Home Renovations, Summer Festivities and Geocaching



Daughter Abigail was quite vocal with her displeasure about being forced to leave the house on Sunday for geocaching with me after spending Saturday at a horse show with a family friend. Staying home might’ve been an option if the right tone had been used, but it quickly became “not an option.” She ended up smiling and hanging out with me on the trail – and occasionally throwing pinecones at me. She slept until after noon on Monday.


By Allan Olson
Ever feel like you have too many irons in the fire at one time? That’s me on a fairly regular basis, and this last week was no exception. Sometimes I’d like to just skip it all and sleep until noon like my kids are doing this summer. Okay… probably not, but it might be nice once in a while.
Friday and Saturday were both busy days for me, covering all the summer festivities in Cass Lake. When I got home on Saturday I laid on the couch and took a brief nap before getting up and going to work on the girls’ room.
My wife and I decided that since we were removing everything from the kids bedrooms to shampoo the carpets, we might as well repaint and repair the sheetrock as well. I’m pretty sure I’ve made it clear that I’m not a handyman repair person – but just for the record, I’m not. If I had the funds, I would hire this little project out and avoid it all together, but I don’t. Instead my wife is going do her best to repair the walls.
We started on Saturday night with my wife cutting out sections of the wall where patches were needed. That required moving more stuff out and bringing the shop vac that hasn’t  been used in several years in from the garage to avoid ruining the house vacuum. We planned to get back at this project on Sunday, but we slept until 10 a.m. – something that I hadn’t done in over a week – and Nikolai had to be at BSU by noon for his four-day field trip so that took care of the morning and a bit of the afternoon. 
When I got home I realized that the lawn really needed mowing. Typically I have helpers to work on it, but they wanted to help in the house instead, so I mowed the majority of the backyard. Certainly it was not as nice looking as it had been for my birthday party last month, but it was good enough.
We took a break from chores, and I decided that we needed to go geocaching. I needed 100 finds to get the big summer “virtual souvenirs,” and there were two brand new caches in Pine River. So we took a road trip and managed to come up with 20 finds for the night. This challenge started at the end of June, and there is only one week left to complete it, and I’m just over half done. It should’ve been easier than this, but the rainy weekend weather spoiled one outing, and my schedule has also been difficult of late. So we drove around the backroads of the Pequot Lakes and Pine River area and ended up near Akeley before it was too dark to continue, and finally pulled in the drive at home just before 11 p.m.
Also, for some strange reason, I failed to take my camera along this time and missed what would’ve been a couple of nice photos of young deer with their mom. I didn’t even attempt such a shot with my phone, knowing I would not have liked it.
On Monday, which is typically my wife’s day off of work, she had to report for jury duty and so once again not much got done in the bedroom for repairs. In the meantime, nearly all of the girls’ stuff is taking up space in the living room. I’m not even sure where or how they are sleeping, but since it’s summer, I’m taking the “I don’t care approach.”
This week it appears that I will need to wait until the weekend before I can get after the remaining 46 caches I need before the challenge expires on Wednesday, and that’s while juggling a family reunion. So hopefully I will be able to do some caching in between destinations.
I wonder if I can get my family up at 4 a.m. for geocaching… oh wait, we tried something like that before and it did not go over well. I think I’ll try a more reasonable wake-up time, like 6 a.m., this time.

Rest assured, no matter what our activities are this summer; we will be taking photos to document our busy lives. I encourage you to do the same! 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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Hunting Season to Remember

Image
A Hunting Season to Remember By Allan Olson The orange clad army headed into the woods this past weekend in search of the mighty white tail to attempt to fill the freezer with some tasty venison and I was no exception to this party. I too was clad in orange and out on the mighty hunt. Every year there are new stories to tell, old ones to bring up and memories made, some deer seasons for me, after over 20 years of hunting have faded into the background, one year blurring with another, not remembering which year I shot what deer or if I shot a deer. Of course there are a few years  stand out more than others and some are just a blur altogether. However, I find it hard to believe that anything will top this year’s remarkable deer season. This year, I had the honor of bringing Nikolai with me. Not just to sit in the stand, but to actually hunt, he was going to have the ability of harvesting a deer also. Recently he completed his gun safety certification and he wa...
Read more
Image
Thank you for being our friend Frey Olson May 19, 2018 - April 26, 2024 By Allan Olson 4.26.24 Thank you for being our friend, thank you for making us your forever home, if we could’ve saved you, we would’ve. Losing our four legged friends is never easy, in our house they aren’t “just a pet” they are our family. Frey, our nearly six year old English Mastiff came into our lives in August of 2018 and crossed over the rainbow bridge to be with others before him on April 26, 2024. Frey was our gentle giant, he was our protector, our laughter and most importantly I think it’s more than safe to say, he was Alivia’s best friend. Have you ever seen a teenager and a Mastiff sharing a twin size bed - or perhaps more aptly put the teenager getting what’s left of the bed when he’s in it. Or perhaps a giant of a dog, staring at her from the doorway of the bedroom saying, “it’s bedtime,” while she’s playing a game or watching something.  He was taught to react to “who’s here” or the alert of the...
Read more

Thankful for Family

Thankful For Family By Allan Olson published 11-24-10 Cass Lake Times Eat until I can’t eat anymore is the plan for me this Thursday. This is likely the case for many others as well. The food that will be prepared is just one of many things to be thankful for this week. I can honestly say I’m thankful for a lot of things in my life. I’m especially thankful for my beautiful little family. Do I always feel overwhelmed with joy while dealing with the everyday tasks of working and raising four children? I would be lying if I said yes. My children are great kids. They are great at making me smile with their questions and antics. However, they are also great at driving me up a wall. Asking them to help clean a room sometimes and it’s like you put them in a torture chamber by daring to ask for a little help cleaning up the mess they made. Other times they are willing, eager partners ready to help with whatever task you need them to. Of course, there are also those times when ...
Read more