"My Crazy Kids"

Photo: Marcus and Alivia examined the contents of a geocache we found near Blackduck on Sunday afternoon. By Allan Olson A weekend that we planned to spend on the road turned out to be a weekend spent mostly at home. My wife and I decided on Friday that due to the way we were both feeling, and some of the hacking the kids were doing, that perhaps it was best that we stayed home Saturday – instead of attending a cousin’s wedding reception. It wasn’t an easy decision. While I’m admittedly not a fan of big, loud parties, it still would have been nice to see some family members I don’t often see. So instead, on Saturday I came and grabbed some photos of the spay/neuter clinic and then headed back home for a nice long nap. That pretty much summed up Saturday – it was largely uneventful, although I did beat the family in a game of bowling on the Wii that evening and I made some peanut butter cookies as well. On Sunday morning I made the family some banana muffins f...

Marcus jumped over a log one too many times while we were out and about this past weekend and decided to take a selfie of his scratches to send to his mom.   By Allan Olson Life in the fast lane… surely makes you lose your mind, as the song says. That’s pretty much the way last week was for us. I think every day and/or night was filled with things I had or hadn’t planned, and some of those things included hitting the sidewalk, getting up early, and running more than usual. The fun started Monday with a full day of things to do; it continued on Tuesday with a trip to Thief River Falls to cheer on the Panthers in the Sub-Section title game. Unfortunately, the home team was stopped short by the Red Lake Warriors, who are headed to state for the fourth consecutive year. The hectic week continued with surgery for my youngest daughter on Wednesday. Thursday was quieter, but I still had things to do. On Friday, I narrowly managed to avoid injury (other than ...

Nikolai and his partner won first place at the local MN History day competition and will advance to state for their work. By Allan Olson I stayed pretty close to home this past weekend. I almost headed to the basketball game; it sure sounded good on the radio, and I sort of wished I had attended, but I also knew that I needed a weekend to stay closer to home. The way the calendar looks, I only have one more that’s not booked with running for the next few weeks. On Saturday morning, I stayed in bed as long as I could before finally getting up to make breakfast. I spent some time arguing with Abigail about the importance of getting her homework done and keeping caught up at school before I finally left the house out of frustration. After a short trip later to empty the garbage, I was back home again and assigned to play chauffeur for my wife and mother-in-law. They headed into the big fabric store while I stayed in the vehicle and listened to the entire exciting ...

Nikolai is a member of CL-B team #3275 – the boys’ robotics team. His official role for the tournament in Duluth was as Media/PR specialist. Here he is standing outside of the team’s pit (workroom). By Allan Olson After several years of wanting to attend a competitive robotics event, this was finally the year. Of course it helped that the CL-B teams decided to participate in Duluth this year instead of in an event in the big metro area to the south. Another added benefit of this competition was we could stay with my cousin to keep expenses down. We watched the competition qualification matches all day on Friday. Never would I have imagined robotics would be that exciting. We watched round after round of matches, checking out all the other robots performing their tasks while waiting for a round in which one of our teams would participate. The kids enjoyed watching the competitions, too, but started to get rather fidgety by the end of the day. Every round we wa...

Marcus found the last geocache of the afternoon on Sunday, February 26, at Spider Lake PWA in Hubbard County. By Allan Olson Some of the best wrestling action in the state happened right here in Cass Lake this past weekend when the home team BCLB Bears hosted the individual Section 7A meet. The excitement started for me on Friday afternoon, when I watched several good matches between some of our Bears and their tough opponents. When the dust settled on Friday, every local wrestler had advanced to Day Two. The results weren’t quite as solid on Saturday, but the Bears still did pretty darn well, with seven moving on to State.  That was my weekend. I got home too late on Friday night to do much of anything else, and on Saturday I stayed home in the morning. Marcus and I made breakfast, and then I attended a geocaching event for all of about 10 minutes before heading off to take in more grappling action. The rest of Saturday was spent at the high school watch...