Focht Family Blog

We are back in Statesboro. We made it back on Friday. Nathan washed the RV on Saturday. The dirt and salt were driving him crazy!! It now looks brand new. It had a wonderful bath and wax from Nathan and his father. We took his parents out to dinner on Saturday to thank them because his dad helped him clean the outside and his mom watched the kids so I could clean the inside. It was gorgeous for one day… however now that the kids are back in here it doesn’t look like I did much! :)

Monday my mom and I took Samantha in to get her throat checked to make sure her strep was clearing up. I can’t remember if I said it before but her pediatrician called in antibiotics for her because I emailed him with her symptoms and pictures of her throat that I took. I love that he helps us out like that. He is a wonderful doctor. I wish I could find a doctor that good that took care of adults! After her appointment we went to my mom’s father’s nursing home. She was having problems with them getting their checks for his care in a timely manner so she left them checks dated for each month so they have them in the file and can deposit them monthly. They want to write my grandfather up as a success story because they now have him up and walking. That man is going to live to be 110!

This is the same grandfather that we rushed home for in August because he was dying in the CCU. We had them pull everything when we got there because that is what his will states that he wants. They said he was still going to die because he had infections and couldn’t eat. He got well enough that the hospital transferred him to hospice. He was only on a liquid diet at hospice and again they said he would die within a few weeks. Mom got rid of his TV and clothes. Then he became so healthy while at hospice that he wasn’t allowed to stay there anymore because he wasn’t declining. He was transferred to another nursing home, mom bought him new clothes and a new TV, and he is still going strong. He seems to be getting nicer to everyone and the nurses all like him.

After the nursing home I drove by Samantha’s old school. I was going to see if they could test her with their national standardized test that they do. They were actually testing this week so I thought maybe she could sit with her old class but when the principal checked with the person who runs the diocese schools they said she wasn’t allowed to test someone who wasn’t a student. I have been having such a hard time finding someone who can test her with a test that covers more than just reading and math that I finally ordered the testing supplies myself for one of the national tests and I will just give it to her. However, we managed to get to the school just as the classes were heading to lunch so the principal allowed Samantha to stop in and say hello to her old classmates. She also got to say hi to her old teachers. She was very happy since she has missed some of her friends.

We then stopped at Houlihans and had a nice girl’s day lunch. Here is mom and Samantha at the table. The waitress tried to get a picture of all of us but she didn’t do something right with pushing the button and the flash didn’t go off so the picture was too dark to see anyone.

As much as I love my boys it was nice to have a little time with just the girls. Samantha has been having some problems with attitude lately and we have a deal that for every 7 days that she is attitude free that we will do something fun that is girls only, like getting our nails done. In two days she has 1 day that she was good. The pediatrician actually recommended that we write a contract with her of things we expect of her and consequences if she doesn’t do them and then have both of us sign that way the consequences are already set.

Tomorrow mom and I are taking a little time for ourselves and we are going to a spa in town to get a massage, a facial and a pedicure. I can’t wait. I haven’t had a facial in over 5 years and it has been over 3 years since I have had a massage or a pedicure. My last pedicure was a couple of day before Josh was born because I wanted my toenails to be pretty at the hospital. :) Wednesday I have doctor’s appointments in Savannah and Thursday Nathan has meetings in Savannah and he is also going to take all of the stuff from my mom’s trailer and put them in our storage unit so her trailer is empty when it is dropped off. Friday is Josh’s eye appointment and then we are headed to Ocala.

Unfortunately I had a bit of bad news today. My other grandfather has suffered from Parkinson’s for years. He decided to have a stomach tube a few months ago when he lost his ability to swallow. They tried to rehabilitate him but he has had a few set backs and had a few bad infections. He has now decided to have his stomach tube removed. He is tired of fighting. He is in a hospital in Ocala and we had already planned on visiting him on Friday. He will be moved to hospice on Friday so we will visit him there instead. They figure he should be coherent and awake for at least 24 hours but maybe as much as 3 days. Then he will most likely fall asleep and not wake up. The whole process could take a week or more. They are not planning on having the memorial for him until some time in April so I don’t know if we will make it back for that or not. Personally I would rather visit someone while they are still alive then to go to a funeral. My grandfather has lived an exciting life. He was a christian psychologist, he wrote books on marriages and family, he traveled around the world speaking to people. He out lived two wives. My grandma died of cancer when I was a child and his second wife died of a cerebral hemorrhage when I was a teenager. I had just returned home from a two week trip with them when it happened. He remarried again and she is by his side while he goes through this final journey.

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.

I figured I better update since I realize that looking at the blog we are still in Indiana somewhere. :)

So we left Ft. Wayne. Connecting mom’s trailer it was 8 degrees outside! We headed to the CB shop that was at someone’s house. Thankfully he had a long driveway so we didn’t get stuck. He was very helpful and didn’t charge us that much. The CB was still working. The extra antennae that Nathan had installed was NOT working but we found out at Newmar and also at the CB shop that we had a CB antennae already installed on the RV. I guess we didn’t need to pay the dealership we bought from to install an extra one. The original Newmar installed antennae is now hooked into the CB and it is working once again.

After the CB shop we drove to Warsaw where mom’s trailer was made. The service manager came out and looked at her trailer and agreed it should not be doing what it is. He also put a level on the ceiling and confirmed that it is bowing. They said they would probably need to remove the roof and put a new one on. They do service at the factory but not until April. We were planning on bringing it back in April and having the factory do the work (we just love Indiana) but once we got to Atlanta we have now developed more issues (explain later) so it needs to be fixed before April.

Next was Newmar again. I dumped and filled the water while Nathan paid for the table and brought it out to the RV. We then drove over to the Martins lot and took care of lunch, laundry and groceries. This is one of my favorite shopping centers because everything is there in one place. There is Pizza Hut for Nathan, McDonald’s for the kids and Subway for me. Then of course there is Martins for the groceries and a wonderful laundromat to do the laundry at. I discovered a wonderful new treat at Martins this trip. It is Pomegranate Teas, pomegranate juice mixed with teas and other juices. I love them. The Pomegranate Peach White Tea is one of my favorites.

Anyways… we decided to get on the road and we ended up driving until about 11:00 and made it just shy of Kentucky. Spent the night at Walmart.

Well… unfortunately for me Nathan had an appointment Tuesday morning. He had one of the people he was meeting with pick him up. Why was this unfortunate for me? It left me with the task of getting 3 kids and 2 large duffel bags of stuff across an icy road with snow banks on each side. My mom came over with one of the duffels so I could put all of the bags of toys we brought with us to the hotel in it. She had both of the boys, I had Samantha and the duffels. We stopped at the desk and checked out. Next we had to wade through snow through the parking lot. Only Timmy had his snow boots so the rest of us were trudging through snow that was past my ankles in sneakers. I got Samantha across the street, dropped the duffels in the snow and then went back to carry Josh because mom was having trouble getting both of them through the snow. I carried Josh to the trailer and then went back for the duffels.

Next we got the brilliant idea to walk to the corner at lunchtime to a diner that was there for lunch. I went back into the RV and grabbed the rest of the snow boots. I have learned the hard way that mine are not water proof. I think I need to throw them out and buy some duck boots to keep in the RV. That would help in puddles while hooking up in rain as well. I managed to carry Josh most of the way but couldn’t make it all of the way. Samantha helped me by taking one of his hands while I had the other and we manged to get to the diner with only falling once or twice. Lunch was delicious and although the waitress offered to drive us back we chose to walk again. I stopped in to get an update and it was a good thing. They had been trying to call Nathan because they didn’t know how to bring in the slide and needed to drive it to make sure all of the leaks were solved.

While we were walking the dogs after lunch I decided to take a picture of them in the snow. Here are Misty and Punch. Misty doesn’t care for this cold too much but mom seems to think Punch enjoys it.

The RV was finally returned to us at 4:00 and then we headed to the mall again for dinner. We are enjoying being back in our home. Nathan had to sleep with Samantha last night and she slept fitfully so he didn’t get much sleep and Josh was restless last night as well so I didn’t get much rest either sleeping with him and Timmy. Tomorrow we are heading to a CB shop to have them diagnose what the problem is with ours. Nathan has now replaced every part of the CB and it still doesn’t work. It was working fine until it was driven into a short building at Newmar in October. They took off the antennae. We replaced the antennae, then the wiring and finally the actual CB. Not sure what happened when the antennae came off to mess everything up. Next we are going to R-Vision. They are the company that made mom’s trailer. When we got to Newmar the kitchen counter and cabinets had come away from the wall of the trailer. Nathan fixed it but then he also noticed that the TV cabinet is trying to come down from the ceiling. When he looked it looks like the ceiling is warping so we want to make sure the trailer isn’t going to break in half. They said they would look at it and see what they could do.

Next we will be heading back to Newmar. Nathan has decided he wants to replace the small folding table with a dinette table. He called on Monday and they made us a dinette table that matches are interior so we are going to go pick it up. We also need to do laundry so I think we may end up spending the night at Newmar although Nathan said something about getting on the road even if he only makes it to Indianapolis and stays at Camping World. I know mom would prefer Newmar because she can plug in. Either way Thursday we will be heading south again. We will be back in Statesboro probably by the weekend. Then we have a week at Disney starting Saturday, March 8 followed by The Rally in Perry. Not sure where we will head from there…

Monday morning we took the kids to the trailer while they looked at the oil leak. Cummins decided that the oil pan wasn’t sealed right so it needed a new oil pan. Yes, we had a new oil pan put in at Christmas. They had the oil pan in stock so it looked like it would be a quick fix. However, when he looked more closely he noticed that the metal that is between the engine and the oil pan was dented. The dent was most likely caused by the engine explosion and was keeping the seal from setting right. He also noticed that the oil pick up was hanging from a loose bolt so they also fixed that.

The downside to this is that they didn’t have some of the parts in stock. So because the oil pan was off we ended up at the hotel across the street. We thought it would be fun for the kids. This was an old Holidome (Holiday Inn destination). It is now a Quality Inn. It had an indoor playground, a pool, a jacuzzi and a sauna. However, everything was quite old and they are still in the process of renewing everything. The kids chose not to climb up into the playground equipment but they did run off some steam in the playground area. I brought their swimsuits but inside the dome was a little chilly and the pool was heated but wasn’t warm enough to justify the chills. The jacuzzi was warmer than the pool but again not warm enough to justify the chills getting back to the room and the sauna did not appear to be working.

After the kids ran off some energy we went back to the room for pool-time. In other words they played and splashed in the tub. They enjoyed it because they don’t usually get the luxury of a bathtub. I took three hot baths before calling it a night too because I was enjoying soaking in the hot water. :) Mom and I walked down the street to McDonald’s and Subway for lunch and brought it back. It was cold, windy and snowy. Needless to say we had dinner delivered! :) So… on to the big adventure!

At about 8:30 or so we sent the kids into the bathroom to brush their teeth for bed. We didn’t think anything of it… until we heard the thump. Timmy and Samantha had already finished. Apparently Josh was climbing on the toilet to get to the counter-top to rinse his mouth. He does this all the time in the RV but the toilet is a lot closer to the counter in the RV than it was at the hotel. Josh must have slipped off the counter. He fell (the thump) and then he immediately started crying. Samantha was in the hallway and starts screaming that Josh is bleeding. We come in and sure enough he is gushing blood everywhere. It took us a few minutes of rinsing to figure out where the blood was coming from. He split his lip on the inside and it was gaping quite a bit. We called the front desk and had them call an ambulance. We were figuring it would be at least a couple of stitches. Josh was crying the whole time until the ambulance got there and then he got very quiet. We weren’t sure if he was going into shock or just scared.

I bought myself a new camera so I had it with me. Here is Josh sitting on Nathan’s lap in the ambulance. You can’t see how bad the cut is from the angle. It only shows the top part of the cut.

Yes, that is blood on his shirt. We got into a room right away. Nathan had brought a washcloth for Josh and showed him how to apply pressure. Here is Josh trying to keep the pressure on while waiting for the doctor.

The doctor came in and checked him out. She said that if it were her child she would leave it be. That because it is in the inside of his mouth, the scar won’t show. She said that because it is in the mouth it should heal within three days. Nathan has a problem with playing with things in hospitals. He will annoy you with raising and lowering the bed and changing channels. SO…. he decided to cheer Joshua up by teaching him how to play with the bed.

Joshua was feeling better and the doctor brought him a 7-up to drink. She said to keep him on soft foods for three days because his front teeth took a shot. It looks like his top front teeth were what made the cut so if he eats hard things if his teeth were loose it could pop them out. We asked the nurse to call us a cab. She said the social worker was coming to talk to us about the cab. We thought maybe they thought we were homeless or something. Apparently they pay for cab rides through social services. When we figured this out we told them we didn’t need them to pay for it, just needed them to call since we had no way to get back to the hotel. By now, it was snowing hard. They were supposed to get 5 inches that night. We chose to wait for the cab outside rather than take our chances in the warm lobby with all of the flu victims.

Amazingly with all of the flu victims around here we managed to make it back to the hotel by 10:30. I think that is one of the quickest visits to the ER we have ever had.