"My Crazy Kids"

Alivia got to play taxi driver for her Grandpa on Sunday afternoon. They were going to deliver a ladder to out to a deer stand site and bring back some tools that were no longer needed out there. By Allan Olson This past weekend was a fun and busy one, with the majority of it spent playing and working in the great outdoors of Northern Minnesota. I had planned this weekend with my brothers to work on deer stands, since I knew I had no “Friday night lights” obligations to keep me from getting up there on Friday night for an early start on deer stand repairs on Saturday. However, something different did come up that I didn’t expect that kept me from assisting with the repairs. Earlier last week, I received a message through the geocaching site about a trip to Garden Island on Lake of the Woods – an approximate 25-mile voyage across the big waters of the seventh largest lake in the U.S. I thought about the message, then asked a couple of questions to get more in...

By Allan Olson It was another busy weekend for this household. The girls and I were up early on Saturday morning for our semi-annual ditch cleaning event between Park Rapids and Menahga after a late night of football the night before. We left home at about 7 a.m. and because Alivia forgot a sweatshirt, it required a stop at a store to find something that she liked. We arrived at the location right at 9 a.m., and a few other helpers pulled in shortly after. We started cleaning about 9:15, and by 10:30 we were all departing in separate directions. The girls and I were headed for Osage (west of Park Rapids) to finish a bunch of caches there, while others were heading off elsewhere to do their own thing. We set forth on our adventure for the day with a mission to finish our geocaching artwork (a geocache in the shape of something); ours is in the shape of Minnesota. We started on this in August, but we ran out of time to get very many due to rainy weather and fast-...

Abigail and her little cousin Greyson, after she woke him from the nap he was taking with his great uncle. By Allan Olson I probably shouldn’t have, considering the nice fall like weather for most of the weekend, but I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t get overly productive and instead spent a good portion of the weekend just laying around. I did so little that I don’t even remember Friday night – and not because of too many adult beverages – I didn’t have a drop all weekend! On Saturday, even though I messaged my younger brother about coming to fix my dryer since the new parts showed up on my doorstep Friday, I decided to tackle the problem myself. That’s not always a good idea, but this time it worked out alright. I was downstairs taking some of the old parts out when Nikolai came down to help. With his smaller frame he was able to get a better angle inside the dryer (short of crawling inside it). It probably took us a little longer to complete the job ...

Alivia and her cousins Kinley and Korbin spent a little time painting bird houses on Sunday afternoon. By Allan Olson If I were a lyricist, I would perhaps write an ode to summer. Since I’m not, my usual ramblings will have to suffice. Labor Day weekend was busy (as are most), but added to the fact is what we do to make it busier. A few weeks ago my wife said that we would be having three more kids at our house for the weekend, as she wanted her niece and nephews to come visit, and she had called their mom to make the arrangements. I was perhaps a little annoyed thinking that maybe I would geocache all weekend and that would put a kibosh on my plans, but the closer it got, the less interested I was in geocaching. Now don’t mistake that for a lack of interest, but rather a waning desire to go anywhere after looking at my September calendar and realizing that at least half of those weekends are already booked. About a week ago, a friend of mine suggested tha...