Focht Family Blog

The first two days of skiing all of the kids were in ski school for the day. Unfortunately it rained a lot those first two days but the kids didn’t seem to care. The adults ended up by the fire by early afternoon because we were tired of being wet and cold. Here are the 4 older kids waiting for ski school to start. Josh was dropped off at a different building.

Mom took some private lessons while we were there so since she wasn’t skiing all day I left my camera with her to take some pictures of the kids. Here is Timmy on his snowboard (all of the other kids were skiing)…

Here is Josh on his skis….

And Samantha coming down off of one of the hills…

Mom even managed to snap a picture of Nathan and me before we headed to the other side of the mountain…

More to come…

I finally sat down yesterday and edited the pictures from Vermont. Even cutting them down I had 40 pictures to post!! So… this will take a few posts. This first post is of the house we rented.

This first picture is of Nathan and Blake relaxing in the hot tub with their beers. This was a favorite stop for the adults…

Here is Nathan on the last day reading his book on the deck… it warmed up quite a bit by the end of the week.

Here is the living room area on the main floor. We enjoyed having a big sofa to lie around on…

Here is the kitchen. It was nice having lots of counter space although it was still crowded when we had more than two cooks in the kitchen…

Here is Joshua and Blake’s son Drew playing Wii in the media room downstairs. It had a HUGE screen for movies and we brought our Wii so they could play on the big screen.

And here is a picture of the kid’s room…

The last picture from the house is the view of the slopes from the back deck. Because the weather started warming up while we were there everyday that we woke up there was less snow to be seen. At night, we watched the SnowCat machines moving snow off of the slopes that were already closed onto the slopes they were keeping open.

More pictures to come…

It is going to take me awhile to update on the ski trip but at least I will start tonight! :) One of the first things that we did while in Vermont was to go to the Von Trapp Family Lodge to see the Sugar House. This is one of the things that we have wanted to see but it wasn’t the right time of year the last time we were in Vermont.

Here is a picture of the boiling sap…

Once it is boiled down they tap it into buckets….

On this day they were making syrup on the snow where they would further boil the syrup down until it reached soft candy temps and then they would pour it over snow. It made a taffy like candy that was delicious!

Here is a picture of the trees with their buckets hanging from them…

Here is a picture of all of the steam coming out of the roof of the sugar house…

Of course we had to go through the touristy stuff, so we went to Cold Hollow Cider Mill for cider doughnuts, Cabot Creamery, and Lake Champlain Chocolates. Here is a picture of our three kids and Blake’s two kids enjoying their candy. Blake is Nathan’s business partner and he and his family joined us on our trip.

On the way back to Pennsylvania from Vermont we had our first and hopefully last tire blowout. I was driving and we were almost out of Vermont. A car passed me and motioned for me to pull over. I pulled over and when we got out to find out what was wrong we found that there was no tire on the left rear of the truck. I had obviously lost the tire a few miles back and had ruined the rim as well. I am lucky that I didn’t blow up the truck and my mom’s camper since I am sure it had been sparking down the road. You can see the groove I was making in the road with the hot rim. Here is what was left…

A semi truck pulled over behind us and told us that he had been trying to get my attention for 15 miles or so. I am hoping he meant he noticed a flat or the tire starting to come off and not that I was driving on the rim that long. I never felt a difference from the RV. I guess I was just looking ahead and not paying attention to the mirrors. Now I am being careful to adjust the mirrors when I am driving so I can see the tires so at least I  might notice chunks of tire flying off if it were to happen again. We called AAA and they called the police and a service truck for us since I was blocking a lane of traffic. The police never showed and Nathan already had the spare off when the truck came. The truck was able to park behind us at an angle so that Nathan was protected to change the tire and the driver helped him get the spare back on so we could get back on the road quicker. It looks like we are now looking at having to get 4 new tires, a rim, and an alignment for the truck. Nathan also mentioned that the boots were torn on the caliper so I am hoping he has the tools to fix that to save us some money. At least no one was hurt. Here is another picture I took of the rim when I was putting it in the back seat of the truck…

The dogs were being so cute the other day so I had to take some pictures. Here is Dory in one of her new favorite places to lay down…

And here is Tinkerbell and Dory cuddling together on their doggy beds…

I am so proud of both of them. They have finally figured out where to go potty and what NOT to chew on. We haven’t had either of them in a crate for over two weeks now. I threw Tinkerbell’s crate out while we were in Vermont because the door was broken anyway. We think Tinkerbell is a year old now. The information we received from the Humane Society says that they thought she was born in September last year. They found her in a ditch with her brother at about 5 weeks old but that is just the vet’s best guess as to how old she was when she was found, so…. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TINK!!!