Focht Family Blog

We drove all day Thursday and made it to the Walmart in Cumming, GA at about 4:00. We called my brother and he brought his girls over to the RV and we went to dinner in the shopping center. My family walked. My brother drove his girls because it was cold and the restaurant was too far away. It is amazing how your perceptions of distance change when you do not have a car. :) My sister-in-law wasn’t able to join us at the restaurant because she had to take their new puppy to the emergency vet. She was throwing up and wasn’t stopping.

Samantha was thrilled to be able to see her cousins again. She loves playing with Ashleigh (who is 4). They sat next to each other at dinner.

Tim got a phone call from Andrea just as we were getting ready to leave. I managed to take a picture of him and his youngest Meghan. Josh was trying to feed Meghan the whole dinner.

So back to mom’s trailer…. once we stopped just outside of Atlanta to get gas we realized that she now has a crack in her fiberglass in the front of the trailer.

This is on the same side where the underside is starting to peel away.

Needless to say, it needs to be fixed. We took pictures of all of the damage and sent it to a dealer in Ocala that the factory recommended. So on Friday when we head to Florida we will drop mom’s trailer in Ocala to be repaired.

Cute story…. Friday morning my sister-in-law brought her girls to play for a little bit before we headed out. When they were getting in the car she told Ashleigh that they were going to go and play with Samantha, Timmy and Josh for a bit. She became very concerned and asked if they shouldn’t call her daddy and let him know. It seems that she thought we still lived in Savannah and had decided that if they were going to drive to Savannah they wouldn’t be back in time for dinner so they should let Tim know. Andrea told her that we didn’t live in Savannah anymore so Ashleigh asked where we lived now…. Andrea told Ashleigh we lived in the Walmart parking lot! :)

I am now worried that when they go shopping she is going to want to know if we are “home”. :)

This has not been Josh’s week. We ended up having to get back to Statesboro quickly because he had developed an eye infection in his bad eye so we managed to get an appointment with his doctor’s office but not his doctor. Josh didn’t like the other doctor as much and did not want someone opening his eye and shining a light in it. We were almost to the point where we were going to have to take him to the hospital and have them gas him to get a good look at it. I had been bragging this week about how good he was that the only time we have had to have an exam under anesthesia was when he was under 1 because he is usually so well behaved at the doctor’s office that he lets him look at his eye without any problems. Not true this day. There seems to be something wrong with his contact. It is getting a buildup on it that isn’t coming off with cleaning and when the people at the doctor’s office were able to clean off a spot they were getting pits in the contact. It shouldn’t do that.

She was able to find one scratch on Josh’s eye which is unbelievable because he wouldn’t let her see the majority of his eye so there may have been more than the one scratch. I was worried that I did it getting his contact in or out but she thought it was from the contact. She prescribed antibiotic drops and his eye is now looking much better. She also called Bausch & Lomb and they are going to replace the contact. Hopefully his new contact will be in before his already scheduled appointment with his eye doctor on Friday.

Thursday morning we woke up and walked to the Wild Animal Park. It is in the same park that the campground is in. They have quite a few animals for a small zoo. My favorite section was the lemurs that they have free-roaming together. Unfortunately my camera doesn’t zoom in enough for me to get a really good shot of them. The first few animals that I was able to get good shots of were the flamingos and the black rhino.

Next we found the zebras and Timmy wanted to have his picture taken standing on a turtle bench.

Next we found Bison or Buffalo, where we all reminisced about seeing two Buffalo heads in the back of a pickup while going out to dinner in Indiana….

The last animals we looked at were the cheetahs. They were so beautiful. There were 4 of them. I was able to get a picture of the two that were layng down next to each other.

After going through the park we went by the playground again for a few minutes and left a little before 12:00. We are now driving into Dothan, AL and are planning on being in LA by tonight. Stay tuned for more adventures…..

Our first stop was in Leesburg, GA to pick up a camera for the back of mom’s trailer that Nathan bought on Ebay. Then we headed to Albany, GA where we checked in at Chehaw Park. We were in Albany visiting one of Nathan’s customers, Harold and Leslie from Outdoor Headquarters. They are one of those couples that you feel like you have known forever. I have only had the pleasure of meeting them twice but I have thoroughly enjoyed both visits.

I took the kids over to the big playground for the afternoon. The first picture is of Joshua driving a train and Samantha is his passenger. The second is of Timmy sitting at the top of a slide. The last one is of grandma being silly with Samantha and Timmy. I was trying to get Josh to stand on one of the blocks but he was being temperamental yesterday.

After playing for awhile we went back to the RV to get ready for dinner. While we were getting ready Nathan installed the camera on the back of mom’s trailer where he had already run the wires last month. Then before dinner we went on a search for groceries since we were out of chocolate milk, which is a major issue in this household. We had passed a nice Winn-Dixie on our way in but Nathan said he found a Harvey’s that was closer. The Harvey’s he found was very small and had a very bad selection. I cleaned out all of their chocolate milk and got a few other things but I still need to find a better store. Maybe tonight we will boondock at a Walmart! :)

After groceries we drove to the country club and had a wonderful meal with Harold and Leslie. The owner of the club had two children ages 8 and 5 and they had their new Wii there. He said our kids could play with them after they had eaten. The kids had a lot of fun because they had never seen a Wii before. It is a new video game system where you actually have to move, like in tennis you swing your arm like you have a racquet. This kept the kids well entertained. Joshua and Timmy decided they wanted to go back to the RV so mom volunteered to take them. Samantha stayed with us and played some more. She got very good at the bowling. We got back at 9:58 and the gate was already closed to the park. Thankfully the lady I checked in with gave me a code but there was a sign saying that it wouldn’t work after 10:00 so we were extremely close. While we were driving in we had a deer run in front of us and then we noticed two more deer standing in the field watching us. We stopped and slowly opened the door and shone the flashlight on them so the kids could see them. They thought that was really cool.

Usually the tradition of Christmas is that Christmas Eve we go to Nathan’s parents for lasagna and then Christmas Day they come over to our house to watch the kids open their gifts, then we go to their house for more presents and also a big dinner. This year Nathan’s parents were leaving for New York the day after Christmas so everything was moved up a day except presents.

Christmas Eve we went to their house for the big dinner. After dinner we all went to mass together. While we were in church Santa snuck into the RV and left Christmas pajamas for everyone on their beds, like he does every year. This year it was blue pajamas with penguins for the girls, grandma included. Nathan got some green flannel pants with moose on them and a green shirt. The boys got green and cream pajamas that had moose and penguins on them.

After we all got in our pajamas Nathan insisted I open my gift from him that night. It was a new video camera that is much nicer than my current one. So we used it to video tape the kids and me setting cookies and tea out for Santa with apple slices for the reindeer. Then everyone yawns for the camera and is sent to bed. After reading all of our Christmas stories the kids were finally in bed by 10:00! The grandparents were planning on being at the RV at 7:00 because we figured the kids would wake early. Here is what they woke up to.

After we unwrapped everything it was time for breakfast. I was tired of all of the years that I have spent hours preparing wonderful breakfast meals that nobody eats so I offered to take everyone to Huddle House. Nathan’s parents declined and said we would just see them later at their house. The rest of us headed to Huddle House where they had a few employees decide they didn’t want to work on Christmas so they were so short staffed that the lady taking our order was also cooking our breakfast. She had a wonderful spirit and didn’t let it bother her. While we were there she called her daughter and had her come in to help.

After breakfast we went to Nathan’s parents house where the kids had lots more presents to open. After awhile mom decided she wanted to get laundry done before we hit the road so I drove her back and while she did the laundry, I cleaned and put away all of the toys that were in the RV. After that we returned to Nathan’s parents where we played a game of Disney Scene It (one of Samantha’s gifts from Santa). Then we said our goodbyes and left to get everything ready for leaving.

I came back to the RV and rearranged toys. We put some of the older toys in a bag under mom’s bed so they can have them if they want them but it made room for the new ones. After a good night’s rest we woke the next morning to pack everything up and hit the road….

A couple of days before Christmas I woke up to find that Timmy had rolled out of his bed and was snuggled with Josh on Josh’s bed. I just had to get a picture.

I think all the excitement was catching up with them.