Focht Family Blog

I’m almost caught up. Once we left Iowa, we drove to Wisconsin. Things have been busy here. We started out with a stop at the Mustard Museum. They are one of Nathan’s customers. The owner gave us a wonderful tour and then read the children a book that he wrote called Mustard on a Pickle. The children thoroughly enjoyed the reading. The owner signed a copy for them and we bought another signed copy of the book for my nieces.

After leaving the Mustard Museum we drove to Jellystone Caledonia. I was determined not to like this place because they have rules about not letting people receive mail here and a few other things. I have decided that the difference is that Jellystones and KOA’s are more campgrounds for families on a small vacation, not people who travel fulltime. But we booked the reservations for the children and they are enjoying the activities.

We started out our Jellystone stay with me taking a trip to the ER at the hospital for the Medical College. My rash is not gone and was getting worse. I was losing my grip on sanity and barely sleeping. I tried to get an appointment at the clinic but they were booked for 3 months. The ER doctor consulted with one of the dermatologists at the clinic and put me back on another round of heavy prednisone, a strong antihistamine (on top of my normal antihistamines) and a strong cortisone that can be applied to the skin. He feels that whatever triggered it made it so that things that wouldn’t normally bother me are bothering me. I told him the results of the skin tests in Denver and they gave me a large printout on formaldehyde that mentioned that if you get new bedding or blouses especially that you should first wash them in dry milk. Somehow this deactivates the formaldehyde. I decided I was done dealing with the new comforter. I threw it out. I bought a quilt from a company that I have bought bedding from before with out any problems. It is 100% cotton inside and out. I then took it to the laundromat and washed it three times in a huge washer. Once with dry milk, once with allergen free detergent and once with water to rinse it out good. Here is the new bedding.

Hopefully all of the medicines will give the allergy time to calm down and it will go away now. So far it is better but not gone but I am still on all of the medicines, too.

While we have been in Wisconsin we were able to enjoy a visit with one of our old family friends, George and Jackie Sargent. They live only an hour away from Caledonia. We went to their house on a lake and had a barbecue. One of their daughters, Laura, was there with her husband, Josh. She is pregnant and due in September. Here is a picture of Jackie, Laura, Josh, and the kids.

We gave George a hard time about not being in the picture so I got another picture with Jackie, George, Laura, Samantha and Timmy. Both Josh and Josh ran off.

It was an especially nice visit since I haven’t seen Jackie or Laura since my wedding.

Some of the activities that the children have enjoyed at Jellystone have included getting to tuck Yogi into bed at night and we also played candy bar bingo. Today we took the kids to the pool for a little while and they had a lot of fun. Here is Samantha helping Josh go down one of the waterslides.

Here is Timmy coming down another waterslide.

They had a really fun part of the water area called water wars. They give each person a bucket with 6 balloons. You fill them up with water and stand across from each other and launch the balloons through holes at the person across from you. Here is Nathan helping Josh and Samantha and Timmy trying to get theirs across to daddy.

After the water wars we went back to playing in the pool for a little while before heading back to the RV for lunch.

After lunch is when we took Misty to the vet. We have had to force feed her her medicine and some ice cubes tonight because she is locking her jaws and not letting us open them. We are really concerned about her being dehydrated and she can hardly stay awake. I am going to stay up a bit longer and try to get some more ice into her. I would really hate to see a cut on her foot be the end of her.