A weekend at home



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 basketball game.
We finally headed back home where there were more arguments about homework – although not quite as frustrating this time. We finally started making some headway. It sure makes it hard to get stuff done when the children are as stubborn as their parents (I’m pretty sure that most parents feel this way about their kids)
That evening I was finally able to get on my computer for a while and took care of some work things before calling it a day. I set my clocks forward (both of them) and headed to bed. Between Thursday night, Friday, and a little work on Saturday, the kids were able to get what they needed done in order to merit some time on the video game machine that’s been resurrected from its hiding spot in the closet for probably over year. The popular game on the screen again is Wii Bowling – a game that’s sure to make all of us mad – and laugh.
Earlier on Saturday, Alivia made a box cake that produced four tiny little cake loaves. They looked very good, but when we got back from town, there was only a partial loaf left and it was on the floor. We are pretty sure the mutts got into the goodies. Once mom was home to instruct her, she still made frosting, and then she made another cake from scratch, and on Sunday we were able to enjoy it before the dogs found it.
I slept in until way too late on Sunday, but the rest of the house, including the kids, slept even later. I got the French toast batter ready, then turned my attention to helping Abigail make the syrup, only to discover that I was out of the mapeline flavoring and didn’t put it on my list to get. My mother-in-law started frying the French toast while I headed out the door for the Scenic Store to get syrup. It sure is frustrating to plan a meal, only to find out you are missing key ingredients. Thankfully, we have a store nearby that carries the staples so we can avoid long trips to town and back when everyone is hungry.
With breakfast over and cleanup duties assigned, I tried to take a nap since it was already after noon, but the 30 minutes or so I laid in bed resulted in nothing even close to sleep, so I gave up. I tried to convince others to go geocaching with me, but none were interested (except Abigail, who had homework). Finally, I convinced Nikolai to go to town with me to grab some stuff for supper, and then on the way back we took the time to hide a geocache. 
This one will require people to walk across a swamp to a land formation, and once they find the container, they will need to climb a tree to access it. Nikolai is quite proud of that hide, and the consternation it will bring to other geocachers when they go in search of it.
Sunday evening consisted of a Wii bowling tournament, where I proved that while I’m not the champion of video games of any sort, I still managed to beat out all the kids, narrowly edging out Alivia, who had bowled over her siblings.
In all, I look at it as a productive weekend, even if I didn’t accomplish much.
Another bit of excitement hit our house on Monday night when we learned that Nikolai’s MN History Day project was selected to advance to state! It’s great to see that our kids are learning something in school by being formally recognized by others for their work! This will only add to the mass confusion on our calendar over the next month, but I’m sure we will figure things out.

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.

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