Focht Family Blog

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.

We decided to leave Newmar on Friday morning. The snow had let up and we called Cummins and they said it was fine if we came in early and stayed in their lot. Newmar is amazing. They pulled mom’s trailer into their shop and made a new tray for her batteries so she now has two of our old batteries instead of her one battery that came with the trailer. I don’t remember if I put it in the last post or not but they also came out to the trailer in the parking lot and installed a fan to force warm air onto the pipes so they don’t freeze as easily. I am sure they wouldn’t have done either of these things in the summer when they are busy but they certainly didn’t need to do them for us now considering they did not build the trailer.

Anyways… once we got to Fort Wayne we took the kids to the mall so they could have a Chick-Fil-A. They have a very neat food court. There are four apple tables for children with regular tables near them for the adults. The kids had a lot of fun sitting at the apple eating their dinners.

After dinner we went on a ride on a two story carousel.

Samantha chose to ride on a horse on the second story.

Joshua chose a zebra on the second story.

Timmy said he wanted to ride the dragon that was on the first floor. However when I went downstairs to take his picture I found that he was making grandma ride in a spinning cup.

The cup spins by itself but Timmy got it spinning a bit faster than he was expecting it to. His eyes were getting bigger and bigger as he was spinning.

The kids enjoyed the day out.

I cannot say enough nice things about the service department at Newmar. The level of service you receive here is well worth the drive to Indiana, even in the snow :)

Now, that being said I really didn’t want to get up this morning and take the kids outside since it was in negative numbers with the wind chill. The RV is renewed. We added an automatic generator starter that will make the generator turn on if the batteries get down to a certain level or if the RV gets too warm so the AC can run. The generator will automatically start and will run long enough to charge the batteries or cool down the RV and then it will turn off again. We took a picture of our new controller.

We also had them replace the wet batteries with gel batteries. Because of how much electricity we use on a regular basis we were being very hard on the wet batteries and we were already getting some corrosion in our battery compartment. The gel batteries do not have water levels to check so they are good for ignoring. Nathan is very happy with his new toys. Here is a picture of the new batteries.

We also looked at new brochures while here. We are seriously looking at floorplans for what our next RV will be. We love the versatility of the All-Star line. We found a new floorplan that has what is planned as an office space where the garage would be on a toy hauler. We are looking at this as an option and making the office area into a second bedroom. This way we could have Newmar install triple bunks so each child would have their own bed. We won’t be buying for another year or two but it is nice to look ahead.

We are staying here until Sunday morning and then we will head to Cummins in Ft. Wayne, IN to have the oil leak looked at.

We made it to Newmar Tuesday night. We took Misty out once we got parked and she decided to make mastiff angels in the snow.

In other words, Misty had all four legs come out from under her and she went splat! She was very happy to get back into the RV. The next morning Nathan went in to the office to let them know we were there. The children were happy to play in the snow again so we bundled them up and I took them for a walk. Here is a picture of the RV sitting in the snow.

Here is a picture of the Newmar service office covered in snow as well as the parking lot full of snow.

And for the last of the snow (seeing a theme?) here is a picture of Samantha and Timmy will shovels full of snow. They were digging in the snow.

Joshua decided that watching Dora in the warmth of our bed was a better idea than playing in the snow. Wednesday we took the RV to the laundromat and ended up with $40 worth of laundry! But all the beds are cleaned now and the whole RV got a scouring from one end to the other. We cleaned so much that when I went to bed last night my eyes were burning from all of the bleach. I told Nathan it was my Valentines gift to him.

I made Nathan find a place we could get some lumber and asked for him to make Joshua a bed that looked like it belonged rather than a mattress in the middle of the hallway. So his Valentines gift to me was a finished bed for Joshua. We had his crib mattress between the other two beds but Joshua fell down the stairs twice in the middle of the night so we needed to come up with another solution. Here is what being married to an engineer gets you. I love it and Joshua slept the whole night in HIS bed last night without us being woken to the crying of him bumping into walls.

When we left Seattle we thought we would stay out of the cold weather but apparently that was very short lived. We decided that we wanted a few upgrades to the All-Star so we are headed to Newmar. We are currently in the last leg of the journey. We left Manteca, CA on Saturday morning and we have crossed into Indiana from Illinois already.

Unfortunately I found out the hard way that my camera has decided to die. Apparently the blurriness from the last picture wasn’t water on the lens. Last night we stopped for the night at a Walmart in Springfield, MO because the roads were becoming too icy and we were afraid we would have to end up pulling off where there was no safe place to stop. It was amazing driving into the parking lot and seeing the ice everywhere. I tried to take a picture of one of the cart returns where ice was hanging off of every piece of metal and where the road crew had piled ice/snow up against the side. Here is how it ended up looking.

I figured it was just the problems that I have already had with the flash and darkness so I tried again this morning near St. Louis when we stopped for gas. I took a picture of the windshield washing bucket frozen into a large ice cube.

So I started looking online as to what a new camera was going to cost me. Nathan reminded me that the nice, expensive video camera that he bought me for Christmas also takes pictures so I started playing around with it in the RV. I decided to take a picture out of the windshield so everyone in the south can feel warmer. This is I-80 in Indiana right after we crossed the Illinois border.

The water running down the windshield is ice that keeps coming off of the roof. We have changed our course a few times today because I keep checking the DOT websites to figure out which roads are cleared and safe for travel. Although we are driving pretty slow right now we are still planning on making it into Camp Newmar tonight. Tomorrow is going to be a HUGE cleaning day. We are going to drive to the laundromat and strip all of the beds and then scrub from top to bottom. We have let it go too long and things are looking gross.

Anyways, I will be a better wife and start carrying the larger camera so I can get decent pictures. That is the only downside to the video camera. My digital camera fits into a pocket in my purse. The video camera does not.