Focht Family Blog

I’m almost caught up. Once we left Iowa, we drove to Wisconsin. Things have been busy here. We started out with a stop at the Mustard Museum. They are one of Nathan’s customers. The owner gave us a wonderful tour and then read the children a book that he wrote called Mustard on a Pickle. The children thoroughly enjoyed the reading. The owner signed a copy for them and we bought another signed copy of the book for my nieces.

After leaving the Mustard Museum we drove to Jellystone Caledonia. I was determined not to like this place because they have rules about not letting people receive mail here and a few other things. I have decided that the difference is that Jellystones and KOA’s are more campgrounds for families on a small vacation, not people who travel fulltime. But we booked the reservations for the children and they are enjoying the activities.

We started out our Jellystone stay with me taking a trip to the ER at the hospital for the Medical College. My rash is not gone and was getting worse. I was losing my grip on sanity and barely sleeping. I tried to get an appointment at the clinic but they were booked for 3 months. The ER doctor consulted with one of the dermatologists at the clinic and put me back on another round of heavy prednisone, a strong antihistamine (on top of my normal antihistamines) and a strong cortisone that can be applied to the skin. He feels that whatever triggered it made it so that things that wouldn’t normally bother me are bothering me. I told him the results of the skin tests in Denver and they gave me a large printout on formaldehyde that mentioned that if you get new bedding or blouses especially that you should first wash them in dry milk. Somehow this deactivates the formaldehyde. I decided I was done dealing with the new comforter. I threw it out. I bought a quilt from a company that I have bought bedding from before with out any problems. It is 100% cotton inside and out. I then took it to the laundromat and washed it three times in a huge washer. Once with dry milk, once with allergen free detergent and once with water to rinse it out good. Here is the new bedding.

Hopefully all of the medicines will give the allergy time to calm down and it will go away now. So far it is better but not gone but I am still on all of the medicines, too.

While we have been in Wisconsin we were able to enjoy a visit with one of our old family friends, George and Jackie Sargent. They live only an hour away from Caledonia. We went to their house on a lake and had a barbecue. One of their daughters, Laura, was there with her husband, Josh. She is pregnant and due in September. Here is a picture of Jackie, Laura, Josh, and the kids.

We gave George a hard time about not being in the picture so I got another picture with Jackie, George, Laura, Samantha and Timmy. Both Josh and Josh ran off.

It was an especially nice visit since I haven’t seen Jackie or Laura since my wedding.

Some of the activities that the children have enjoyed at Jellystone have included getting to tuck Yogi into bed at night and we also played candy bar bingo. Today we took the kids to the pool for a little while and they had a lot of fun. Here is Samantha helping Josh go down one of the waterslides.

Here is Timmy coming down another waterslide.

They had a really fun part of the water area called water wars. They give each person a bucket with 6 balloons. You fill them up with water and stand across from each other and launch the balloons through holes at the person across from you. Here is Nathan helping Josh and Samantha and Timmy trying to get theirs across to daddy.

After the water wars we went back to playing in the pool for a little while before heading back to the RV for lunch.

After lunch is when we took Misty to the vet. We have had to force feed her her medicine and some ice cubes tonight because she is locking her jaws and not letting us open them. We are really concerned about her being dehydrated and she can hardly stay awake. I am going to stay up a bit longer and try to get some more ice into her. I would really hate to see a cut on her foot be the end of her.

We stayed at some pretty campgrounds on this part of the trip so I thought I would share a few pictures. The first two are of the campground in Minnesota, Dakotah Meadows. It is at an Indian Casino.

After leaving Minnesota we spent a week in Iowa at a nice campground on the river called Upper Iowa Resort and Rentals. They are directly on the Upper Iowa River and they are nestled in a valley so this was truly camping. We had no cell phones, no internet, very little satellite TV and no antennae TV. It was a very nice, quiet campground and we caught up on a lot of reading. We also finished school and started our book burnings. Here is a view of the river across from our site.

We found some interesting animal tracks by a fallen tree at the edge of the river. Not sure what made them, though.

Samantha decided it was very interesting that the flowers that grew by the river were much bigger then the flowers growing by the campsites. Here is Samantha showing the difference and then a picture of all three of the children with the flowers.

Andrea had her biopsy today. They were able to get enough without going through her back, although Tim said they had to spread her ribs. She will stay tonight at the hospital. The good news is that they said at first look it looked benign. They won’t know for sure until Friday so keep the prayers coming.

We have been without phone or internet for the last few days. We were staying at a campground on the Upper Iowa river and it is down in a valley. This was a weekend of firsts. We survived our first year of homeschooling!! Samantha is officially done with 3rd grade. 4th grade has already been shipped and is waiting for us in NY so she has off from school until July 15th. Timmy is anxious to start Kindergarten as well. This weekend we had a book burning. As we finished subjects we put the books into a pile that was used as firestarter for the campfires. :)

We also had the first canoe trip with the kids. We rented two canoes and the owners of the campground dropped us at a point at the river that is about 2 1/2 hours from the campground. We had one canoe with girls in it and one for the boys. Nobody fell in! At one point Nathan had to drag Joshua in because he fell asleep hanging over the edge. Both of the boys were pretty wet at the end just from putting their arms over the sides but it was a fun experience and we saw lots of bald eagles flying over the river. I didn’t take the camera with me because I was afraid it would end up in the water but I will try to catch up with what pictures I have tonight or tomorrow. :)

Unfortunately we woke up this morning and the eggs were gone. There isn’t any evidence around that they hatched. We found out the birds are killdeer plovers. We think that a snake may have gotten to them. Josh took this bit of information and has been trying to get Timmy’s toy plastic snake to spit out the eggs. :)

The other fun development this week is that Nathan decided to buy himself a Wii. He also bought Mario Kart, Playground games and Olympic games as well as the sport pack that comes with it. I had to buy another controller today so that all three of the kids could play Mario Kart without fighting over whose turn it is. I am still looking for another wheel for the controller. It seems that everyone around here has sold out.

The only bad part of this development is that I was planning on making a Wii the kid’s big present for Christmas so I will have to rethink what they will be getting this year.

Tonight we will be able to add a couple of new states to our map. Last night was spent in the truck yard at the Mc Cormick center in Chicago, IL. Not a bad deal. They let you stay overnight for $20 with the containers and car parking and they patrol the lot all night. After leaving Chicago this morning in heavy traffic Nathan has decided that for the part of the next trip that he has to be at Mc Cormick we will just stay there. It is close to downtown so next trip we will disconnect the truck so we can go exploring.

I have promised Samantha that the next trip will include a day out for her and me where I will take her to lunch and a show at the American Girl store with her Samantha doll if I can get reservations and if she is done with 3rd grade! :) I think we can get the school work done. I just need to check the dates and see if I can get reservations for the show and lunch. I have also found a restaurant that delivers your food by train that is right outside of Chicago that I have promised them we will go to the next trip.

This trip was spent doing schoolwork in the parking lot while Nathan walked the show site. I tried to Photoshop the “new” picture of our RV and truck being towed on Nathan’s computer but when I went to save it, it crashed. I will see if I can get Nathan to work on it tonight. Today we have been driving in snow (just for a bit) and very heavy winds. We are almost to Des Moines, IA where we will be stopping to get a valve for our water (we are leaking) and fill up on water so we can do dishes and shower before everything starts smelling. :)

We went past a Speedco when we were just coming into Iowa and it reminded us that we still need to get an oil change on the generator. We had one scheduled at the Rally but they were over run and never got back to us to do the work. I called a Cummins shop in Des Moines but the couldn’t get us in until tomorrow so I called another Cummins in Omaha, which is one of the big hubs in the area. I asked if they could do an oil change on the generator first thing in the morning and they said no problem and they even have hookups so now I don’t have to look for a Walmart in Omaha. :) Tonight will be spent at the Cummins shop hooked into power and tomorrow morning we will get the oil changed on the generator at 7:00am and get on the road heading towards Colorado.

I think we will end up reaching Colorado before we were planning so I will have to see if I can add some days to our reservation. We will have time to do some sight seeing in Colorado so hopefully I will have lots of pictures to post in the next couple of weeks.