Hanging out with my girls


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-approaching darkness. So on Saturday, the girls and I committed to tackle the remaining 38 geocaches that we had yet to locate. In all honesty, I didn’t know if we could get it all finished. After we found about 10, I consulted the map, counted what we had left, told the girls and asked if they wanted to keep going. Alivia checked the time and decided that we should finish, so we continued on our quest. 
One by one, the girls and I (mostly Alivia) found the geocaches in their hiding spots. Some of them we could spot from the vehicle, some we just followed the already packed trails right to the location; a few took a little more work to actually make the find.
We managed to find all the caches we were looking for and a few more, and had a great time doing it. In return for their help and company, I treated them to a stop at Dairy Queen on the way home; the girls were happy with food and blizzards to fill them up. 
We stopped at an auction in town on the way home (as I had promised) but didn’t find anything they were interested in, which was fine by me, so we continued on our way. We managed to get home by 5 p.m., much earlier than I thought possible when we left in the morning. The evening was spent trying to get a few things done around the house and watching the television.
On Friday night my 8-month old great nephew was admitted into the hospital for pneumonia, and on Saturday the boys and my wife went to visit him. Then on Sunday afternoon my wife and I headed back to town to go see him and to get a few items for the house. A few hours later we were back home, and a couple hours after that the little guy was released from the hospital, and his parents stopped by our place (with him, of course). He and his mother will be staying at our place for a couple days to be close to the medical center in case further care is needed.
Marcus, Alivia, and the dog and I took a short walk that evening and were treated to a fabulous sunset. The kids wanted to walk further, but my legs were still tired from the geocaching adventure the day before and I didn’t feel like walking any further.
This weekend is going to be busy; we will be prepping deer stands with family and getting ready for the big hunt in November. I think it’s just going to be a couple kids and myself heading up north for the weekend. The focus will be on checking the existing stands, repairing those that need it, and probably do a bit of mowing as well. It’s going to be a lot of fun, but definitely some work as well.

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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