A Weekend with Company

A Weekend with Company

By Allan Olson

As usual, the weekend went by in a blur and a lot of fun was had with my cousin and family.  We had been trying to get together with my cousin and his family for a few weeks and this weekend it finally worked out and they made the trek to our house in the woods and came for a weekend visit.

Abigail decided to roll, instead of walk downhill.

On Friday after school, we as mean parents forced the children to clean up the mess they had made during the week to get ready for company –finally calling it quits sometime after 8 p.m. My cousin and family made their arrival close to 10 p.m. and the kids were ready to play and the adults were ready to sit back, visit and sip on an adult beverage and play a game. The game on the evening was one my cousin brought with – Cards Against Humanity. While I can understand how some might feel about the game given some of the choices and combinations of cards to match, however, it is exactly that a game – in all it was quite entertaining and apparently I was the best – or perhaps the worst – as I collected the most cards on both Friday and Saturday evening. On Friday evening we crawled into bed sometime close to 2 a.m. the children also retired very late sometime after 1 a.m. I fully expected that the kids will stay wake up by 7 a.m. and was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t hear anything out of them when I awoke briefly at that time. I rolled out of bed at 9 a.m. fully expecting the house to be full of activity and again was surprised that all was quiet – with only Nikolai awake. He informed me that everyone else was still asleep – so I turned around and went back to bed. However, it wasn’t much longer and the upstairs exploded into noise with the sounds of kids trampling up the stairs and looking for something to do or something to eat.

Since the kids were all awake, it was time for the adults to get up also. We fed the kids and discussed some plans for the day. I of course wanted to do a little geocaching and my cousin was up for it also. The women needed to do a little shopping for clothes and food. So it was eventually decided that Marcus and their son would go with them to do the shopping and the girls, my cousin and I would do some geocaching and Nikolai would man the fort and do a few chores while we were out.

So the women headed to town and shortly after we headed out on the road, we stopped at a couple of geocaches my cousin had yet to find and then made our way to some I needed to find also. Of course, I took the wrong road first so that delayed our destination a little longer but soon we were headed in the right direction. Judging by the map, I thought these were all along a road where we could drive and get out look and drive again. Well, it was a road, but it turned out to be a forest road more designed for ATV’s than my 4wd, even though it would probably handle it, we opted for walking instead. It was just over a mile to the other end of the road, so we decided to split it into two parts, we would walk halfway and then back and go to the other end of the road and walk in to the remaining few caches and back again. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as planned; we walked all the way to a pre-determined spot, found the cache and then worked our way back, going 0-3 in the next three attempts. We weren’t sure if it was us, or the snow hampering the search, but we decided enough is enough and called it a day. Ultimately, I logged three of six attempts for the day – not very good odds. Through it all the kids were good troopers running and playing in the snow, laughing and having fun.

We arrived home a few hours after we left and played a game of dice while waiting for our wives to get back from town. That evening we enjoyed a fried fish supper along with oven fried potatoes and eventually settled down to play another game for the evening. That night, we retired much earlier exhausted after from the fresh air and late night prior; everyone was in bed before 11 p.m.

Sunday – it was Nikolai’s birthday and the company was headed home early before the storm really kicked in. The plans for the evening were a birthday meal and maybe some cupcakes or something for him – except he woke up that morning – sick. It was planned that we were going to go for a drive, which would lead to a geocache, except he was of course sick. So instead, with the company gone before noon I opted for a late afternoon nap, before taking a quick drive over to a friend’s house to drop some items off.

The rest of the evening was spent watching some television, wrestling with a couple kids and finding some leftovers for the evening meal.

This weekend, is the birthday party for Nikolai, a few cousins are coming over and he has a top-shot contest planned, along with some bowling, it should be a fun weekend once again.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. 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.