Focht Family Blog

Okay… Here are the pictures of mom’s new home. The truck is a 2004 Ford F250 diesel. The camper is a 2008 Arctic Fox 805. It has thermal windows so if we put mom in the snow again she will do better. The only problem it had was that they were supposed to add a microwave and an electric water heater to it before it was shipped. They shipped it from Oregon in such a rush to get it to her in time that they forgot to add both. They were able to add a microwave from a different Arctic Fox they had on the lot but we will have to return later for the electric water heater. It does have a propane heater so she still has hot water. One of the things mom likes most about it is that it has a generator so now if we stop at a Walmart she has air conditioning and power as well.

Here is the side view.

Here is the door in the back.

Here is Joshua sitting on mom’s bed showing off the flat screen TV that I insalled for her. I am proud that I managed to do it correctly with only making the two holes that were needed to attach the arm. She can watch it in bed or swing it out so she can watch it from the dinette.

Here is a shot that shows the dinette off to the right.

Here is the kitchen to the left.

I tried to get a long shot that shows the whole camper from the door…

I tried to get a picture of the bathroom. It is on the right past the dinette. Josh was standing in the way but it basically is a wet bath like a boat bathroom. The shower, the toilet and the sink are all in the same room so that when you shower you are getting the toilet wet.

And with that I am as caught up as I am going to get… :)

Today we are driving to Chicago. I am not sure if we will make it all of the way but knowing Nathan we will. Nathan has to attend a show of some sort for a day and then we will be driving to Boulder, CO. We are supposed to check in at Boulder on April 30.

After Atlanta we drove back to Statesboro so mom could buy a truck. She bought a 2004 Ford F250 diesel that has 60K miles on it. It has a club cab so we can all fit in it. She has always felt bad that we didn’t have a vehicle to drive when we stopped places. We stayed in Statesboro for another week so that Nathan could order all of the pieces that he needed to put onto the truck to make it towable and also make it so it could hold a camper. That gave him time for the parts to get in and for him to go to his friend’s house where he works on the Jeeps and get them all installed.

During the time in Statesboro I ended up taking two trips to the emergency room for allergy attacks and went to just about every doctor known to man to figure out why I was all of a sudden having such a bad reaction. I thought it was from a new medicine but they seem to think it didn’t look like a reaction to medicine. They biopsied my skin and ended up putting me on a HIGH dose of prednisone for a couple of weeks. End result is that it was/is a reaction to something I have come into contact with but they don’t know what. The best guess is that this is a really bad spring season and the trees are trying to kill me. :)

During all of these reactions we took a week and drove down to Ocala to pick up mom’s trailer. It was all fixed up but needed a lot of WD40 to get into all of the locks from it sitting for a month. While in Ocala my mom and I stopped to see my grandfather at hospice. He seemed more alert to me than he did when we saw him last. He was suffering from pneumonia the last time we saw him and ended up at the hospital. He is now at hospice. He doesn’t have a feeding tube but is still eating pureed food. The Parkinson’s makes it extremely difficult for him to swallow. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to eat because he wasn’t eating much the day we were there. He used to love lemon meringue pie and I told him I would make him one if he would eat it so I went back to the RV and made him some little tarts and brought those back with some ice cream. His wife and her daughter said he ate all of them. They have his memorial service planned for the end of May but I am starting to wonder if he may be alive for his own service. :) I have tough grandpas.

My other grandpa was kicked out of hospice in Savannah and was sent back to a nursing home. They have now written him up in their journal as one of their success stories. When we stopped to see him before leaving for Florida we had to track him down because he is now spending his days wheeling around the hallways singing.

While in Florida we stayed in Tampa at Lazydays Rallypark. They had a nice pool that I took the kids to one day and they have free breakfast and lunch at the park Monday-Saturday so the kids got to ride their bikes everyday to get meals. I bought Josh a small bicycle while in Statesboro and once we got to Tampa he figured out right away how to ride it and now he is always wanting to ride bikes. Nathan and I spent his $500 gift card at Camping World while there as well. We bought 2 folding bikes with bags and a hitch that goes between the RV and the truck that holds the kid’s bikes. We are putting our bikes in the back seat of the truck while we are driving since they are folded in bags.

Mom had a chance to catch up with old friends while in Tampa. She spent the time we were there staying at her college roomates house. They went out to adult things like nice meals and shows. :) The day before we left mom and I drove to Orlando and attended the wedding of my cousin, Brian. It was a nice wedding held lakeside with a beach atmosphere. There was a luah theme to it including a show during the reception. It was nice to see both of my aunts in one place and get to visit with them without having to worry what the kids were up to. Nathan stayed in Tampa with them. The only bad part of the evening was that we got home at midnight and were up at 7:00 the next morning to get everything ready for a long day on the road. We took turns driving because we had to drive the RV pulling the trailer and someone else had to drive the truck separately. It was a tiring day but we made it back to Atlanta in one day.

We are now in Stone Mountain. Mom traded the trailer in for her truck camper on Tuesday and she has spent the week getting everything settled inside. She had to throw out a few more things and she says that the truck camper will keep her in good shape because she has to climb to get to everything in it. Punch has a new bed in the aisle by the door so she can sleep on somewhere soft because she cannot get up on anything either. I need to go out and walk Misty in a minute and while I am out there I will walk to mom’s site and take some pictures so I can show what is now going to be pulled behind us. I will have to wait until we get to a large parking lot so I can update the picture on the front of the blog to show the truck behind us.

I know I am seriously behind…. but I am starting to feel like I can get caught up a bit.

We went back to Statesboro after the rally. Easter weekend started out with a egg hunt at my in-laws on Saturday. Here is a picture of the kids running around looking for the hidden eggs.

My mother-in-law gave them each tags to wear for their age group and Josh got to start first followed by Timmy and then Samantha and then she gave them special prizes for gathering the most eggs in their age groups. After the hunt the kids played with their new toys and we had dinner with them. I also gave all of the boys a haircut that day so they would be trimmed up for Easter morning.

Easter morning came at the RV and the kids woke up to their baskets and another egg hunt. Here are their baskets this year.

They each got a book and a special toy along with the candy from the eggs. After the hunt we got everyone dressed and headed to church with my in-laws. Here is a picture of the kids before church.

The reason I mentioned the haircuts is that during Nathan’s trim I accidently cut a groove in his sideburn. Nobody would have noticed but it bothered him so Easter morning he shaved his beard off. This is only the third time in 11 years that I have seen his cheeks.

Misty started to get grumpy a couple of weeks ago and would just give us an occasional yip of that hurt, leave me alone. At the rally it was getting to the point that she was snipping more and would cry out in pain while she was getting up. We called her breeder to see what she thought and we found out that 3 of her siblings have auto immune issues so we were afraid that she might have something like that since she also has a problem with her breath getting bad within 6 months of a teeth cleaning.

We took her to our old vet in Pooler and she drew some blood. Upon physical exam all that she saw was some arthritis. Her blood turned out perfect and the vet gave us some medicine that would help with the pain and swelling from the arthritis. After two days she seems to be back to her old self. She is playing again and she hasn’t cried out at all in the last two days so I guess she is just dealing with arthritis. We are now trying to find someone who can clean her teeth. We wanted to get her the new vaccine that is supposed to help with bacteria in the mouth and I cannot find any vets in Savannah that have it. Our vet said she could get it for us but we would have to buy the whole tray of 25 shots and she will only need 2 shots. I called my brother and got the name of his vet in Atlanta. They have the vaccine so we can get the shot there but they want a lot more money to clean the teeth.

Our vet is already booked for surgeries next week so maybe I will call and see if they can just clean her teeth in Atlanta without doing all of the fluoride treatments and coating her teeth with extra. They said that we could just get the vaccine from them so if I can find someone to clean her teeth around here next week we will do that and then arrange for her to get the vaccine in Atlanta.

Other than that not much is happening. We are in Statesboro this week and next. We will spend Easter with Nathan’s parents. I did get rid of our old comforter yesterday. It was getting worn looking. I found a nice set on sale at JC Penneys. It wasn’t the color I would have chosen but I am stuck with the fabrics on my windows and headboard so this is what we found to go with them.

Well… now I am caught up. We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who this afternoon. It was a cute movie although Nathan felt it would have been better if it were only 30 minutes long. Tomorrow we will be doing an egg hunt at Nathan’s parents house and then Sunday we will celebrate Easter with them.

Okay… my lesson for the day is to learn how to get the fire extinguisher out of its holder. Apparently this is a lesson you should learn before you actually need it. Yesterday while we were driving the indicator light for the high beams wouldn’t go off. We called a tech and they thought that maybe moisture was near the wires and as soon as it dried it should be fine. We stopped and checked the lights and they didn’t seem to be on high beams but the high beams wouldn’t come on, although the indicator light was on.

We are also having an issue with the radio not being able to turn off if the running lights are on. Today we stopped in Lakeland to look at some truck campers that Nathan found that are light enough that we could probably tow. Mom is considering trading in her trailer for a truck and camper so we would have a vehicle. Once we stopped Nathan smelled something that smelled like burning electronics.

The children were already dressed so I threw them out the door while Nathan was yelling for the extinguisher. He had opened the fuse box and nothing was there but when he opened the front access door there was a high flame coming out of the back of the headlight. He had it mostly blown out by the time I got the extinguisher out of its holder but he used the extinguisher to make sure it was all out. Apparently two of the wires must have crossed or something and we should have been more concerned about the high beam light that wouldn’t turn off. Now I am a bit more concerned about the radio issue. Nathan is going to try to take the RV into a local dealer on Monday while I take the kids to a park to see if they can look into the radio issue and fix the headlights. Right now we only have one headlight.

Here is a picture of the wires and a picture of the burnt housing.