"My Crazy Kids"

Alivia with the new puppy. By Allan Olson It’s crazy how many different things we can fit into one week, and last week was no exception. Ours was jam-packed full, especially the weekend, even though we didn’t leave town for a change. To kick things off, we celebrated 12 years of twins – my “middle” children, Abigail and Marcus, celebrated their 12th birthdays last week. I’m not sure where that time went. At first you look forward to them getting into the communication and out-of-diapers stage, and then pretty soon they are into some “cute” stages, and then with a flash, here they are nearly teenagers. For their birthday they each had one dinner guest over to enjoy their requested meal – meatloaf (they actually agreed on something) and then they each picked out a cake to have made by their younger sister. I could say I helped with the cake, but really it was Alivia who kept me from screwing it up, although Abigail requested a marble cake and, well, it ended...

Nikolai and Abigail insisted on goofing off while I was trying to get a photo of them in between our night caching adventures in Park Rapids on Friday. By Allan Olson Another weekend has flown by, inching us one week closer to school, hunting season, and (of course) the cold, furnace-running weather. Naturally, I couldn’t spend it just sitting around doing nothing – that’s not really my style. This past weekend it was time for my annual geocaching camping and caching event, this year held in the big city of Menahga. And it was held without me being there for the main festivities. Because we had another weekend wedding to attend, this time Up North. We did not bring kids, nor did we spend the night. Instead, we left home on Saturday morning, went to the wedding, socialized, and returned home about 12 hours later. The house survived, as did the kids – and we hardly heard from them the entire day!  In fact, the only time we did hear from them was when we ca...

Me and my cousin at her wedding reception, with her groom “photo bombing” in the background. By Allan Olson It’s summer – of course there’s going to be some weddings. This year, we have two weddings – back-to-back. In essence, weddings are wonderful, beautiful events, but when you get right down to it – they’re kinda boring. Every wedding is pretty similar. You’ve got people up front, all dressed up, and people in the congregation wearing every manner of clothing, all staring at the two people getting married. And, of course, everyone wants photos of the lovely couple.  Now, when you’re the couple standing up there, you don’t really remember the rest of it. At least I didn’t, but then mine was nearly 20 years ago.  This wedding we went to did have a couple of not-quite-as-common features. My cousin (the bride), who is a few years younger than me, lost both her parents in about a nine-month span nearly a decade ago. It was announced at the wedding tha...

By Allan Olson So I finally got the boat back in the water on Friday night. It took 15 minutes for me to get the motor started, and Abigail kept saying, “Maybe this is a sign…” I should have listened to her.  I finally got it started, and off we went, buzzing across the lake to one of the areas that we have had luck at before. We dropped our lines, but Nikolai was using my fishing pole, with the brand new Rapala I had just purchased. I finally said, “Hand it over,” and he secured the hook to the eyelet. Apparently either it was cranked too tight or the eyelet was too weak; either way, it broke. Another sign. We finally got bored of fishing in that spot, with no results at all. I told Nik to pull up the anchor a bit and let us drift, but we still had no luck after a few minutes of doing that. Then I announced we’re going to move, and I’m pretty sure I told him to pull the anchor all the way up, or at least I thought he understood that if we’re going to move,...

Thanks to the Google backup on my phone, the few photos I did take during my trip down the St. Louis River were saved. Here is Nikolai and me on shore getting ready to launch for our geocaching trip on the river. By Allan Olson Since I am able to put together this weekly jumble about my crazy life, it means I survived yet another crazy idea of mine – this time spending about 10 hours in a canoe. A few weeks ago a geocaching friend informed me that she was going to remove her St. Louis River caches, and anyone who went with to help her could log them all. The problem was finding a date that worked. Luckily for me, since I inquired about doing them earlier in the summer, she consulted me on what was a good date to make the journey. I knew I had one of two weekends open for it in the next month, and this past Saturday was the date that was chosen. Our meeting place was two hours and 20 minutes (one way) from my home, and we were scheduled to meet at 8 a.m. sha...