Focht Family Blog

Part of the CommerceV3 Camping Trip was a 4 hour canoe trip on the Edisto River. Here is a picture of everyone during orientation…

Here is a picture of Nathan removing canoes while Perry, Perry’s daughter Luna, and Patty’s daughter Jaden look on…

Another of Nathan removing canoes while Timmy is climbing on the hitch….

This is Danny with all of the kids (not sure why)….

Joshua trying out his seat…

Here is a picture of everyone…. from left to right standing is: Christina, Patty’s daughter Brianna, Patty, Danny, Sarai, Jerry, Megan, Huey, Perry, Michael, Bonnie, Samantha (in front of Bonnie), Shawn, Patti (my mom), Kristen, and Blake. From left to right sitting is: Penny Lane (dog), Katherine, Patty’s daughter Jaden (behind Katherine), Blake’s son Drew, Blake’s daughter Jax, Perry’s daughter Luna, Nathan, Josh (in front of Nathan), and Timmy.

Pictures from the river:

Here is Danny and Sarai…

From left to right: Blake and Drew, Shawn and Kristen, and Katherine and Jax…

From left to right: Huey and Megan, Christina and Patty (Patty’s girls are between Christina and Patty)..

And one last picture that is a view of the river from our canoe with my mom in the front….

Last week we had another CommerceV3 Camping Trip. This time we tried a state park in South Carolina so that we could have a canoe trip on Saturday. We stayed at Ghivans Ferry State Park because they had cabins. It was a decent older park but I wouldn’t choose to stay there again. Here is a picture of Nathan’s dad, Ron, in the kitchen and another of our fearless cook, Scotty.

The camping trip was great. I will put pictures of the canoe trip in the next post. The only bad spot in the week for me was that Joshua and Nathan both were bit by ticks after the canoe trip. We did a tick check on the kids after stopping for lunch and didn’t see anything but when I took his shirt off to change him into pajamas there was a tick stuck to the middle of his back. He screamed quite a bit while Nathan removed it. Then before bed we double checked for ticks and found a tick on Nathan’s chest. Fun times! :)

After leaving Savannah we made it to Greenville, SC the first night. Traffic was horrible. If we had remembered what day it was we would have waited until Monday to leave. We chose Greenville because we watched the TLC show Six For The Road and the family from the show were working a tree stand there. We were curious to see if they were anything like the show portrayed them. After meeting them we are very glad that we did not choose to do the show ourselves since at one time we were thinking about it. We quickly realized that TV chooses to edit how they want to. The website for the Evans family is www.ourloudfamily.com

They were a wonderful, friendly family. The show is now being shown on Discovery Health on December 3 & 10 at 8:00 & 8:30. I belong to a yahoo group called Families on the Road and I knew of their family from there. While we were there another family from the FOTR group showed up. Their bus was having problems so we were able to meet two other families that travel fulltime. After socializing for a bit in the morning we headed off again. I was in bed most of the day with a head cold so I couldn’t drive at all and Nathan had to get some work done so we stopped for the night at dinner time in Kentucky. We managed to make it to Nappanee by early afternoon on Tuesday.

Today we went to the South Carolina Aquarium. Our friend Chris Potter volunteers two Saturdays a month as a diver. He met us at the front and they had “Official Visitor” badges for all of us. Here is a picture of Chris with my mom and the kids. Chris went to college with my brother so my mom has known him for quite awhile.

Chris showed us around and walked with us for a bit until he had to go get dressed for the diving show. Once he was in the tank Nathan tried to take a picture of the kids with Chris behind them but the flash hit Chris’ mask so he is basically behind the flash.

While Chris was getting ready for the show we explored the Aquarium. In one spot there was a bald eagle. I think it is the closest we have been to one so far.

Yes it is real! They had a large touch tank area where they had workers educating about the different animals. Here is Josh looking at the underside of a horseshoe crab.

Here is Timmy next to one of the tanks. We spent quite a bit of time here because there was a Green Moray Eel that had his head sticking out of a rock.

Next we found a children’s play area where Josh was steering a boat and Samantha was matching animals up…

After the dive show Chris took us “behind the scenes”. He took us to the top of the tanks where the divers get in. He also showed us the quarantine tanks and the fish hospital tanks. Here is a picture of the main tank. The Loggerhead Turtle is on the top left portion of the picture.

Here is a picture of one of the quarantine tanks. They put the fish that they catch here to make sure they are not sick before adding them to the other tanks.

The last picture is of the filter system for one of the quarantine tanks. Nathan could not believe how big it was. We had two salt water tanks when we lived in Charleston and we had filter systems exactly like this but MUCH smaller. :)

We finished the day in Charleston with walking to a deli nearby and having lunch with Chris. Thanks Chris for a great day!! We are on the road again and should make it to Atlanta late this evening.

On Wednesday Nathan took the kids for a bike ride around the campground. On Thursday they found a path that took them to a large playground that we had seen driving in and out of the park. He didn’t take the camera but the kids had so much fun all of us went back on Friday since it was our last evening at James Island.

Here are pictures of Samantha, Timmy, and Joshua showing off their monkey skills.

At first Joshua found a small slide that he decided to go down…

After that he realized there were bigger slides. Samantha and Timmy joined him at the big slides…

While the boys were still playing on the slides, Samantha decided to go to the swings where grandma was resting…

The last two pictures are actually from the trip to the Aquarium but I have too many pictures from that day so I am putting them here. Timmy found a penny at lunch and had it balanced on his nose so I had to get a picture of him being silly. Also… Samantha got a penny from grandma to see if she could do it as well. Both of them had the pennies balanced on their noses the whole ride back to the campground.

Next up… the Aquarium!