Focht Family Blog

The day after Timmy’s birthday Tyce from Natural Solutions took us out on the lake on his boat to have some fun. After taking us on a tour of the lake and the beautiful houses he let the kids try tubing. Here is Samantha preparing for her ride…

She had a great time on that tube and took multiple turns! :) Timmy wasn’t as sure about it so Nathan rode with him….

Nathan rode with Josh as well. Here they are preparing for the ride…

And here they are ON the ride….

Josh didn’t enjoy his ride very much. I think the boys would have enjoyed the ride better if they had ridden together without Nathan. Tyce thought the weight difference between Nathan and the boys was causing the boys to get splashed. After the kids took their rides, Nathan wanted to ride by himself. Tyce increased the speed just a bit….

After tubing Tyce let Timmy take a turn at the wheel…

Then we stopped for snacks and swimming. The kids had fun feeding the ducks…

After snacks it was Josh’s turn to drive…

After Josh got his turn, Nathan decided to try water skiing. Since he hasn’t skied for about 20 years I think he did a great job just getting up…

Of course Tyce made sure Samantha got a chance to drive too….

It was a beautiful day on the lake with perfect weather. Tyce went out of his way to make sure that all of the kids had a great time. The water felt a little too cold to me so I stayed on the boat and took pictures but maybe next year I will have to see if I can still water ski! :)

My little boy is now 7!!! Timmy decided he wanted a Sponge Bob pinata which led him to decide on a Sponge Bob cake. Although Timmy decided he didn’t just want a cake, he wanted cupcakes. Here are the results of my efforts…

Timmy’s day of fun started with Duck Bowling. He always loves to go bowling and I wanted to make it more interesting so I managed to find this. It is played with smaller pins and the balls are about the size of a bocce ball. Here is Timmy holding up one of the balls…

And here is Timmy bowling. They let the kids walk up closer to their target…

After the bowling we went to lunch at Pizza Hut (Timmy’s choice) and then went to the mall. While at the mall the boys managed to talk Nathan into getting remote control cars at RideMakerz. Nathan ended up getting one for himself as well. Here is Timmy holding up his choice of car body…

Here are the boys putting together their new toys…

After the cars were created they each received certificates with personalized license plate stickers and everything is put in a box. These boxes were not exactly light. Here are all of the boys carrying their toys to the car….

Here is Timmy holding up his finished masterpiece…

After the mall we stopped and had dinner at the Mug N’ Bun. I found it on Roadfood and it was also recommended by the man at the bowling alley. They had wonderful root beer that they make there. My mom and I both had root beer floats. Samantha said their hamburgers were great. I got a pork tenderloin sandwich because that is supposed to be one of their big specialties but I found it to be greasy and tasteless. Next time I think I will just get a float! :)

After dinner we headed back to the RV where Timmy had a pinata and presents waiting for him. Nathan rigged a leash to hang the pinata with and removed a plunger from its handle for the stick…

I had Timmy’s presents wrapped and on the dash for almost two weeks before his birthday to torment him. He really wanted a blue and black Nintendo DS but he was convinced that the boxes weren’t big enough for one. He was glad that he was wrong…

Newmar was wonderful as usual with the exception of the alarm clock going off WAY too early. We arrived at Newmar on Monday and Tuesday morning bright and early the crew came to get the RV. Thankfully they were able to find some of the electrical problems although Nathan still thinks it is drawing too much. However they found an engine block heater that has been plugged in for 2 years that we never knew we had. The block heater draws 8 amps at all times. The other thing that they found was that one of the chassis batteries was dead so the charger was constantly running trying to charge it. Hopefully our last two weeks at Shenango will be more affordable now! :)

While the RV was being worked on we did our best to keep the kids entertained. Here are the kids at the big playground in Nappanee.

We also invaded Nathan’s peace and quiet a few times because we found out that they have DISH in the waiting room where dogs are allowed and the kids wanted to have more cartoons to watch than the PBS that mom could get with her antennae. Here is Josh lounging out watching TV.

Here is Timmy watching TV while my mom is immersed in her book.

For those of you who read this who also go to Newmar for service, you will be glad to see that Newmar has installed 3 washers & 3 dryers in the high line waiting room (open to all/pets allowed). They even have a laundry detergent dispenser and a change machine.

I can’t let anyone know how the machines worked because our resident laundress, my mom, said that it was still cheaper to drive to the laundry by the Pizza Hut so we went there to do our laundry while in Nappanee.

After the RV service was done we stayed one more day so we could do some shopping. We made our usual stop at the Little Nook Bookstore and we also went to the Farmer’s Market but we were disappointed to find that most of the stalls were empty. We thought it might be because of the bad economy but one of the stores I purchased from said it was because they have recently opened on Wednesday as well so when they increased the days it was opened for a lot of the stalls were being run by people who had other obligations for their Wednesdays so they are in the process of getting new people in. Here are the kids posing with a pig statue that they liked.

Saturday we drove from Nappanee to Indianapolis so Nathan could attend a user conference. Updates from Indy to follow…

We just can’t seem to stay away from Nappanee for long. I think the RV is homesick. While we were driving to Pennsylvania we started having problems with the headlights. We called Newmar and they said that we could come in for service on Wednesday. We made it to Nappanee early in the afternoon on Tuesday and parked at the laundromat. We haven’t been able to find a laundromat the last few days and we had 4 large baskets full instead of our usual 2. After laundry we parked in Camp Newmar to get some sleep before our early wake up call.

They worked on the RV today and fixed the headlights. It was a bad switch and was covered under the chassis warranty. Have you noticed that most of our issues have been Spartan, not Newmar? They want to touch up some paint on some new screws they put in tomorrow but we have decided we will leave tomorrow and just touch up the paint ourselves. Tomorrow we plan on leaving Newmar by 9:00 and start our trip to Atlanta. I think we may stop for a meal in Nashville at one of Nathan’s customers but we will see.

The kids woke up to six presents each from Santa…

They also had 3 gifts each from mom and dad and a gift from Aunt Chris under the tree…

They had a lot of fun opening presents…

After presents the kids played with their new toys while I cooked dinner…

Dinner was difficult to make with a small oven but I managed to make a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sauteed green beans, corn pudding, and biscuits. We were supposed to have rolls but I didn’t take them out of the freezer in time for them to rise so Nathan found some biscuits at a gas station. Of course the corn pudding wasn’t in the oven long enough either so the rolls and the corn pudding were saved for dinner with leftovers.

After lunch we went to see Bedtime Stories at the movies. It was a very cute movie. When we came home the kids wanted to play Guess Who I Am…