A sunny weekend



Pic: My youngest niece didn’t want much to do with me, but she did want to play games at the birthday party we attended on Friday.

By Allan Olson

I’m not sure about anyone else, but I know I am sure happy to see open water and feel warm sunshine and temperatures climbing above 50. At the start of last week, I stood out in the wind and cold and mostly damp weather, taking photos in a sweatshirt with a winter jacket on at a baseball game. The next day a sweatshirt was too much, and thankfully the rest of the week largely followed that pattern – lots of sunshine and temps mostly in the 60s.
We kicked off the weekend on Friday with a road trip to International Falls and back, all in the span of about six hours. We headed north for a surprise birthday party for my wife’s brother, leaving the kids at home with a friend. We left at about 5:30 p.m. and  just took our time to get up there so we weren’t too early (or late) for the party. We came right back home later that night, after enjoying some food, visiting with relatives and conveying our best birthday greetings. 
Thankfully, the road trip itself was boring. I narrowly avoided hitting just one deer, pretty close to the same spot where I nearly hit one on Tuesday while enroute to Blackduck, and also near where I did hit one over a year ago. That time the deer bounced off my front end and mostly only damaged the grill.
Nikolai woke me up a little after 7 a.m. on Saturday; he wanted to go to Blackduck to take in the Legacy program about World War I. He had seen an abbreviated version of the show on Wednesday at the high school, but wanted to catch the whole program on Saturday. I said okay, and an hour later we were on the road. Unfortunately for us, once again we only got to see only a portion of the show because a niece forgot something important in my vehicle and they needed to leave. Frustrated, Nikolai and I left the program early and headed to meet them in Bemidji. 
We met my wife and the other kids and decided to see if we could score any good deals at rummage sales. We didn’t really have much luck at that, though, and Marcus left every sale empty-handed. I even stopped at three more on the way home, hoping to find something, but no.
Back at home I decided I really needed a nap. I was still exhausted from the day before, and all the running around today made me even more tired. Two hours later I felt refreshed and so led the kids outside to do some spring cleaning. I put all but Abigail to work cleaning the garage; I assigned her to pick up some garbage in the yard. A couple hours later the garage was clean and I now have a load ready for the dump. Unfortunately, from the looks of my calendar this week, it will be Saturday (at the earliest) before I can get it there. And I also hope to go fishing on Saturday, if things work as planned.
I was finally able to sleep in on Sunday. I got out of bed about 9 a.m. and cooked up eggs for any that wanted them. That afternoon, we attended the UpWard Bound orientation for Nikolai, grabbed a few groceries and headed home. The kids did a few chores and we played some catch before they decided to play a game of Lightning. It was another busy weekend, but not as crazy as some.
We did discuss some possible camping dates for the coming summer, but with Nikolai in Upward Bound and other schedule conflicts, it appears that we will have maybe two weekends available for getaways between Memorial Day and Labor Day. There’s no doubt about, this summer is going to be busy – again. May has barely started, and my calendar looks full all the way to the start of next school year already. I guess I’d better get used to my kids getting older (and busier).

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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