Focht Family Blog

In years past we stuffed the kid’s stockings with cheap gifts so that they could open something everyday starting on December 1. This is something my parents did that I wanted to pass down. This year I decided we didn’t have room for all of the junk so why buy it? Instead I decided to make up a craft countdown. I went to Hobby Lobby while we were in Statesboro and bought craft kits and supplies to equal 24 crafts and made a list of all of the choices. We are taking turns with the kids choosing what craft we do what day.

December 1 was Samantha’s choice. She chose to decorate a gingerbread house. It was a premade gingerbread house so all we did was add the frosting and decor. I also set out candy necklace kits so nobody fought over the decorating. Here are some pictures of their creation….

December 2 was Timmy’s turn. He wanted to make puppets and chose the fairytale puppets. Timmy made a knight, Josh made a horse, Samantha made a princess and I made a fairy (modeled by Samantha) since the package contained 4 puppet kits. :)

December 3 was Josh’s choice. Since he didn’t understand the list I showed him everything in the bag. I think he may have been encouraged by Samantha but he chose Glitter Domes. They are like snow globes. The kids got to create something in clay and then you add glitter and water to the domes and screw the base and dome together. Samantha and Timmy made Christmas scenes featuring snowmen and I helped Josh create a teddy bear in his. Here they are with their globes.

I will update with the next batch of crafts. :) Timmy is holding out for a good snowfall because one of the choices on the list is to go outside and make a snowman! :)

After leaving Savannah we made it to Greenville, SC the first night. Traffic was horrible. If we had remembered what day it was we would have waited until Monday to leave. We chose Greenville because we watched the TLC show Six For The Road and the family from the show were working a tree stand there. We were curious to see if they were anything like the show portrayed them. After meeting them we are very glad that we did not choose to do the show ourselves since at one time we were thinking about it. We quickly realized that TV chooses to edit how they want to. The website for the Evans family is www.ourloudfamily.com

They were a wonderful, friendly family. The show is now being shown on Discovery Health on December 3 & 10 at 8:00 & 8:30. I belong to a yahoo group called Families on the Road and I knew of their family from there. While we were there another family from the FOTR group showed up. Their bus was having problems so we were able to meet two other families that travel fulltime. After socializing for a bit in the morning we headed off again. I was in bed most of the day with a head cold so I couldn’t drive at all and Nathan had to get some work done so we stopped for the night at dinner time in Kentucky. We managed to make it to Nappanee by early afternoon on Tuesday.

I am disappointed. I had hopes that this would be the perfect RV for us. The way I had it all planned out we would put a single bed in the loft, instead of the queen. That would be Samantha’s bed and the extra floor space in the loft would be the play area. The bunks would be for Timmy and Josh….. well…. that was the plan at least. The reality is that the loft is at best the height of an over the cab bed in a Class C. Nathan had to belly crawl in and out of it. I could get up there on hands and knees and Samantha was hitting her head trying to sit. We tried to talk to Newmar about lowering the floor by 6 inches which would make it good enough but still not ideal. Their answer was “no”. I am not sure if they are just not wanting to invest money in the engineering behind a redesign or not. There were 2 other people at Newmar while we were there that wanted the new floorplan as well but for all of us the loft height was the deal breaker. So… Newmar just saved us a bunch of money! Nathan put up a page that has all of the pictures on it that we took. If you are interested in seeing this engineering malfunction, go to: http://www.focht.net/photos/4159

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…