Focht Family Blog

This week has been long…. it started off with Nathan’s birthday. It was our last day in Wisconsin. The kids and I got up, did the dishes, cleaned the house, baked a cake. Then I left to pick mom up from the hospital. After getting her out and filling her prescriptions we stopped to pick up a box that came into town for Nathan. He ordered himself two new hats because the kids hid his and he couldn’t find it. So instead of just a brown hat, he ordered a brown and a black hat. Mom and I got home and I made Nathan lasagna and did the laundry while it was cooking so we would be good for boondocking for a week in Chicago. Here is a picture of Nathan’s cake… the kids decorated it.

Thursday morning was filled with pouring rain and thunderstorms. Always fun for packing up and leaving. We made it to the hotel parking lot by lunch and Nathan went to visit a customer. While he was gone security came by to tell me that we were parked on the wrong side of the hotel so as soon as Nathan got back we had to move everything to the other side of the hotel. Then Nathan and I left and drove 20 miles in about 1 1/2 hours into Chicago to meet a couple for dinner. I realized I am not made for staying out late anymore. By the time dinner was done I was exhausted and ready for bed. Maybe once the kids are grown I will have more energy. :)

Friday we took the kids to the Choo Choo. It is a restaurant I found that has a train that delivers your food. There was a line out the door when we got there. It is a small diner and only has 27 seats that are on the track so we waited for a booth on the track. The food was actually very good. They opened the restaurant around the same time as the first McDonalds (which is right down the road). All of the equipment, including the cash register looked like the originals. I didn’t get a picture of our food being delivered but here is the kid’s dessert being delivered.

Here is Joshua trying out his train whistle that came with the cupcake.

Funny note on Nathan’s hats. He was going back and forth trying to decide if he should order a second hat. He must have clicked on the black hat and didn’t check what size was the default because he has found his original brown hat, he has a new brown hat, but the black hat came in a size small so here is Nathan and his mini-me….

Here is Samantha playing with her whistle while mom finishes her drink before we left.

After we got back to the hotel parking lot, Nathan had to start his week of working all hours. We drove out to get some dinner and ended up at a large shopping area. Samantha was talking about wanting to go to a Rainforest Cafe (why I don’t know) and I looked up food in our new GPS and there was one across the street so we had dinner there.

The kids had a lot of fun although our booth was by a waterfall so it was a bit wet. All of my other pictures didn’t turn out because of the mist. When we left all of the kids ended up with soft stuffed snakes and we bought a couple of Seuss books that had to do with insects and rainforests. Most of the rest of the time while at the hotel was spent dodging thunderstorms and watching radars for tornado warnings. Monday morning we drove to McCormick center.

Nathan took the RV and went ahead. Mom and I drove the truck and camper with the kids and drove to the company who makes her jacks to get them repaired. The problem ended up being a controller issue so they were able to just switch out the controller. She had one jack that wouldn’t stop moving so balancing her was becoming a fun dance of plugging and unplugging jacks. Then on our way to the McCormick center we stopped and took the kids to see Kungfu Panda. They had been wanting to see it and they always enjoy a lunch of popcorn. :)

Tuesday I took Samantha out for a girlie day. We had reservations to go to the American Girl store. She dressed up, put on makeup and made sure her doll was dressed as well.

We checked in at the cafe and were seated at a cute table just for two. The napkins each had a scrunchy on them that we got to keep. We put one in her doll’s hair and one on her doll’s wrist.

There was a special seat for her doll and if you didn’t bring yours then you could borrow one. They brought us cinnamon rolls and a fruit plate before serving lunch and then brought us a dessert plate that had chocolate mousse in flowerpots with silk daisies we could keep, an angel food cake heart and a flower sugar cookie. After lunch we went downstairs to the theater and watched the broadway style Revue. After the show, we shopped. Samantha ended up with an outfit and two pairs of pajamas (with matching clothes for her doll) as well as a mini doll and a hairbrush for her doll.

Nathan has been very busy and we haven’t seen much of him this week. Tomorrow we leave for Michigan once his show is over. We have an appointment Thursday morning in Michigan to get a new, metal oil pan. We have had two of the composites and we are still leaking. After that we head into Ontario for a week and a half and we will not have internet on our aircard at all so updates will depend on how good the wi-fi is at the campgrounds. :)