"My Crazy Kids"

—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 ...