"My Crazy Kids"

There were a lot of highlights at our first Christmas celebration, but my photo on left, features three of my great-nephews: Brayden, Greyson and Brody. By Allan Olson Christmas will be gone for another year before this hits the newsstands, and my family will have celebrated the holiday once at home (a very low key celebration), once with my wife’s family and once with mine. The latter two were replete with food, noise and laughter. There was a new generation of kids is joining in the fun this year, ages 4 to newborn. Two of my nieces at Christmas - our annual pic.  I would like to say the weekend started right after school on Friday, but instead I was working late in the office trying to get things done for this week’s publication. When I got home, I had to explain to kids the importance of cleaning up certain messes before we could enjoy any holiday festivities. They finally got the message that I was serious about not leaving for Christmas until thei...

 Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, from my crazy family to yours! By Allan Olson It was another one of those weekends with a lot of stuff going on, and it became a divide and conquer kind of thing. On the home front, there were tasks that needed completion in the house, and on the work front there were things I needed to be at. And then there was a family cookie decorating event, too. Saturday morning found me wishing I could sleep in, but for some reason that became an effort in futility. I had too much on my mind, and there were things I wanted to do, including a book to read. Maybe I’m just getting old… I can go to bed earlier but I can no longer sleep in.  I can’t say I was overly productive on the home front Saturday, but at least I did get the garbage hauled. I also got my book finished; now I’m down to eight books to read, with only about three weeks to finish them all.  I headed into Cass Lake for the afternoon to watch the champi...

Nikolai at the first island cache of the day on Crystal Lake, south of Highway 34 between Walker and Akeley. By Allan Olson Oh, the weather outside is so delightful… please hold off with the snow. I had spent the previous weekend mostly working and/or just staying at home, so I vowed that one way or another I wasn’t going to let that happen for a second weekend in a row or I just might go crazy. I had some tentative plans made for geocaching with a couple kids, perhaps in the Menahga area, since there are some new ones there from this summer I haven’t logged yet. Then my Roseau friend messaged me about my weekend plans, since he had secured it off. We discussed some options and since he has this area mostly cached out, there were not a lot of options for us both. My budget limited me to no real distance and one day only, especially since my wife was gone for the weekend and kids would be home solo if they chose not to go with me. We finally came up with...

 Abigail and I enjoyed the nice spread of goodies set out at the Teal’s Market Holiday Open House last week. The food was delicious, and we both enjoyed our evening meal at Teal’s. By Allan Olson This past weekend I didn’t go out geocaching or hunting, although either activity would have been enjoyable. I did manage to get out and take some photos of outdoor scenery and things happening in town, but I was far from physically active. I confess that I took a nap on both Saturday and Sunday. I thought about going into my garage and putzing around with a few things, but really the only thing I had to do was organize some wood in the garage that I didn’t get to when I cleaned it up earlier this fall. Instead, I spent several hours Saturday morning and again on Sunday doing work things. We also stocked up on food on Saturday with a big grocery outing – ouch – but it was necessary. We had plans to do some family photos on Sunday, but that didn’t happen, either...