Focht Family Blog

Thursday we picked up Aunt Sue and headed to the Cleveland Zoo. Timmy wanted to see the sharks so the first thing we did was walk up a very long high hill to where the sharks were. We found out later there was a shorter not so steep path that we could have taken but I guess we got our exercise.

The sharks are also in with the primates and the cats. I couldn’t get any pictures of the sharks but I took a picture of a cute lemur.

When we started walking back down the hill we went past the gorillas.

Next we went to the Australian section. They had kangaroos, koalas, wallabys, wallaroos. They also had a train ride through this section that we took. Here is a picture of the kids trying on kangaroo ears, a picture of me with the kids on a termite hill and a picture of a koala.

Next we wandered around. We had some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (yum) and looked at more of the animals. We found a pool that had a hippo in it. We waited until she surfaced and I got a picture of her head sticking out of the water. They have a section where you can ride camels but they were during season only so we found the camels in a different section.

Some of the animals were not on exhibit because they have torn down a bridge that travels over the zoo. They are in the process of removing the rest of the bridge and starting construction of a new bridge. I took some pictures of the debris and the polar bears that were still out in this area. They had two beautiful wolves near this area as well but due to glare off the windows I couldn’t get a good picture of them. I asked about the wolves and they said they wouldn’t be adding to the pack until the construction was over because it is stressing a lot of the animals.

Towards the end of the visit we found some monkeys to watch. While we were there we saw a monkey on a bench that scared me. It was a statue but it looked so real that I thought one of the monkeys had gotten loose. We took some pictures with the statue and the kids. At the end when we were heading back to the car I finally got a picture of my Aunt Sue while she was carrying Josh to the car.

We have been enjoying Cleveland. We checked into Jellystone during the weekend because they still had activities this last weekend. It has been pretty dead around here since Monday because it is past season. They actually close in another week or so. On Saturday we went trick-or-treating after going to a costume contest. I couldn’t talk Nathan into dressing up but here is a picture of me and the kids.

After we got back to the RV I made stuffed shells for Timmy and we invited my Aunt Sue and Uncle James to join us. We had a wonderful dinner complete with a salad fresh from Sue’s garden. After dinner Nathan put up a sheet and played Happy Feet on the projector. By the time it was done we had kids from 3 surrounding camp sites watching with us. On Sunday we tried to do all of the activities they had. We took the kids to paint ceramics. Here is a picture of Samantha and Timmy with their finished artwork and a picture of Josh that shows where most of his paint ended up.

On Sunday evening my Aunt Sue brought us her car so we could use it for the week. Tuesday night we went out to Sue and James’ house for dinner. Before dinner we met James at the Cleveland Clinic where he works and got a tour of the Prosthetic/Orthotic Department. The kids thought the legs and arms were pretty cool. Nathan’s engineering side enjoyed trying out the machanics of the arms and I enjoyed it because it reminded me of a lot of the Biology classes I took in college. I think the only part that bothered me was seeing the casts for children’s legs and torsos. It makes me realize how lucky we are to not have to deal with anything major with our children. With Josh the absolute worse case scenario would only be him being blind in one eye, which I feel is extremely minor! :)

Wednesday we took Nathan to the airport to fly to Baltimore and then we went to the Children’s Museum. It was very interactive and the kids had a lot of fun. There was a play town where Samantha enjoyed the nursery. She also found an area where she could do a weather forecast on TV.

As always the boys love anything where they can splash in water and play.

The kids also found an area by the water that looked liked waves that you could climb up. The boys didn’t go too far up but Samantha made it to the top.

We finished off the day with an art class where the kids got to paint. Joshua needed a little help so grandma helped him create his masterpiece.

Tomorrow we are picking up Aunt Sue and we are going to the zoo. I will try to post pictures tomorrow night.

Nathan and I and the kids were SO happy yesterday to be back in the RV. It is amazing how quickly you get attached to your space. We would like to give a BIG Thank You to the owner of Alton RV Park for giving us a place to call home for the last two weeks while we were stranded. She was fully booked this week and made room for our trailer in the parking lot of her park. We would also like to give a BIG Thank You to the people at Cummins in Bridgewater. They worked very hard to get us back on the road as quickly as possible. The biggest delay was waiting for the new engine to be delivered. As soon as it was they went right to work getting it in and getting us back on the road.

We decided there wasn’t enough time to go to Baltimore with Nathan before driving back to Indiana so we are staying this next week at Jellystone Park near Cleveland, Ohio. This is the last weekend of their season so they are having a Halloween weekend. The kids and I are going to dress up in our costumes this afternoon and go trick-or-treating around the park. I will have someone take some pictures. Nathan said he wasn’t dressing up but he would walk with us. Mom is going to stay at our camp site and pass out candy (Nathan and I hit a store this morning).

The kids and mom and I will be doing some sight seeing in Cleveland this week and my Aunt Sue is going to join us for the zoo so stay tuned for more adventures and pictures….

My mom and I took the kids to the zoo today. This is the zoo that Jack Hanna is with. It was one of the nicest zoos I have been to. They had everything set with scenery so that it wasn’t just looking at the animals. Unfortunately because of the heat, we saw lots of animals that were asleep. We started out in the North America section where there was a petting zoo. The kids enjoyed brushing the goats.

They had lots of statues of animals throughout the park and the kids were enjoying climbing on them. I liked this picture because it looks like Josh is screaming at the bears.

One of the most amazing animals we saw was the tiger in Asia. I have never seen a tiger that close. The kids were literally nose to nose with the tiger with just a sheet of plexiglass between them.

We had the same opportunity with the orangutans. The female orangutan was named Tara and she was enjoying being by the people at the glass. She liked the little children especially. She was checking out Joshua here.

One of the other statues that they had was one of the world’s stinkiest flower. Timmy wanted to sit in the flower so we got a picture with all of them on it.

One of the last places we walked through was the African jungle. This was one of my favorite parts of the day. It was a bit warm today and after pushing 90 lbs around in a stroller all day I was hot. They had a spot on the path where mist was showered over you. We stayed under the mist for awhile and got soaked.

I forgot to say that Timmy had his birthday on the day we broke down. He turned 5! I had baked him a cake that morning and we were going to stop early and make stuffed shells (his favorite) for dinner. Unfortunately with the turn of events he got a McDonald’s Happy Meal at 10:00 for dinner. I did bring the cakes with me and the frosting and we had cake before bed in mom’s trailer. Here is a picture:

We spent the day on Saturday at COSI, the Science Museum in Columbus. The kids had a lot of fun (and so did Nathan). There was a ocean section that had lots of hands on fun with water. Josh especially enjoyed this section.

In the gadgets section there was a fun giant engine where you pushed the pistons in. Nathan thought it was great fun considering the recent blow up of our pistons.

Timmy tried his hand at lifting his own weight. He was very impressed with himself. He didn’t know daddy was helping. :)

Nathan quickly realized they had fun toys for the big kids as well. They have a unicycle that you can ride over the atrium. Samantha and I were tall enough but we were too chicken to try. Mom wanted to try but didn’t want to hold us up. We would have waited. Guess we will have to go back at some point so she can give it a try.

We all signed up for a chemistry class. Unfortunately Josh wouldn’t keep his goggles on so my mom took Josh to a play area for his age while Nathan and I did experiments with Samantha and Timmy. They had a menu of choices and you could choose which experiments you wanted to do. We did an experiment with alka-seltzer that caused a small explosion of a cap off of a film canister. We also did an experiment with ice and salt where we lifted an ice cube with a small piece of string after salt was poured over the string and ice sealing the string to the ice. We then finished with a whole bunch of experiments with baking soda and vinegar. Do you see a theme in what the boys wanted to do?

On our way out we were stopped by a roving demonstration. He showed the children what happens when a meteor burns up as it falls. He also had a piece of meteorite to show them. It was much heavier than rocks found on Earth and was also magnetic. After he showed them the burning up of the meteorite, he let Samantha try it to see if she could get the same result. You had to hit it with quite a bit of force so she wasn’t able to get the same result as he was.