. On Saturday we had 22 left to accomplish this number and I knew that was too many to leave for Sunday and I really needed to get out and find some to narrow down that number. Saturday morning after a nice breakfast of pancakes prepared by my wife and niece, I mentioned that I would like to go out and find some geocaches sometime today. As great as my idea was in my mind, my wife had other plans –cleaning. I have my share of pet peeves when it comes to cleaning and dirty dishes is one of them – but if I want to go play I can ignore a few ...

My kids and my niece at the Headwaters of the Mississippi on a footbridge at Itasca State Park. By Allan Olson I mentioned in last week’s column if the weather was going to be nice we were going to be outside and on Sunday we were outside for a good portion of the warm day a considerable temperature difference from Friday. While some called it a week on Friday, the first home football game in two weeks had me out braving the very cool and damp fall weather at the game. Prior to the game, I grabbed my warm orange hunting jacket along with my carhart for extra warmth if needed. I was thankful the concession stand was selling hot chocolate to help keep me warm also. The game wasn’t in favor of the home team, but it was still overall a nice cold night to be watching some home town football. Saturday morning, I was back in town for work again and once I finished those obligations – we headed to town to pick up a few things for the family. Marcus was the only one of the kids wh...