Focht Family Blog

Today is Joshua’s 4th birthday. It is hard for me to let go and realize that my kids are not babies anymore. Here is a picture of Josh’s cake. We decided that we hadn’t watched Wall-E since we bought it so we were going to watch Wall-E and have a Wall-E cake.

Here is Josh’s birthday present…

After dinner, the cake with the candles was served. Here is Joshua blowing out his candles and opening his present…

The present was an outdoor adventure set that came with a watch, a compass, a telescope, a camera, and binoculars. What we didn’t realize was that there was also a small tent. The kids decided to try to put together the tent…

The results were not pretty…

Tomorrow we are taking the kids skiing at Lake Tahoe. This will be the first time for all of them so they are getting lessons. Nathan has not been skiing in about 20 years and it has been about 15 years for me so hopefully it is like riding a bike. :)

Yesterday was a LONG day on the road driving from Las Vegas to Reno. This was made worse because the Putnam hitch on our RV is cracked. Spartan knew that some of them were cracking. We just didn’t think we were one of the ones affected. Unfortunately Nathan discovered a crack while we were at Lake Mead. It looks like it has been there for awhile but Spartan said they did not recommend towing anything with it. This meant that both the RV and truck had to be driven separately. Nathan drove the truck and I drove the RV. There is NOTHING between Las Vegas and Reno. There really wasn’t even a break down lane. There was one town right in the middle called Tonopah that we stopped at to get more gas in the truck and eat lunch, bathroom breaks and such. Then it was back on the road. We left Las Vegas at 8:00 in the morning. We stopped for lunch and also stopped right before Reno at a Walmart so we could buy Josh a birthday gift and we didn’t arrive at the campground until 7:00 at night. I think I am still tired, even after 10 hours of sleep. Spartan is trying to figure out what hitch to replace ours with but it won’t be fixed until San Francisco at least and maybe not until Bakersfield so until then we will both be driving.

We left St. Louis on Friday morning. Friday night we stayed at a Walmart in Oklahoma City. We actually stopped at a Walmart between Tulsa and Oklahoma City first but Nathan didn’t feel good about staying there so after we made dinner we continued on to a bigger area. We made good enough time that we were able to have short driving days the next two days. It was so nice to go outside on Saturday morning in a short sleeved shirt! :)

Saturday night we drove until Amarillo. There isn’t much available for overnight anywhere outside of Amarillo if you are traveling on I-40 so that is why there were 9 or so campers in the lot with us. :) Unfortunately a cold front came through so the short sleeves are back in the closet. Tonight we are at a KOA in Bernalilo, NM. This is the KOA we stayed at right after we purchased our Allstar. We were going to stay at the Cummins because they are going to fix an oil leak in the morning but it was a bad area so we decided to just pay for a campground so we could dump and fill up with water. If we need to be in NM tomorrow night we will probably just stay at a Walmart. Once we leave here we are headed to the Grand Canyon.

Tuesday our plans were to go to the zoo and visit their Christmas areas. However, we were hit with an ice storm and all of the roads were icy. We went as far as the first road out of the campground and the truck was fishtailing too bad so we turned around and decided to have a craft day in the warmth of the RV. First up were smore snowmen ornaments…

Next was boondoggle keychains….

Followed by potholders…

Last night there was an ice storm. Today started with Nathan cleaning chunks of ice off of the rental car. He decided the one chunk looked like a good hat for me…

My mom’s friend Tom had a business meeting in Indianapolis this week so he stayed for a few more days so that he could visit with mom. While they were walking today they found a tree that was covered in ice and red berries. My mom wanted a picture so here is a picture of the tree and a close up of the berries.

While driving around we have seen beautiful horses that are used to plow the fields. We found out today that they are a type of Belgian draft horse. I tried to get a picture of a few in a field while driving by…

Finally when we arrived home I decided I needed a picture of all of the ice on the RV and a close up of the Georgia Southern license plate.

Nathan has been busy outside with the hair dryer trying to melt the ice off of areas like the slide and the windshield wipers because we are traveling tomorrow to Indianapolis for at least a week. The insurance check came today so everything is paid up with the repairs from the water damage. Thankfully they did not give us any problems with the repairs and paid everything except for our deductible and a small portion from depreciating the carpet and the electronics.