Focht Family Blog

I have found that I am taking more pictures with my phone lately because I can instantly post them to Facebook. Yesterday I decided to clean out my phone and emailed a bunch of pictures to myself that I wanted to post here. Something happened in cyber space and they never landed in my email and I was stupid to delete them after I emailed them thinking they would be safe on my computer. Guess that is a lesson learned.

It appears that we have managed another successful conference this year. Everyone enjoyed themselves. They liked the hotel, the food, and the employees. Now to start the planning for 2013!

I cannot believe how hectic life has become. We are in full-blown soccer parent mode. Work has been busy for both Nathan and I so we haven’t been able to take the kids to the parks as much as we have wanted to. Sundays we go to church and then Samantha has CCD classes until 8:00, Monday the boys have CCD classes until 8:00, Tuesday the boys have Cub Scouts, and Wednesday all 3 kids are taking ballroom dance classes an hour away from where we live. Right now I am sitting at our annual CV3 Conference that is being held this year in Orlando, FL. Since I do not have any school to teach I may actually get some updates in.

We ended up having another CV3 meeting at the house. This time had 10 people. The kids lost their beds. 2 slept on the futon, 1 slept with grandma. While the employees were here we went out for the night for a Pirate Dinner. Here is a picture of all of us with the pirate captain and his wench…

After that adventure we had a few educational outings including a tour of one of Disney’s fire stations. Here are the kids posing with the dalmation statue….

The firemen set up a burning house display for the kids to put out with the hose and each child was able to take a turn spraying the hose. Here is Timmy…

Here is Josh…

and here is Samantha…

Next in our adventure this fall/winter was a trip to Disney for one of the Not So Scary Halloween Parties. We didn’t go on the actual Holloween night because we wanted the kids to be able to trick or treat at the neighborhood this year. Here is a picture of the kids posing with Belle…

And here are the kids and grandma posing with Aurora…

We were also carrying a Flat Stanley with us for one of Nathan’s employees so here is Timmy with the Flat Stanley on the Jungle Cruise…

Anyways…. we have had a lot of fun this Fall/Winter and are enjoying the new house. We ARE missing the neighbors at camp although we have entertained many of them at the house this year. Our Thanksgiving and Christmas tables were graced with family and camping friends. The kids had a BIG Christmas this year with a tree and lots of presents because they haven’t had that for the last 4 years. Timmy and Josh both celebrated their birthdays in Florida this year and both are excelling in Cub Scouts. They both have earned their Light of Christ Award and Josh has been awarded his Tiger patch. Timmy is being awarded his Wolf patch this month. Samantha is loving dance and they have their first BEGINNING competition this May. Our plans right now are to head up to camp around Memorial Day and we will return to the house near Labor Day. It is cutting the camping season short but the kids want to be back in time for CCD classes to start next year so they aren’t the “new kids”. I think Samantha will also want to get back to dance. I will see if I can edit some more pictures while at the conference tomorrow so I can put a few more updates on our adventures.

We have finished decorating as much as we are able at this point so I took pictures of all of the rooms. I am too tired to post the whole house tonight but I will post the pictures of the downstairs. I have already posted pictures of the guest rooms so I won’t repeat those. Here is a picture of the schoolroom…

Across from the schoolroom is supposed to be the formal dining room. Right now it is a sitting room with a china cabinet. I plan on buying plate hangers and hanging some of my grandmother’s china on the wall to decorate with…

Here is the living room without boxes in it…

And better pictures of the dining area and the kitchen….

I tried to get a good picture of the guest bathroom but it is at a strange angle so it is hard to get a good overall picture so I took two pictures of some of the decor I put in…

That is all for tonight!!

Life is hectic when you are trying to move. We drove back to Pennsylvania with my back out from moving boxes and it took the few weeks we were there to get my back to the point where I could drive back to Florida. It took two rounds of steroids to take down the swelling. Timmy had decided that he wanted to spend his birthday in Florida so we left a week earlier than planned.

We left Pennsylvania on Sunday morning at 5:00 am and I managed to drive the whole day and made it to my brother’s house by 4:30 pm in Atlanta. We had dinner with them and spent the night at their house and left after lunch on Monday. We made it to the house by 8:00 pm. Next time I am driving both days early in the morning because Monday seemed like a MUCH longer day.

Once home we went into overdrive putting things away because the next Monday I was going to have 5 CV3 employees at the house for 3 days as our first guests!! We managed to mostly pull it off. I was able to teach Samantha how to make cinnamon rolls as a trial run for the guests coming. This went great! I was using my beautiful marble rolling pin that was a wedding gift from my sister-in-law’s sister…. I left it on the counter and Joshua was playing with it. It dropped on the floor and broke in half and scratched Josh on the toe. He was crying and Timmy came upstairs to tell me that Joshua’s toe was broken and there was blood everywhere. In truth there wasn’t that much blood and it looked like he just got scratched with the broken edge and it didn’t actually fall on his foot. Thankfully for the real run of cinnamon rolls I have a backup wooden rolling pin! :)

Before the guests arrived we were able to have a few fun days. Friday was spent at Epcot with the Homeschooling group for a Not Back To School Day….  I took a picture with my phone and am trying to email it to myself so I can post it… We will see if I can figure that out. On Saturday it was Timmy’s 9th birthday and he wanted to try one of the waterparks. My mom doesn’t like waterparks so she stayed home with the dogs. Nathan and I spent the day at Blizzard Beach with the kids and we had a great time. To finish the day off Timmy wanted Japanese food so we had dinner at Benihana.

The guests all arrived on Monday and we managed to feed and house them for three days. All of the guests and Nathan left on Thursday and we are busy trying to put away the remaining boxes. I have also been busy making a headboard for our room. We spent so much on all of the other rooms that we ran out of money for our room. We have the room that Walmart built as Nathan says so I went to Home Depot and bought 3 doors and stained them to match our furniture and then bolted them all together. I will take some pictures of all of the finished rooms this week and post pictures.

We were able to get a lot of work done on the house last week so I am going to share some of the pictures. Some of them still have boxes in the rooms but I should have all of that put away next month when the kids and I move down. Here is a picture of the finished outside of the house…

First I will show you some of the downstairs. This picture is of the kitchen…

Next is the living room but it obviously still has boxes that need to be put other places in it…

Next is guest room #1…. Nathan’s parents have first dibs on this room but it will be a guest room for others when they are not visiting…

Next is guest room #2… this one is for whoever is visiting…

That is about as far as we have gotten downstairs. Once I get back to the house my first priority will be to get the boxes put away that are in the formal living room so I can set up the kid’s schoolroom.

Upstairs… my first picture is of my laundry room…

This is a picture of the boy’s room. Their matresses are on the floor in the master because Nathan and I were sleeping on them… it will eventually be decorated like Phineas and Ferb travelled back in time because Josh wants Phineas and Ferb and Timmy wants dinosaurs!..

Next is Samantha’s room. Unfortunately my back went out before I could finish making her bed so I don’t have pictures of her bedding set she picked out but this is the furniture she chose for her room…

The last two pictures that I have at this point are of Nathan’s favorite room…. the media room…

We have already watched two movies in here. Nathan said he didn’t care what furniture was in the living room because he plans on being in the media room all the time! :)