Focht Family Blog

Life is never boring in the Focht household. After Dory’s adventure we had to cancel our trips to Nashville and Nappanee so that Dory could get rechecks at the vet until her blood was better. After calling some of our Pennsylvania friends we realized it was still WAY too cold up there so we went back to Statesboro for a month.

While in Statesboro I started having daily asthma attacks and we found out they were being caused by the guinea pigs so they had to find a new home. We also decided that we wanted to give the kids a real house for the winters and started looking. We talked to a builder and almost signed to build a house. However… we then went and talked to our accountant who advised us NOT to buy a house in Georgia so we thought…. hmmmm…. where else could we go???

Next thing you know I am driving to Orlando with the kids. Nathan was out of town and he rescheduled his flight to return to Orlando instead of Savannah. I went out with our wonderful Florida realtor, Gina Carbonetti, all day Sunday previewing houses for a short list for Nathan on Monday. He didn’t agree with my choices and we started looking at other houses including new construction. Tuesday we took the kids to two houses that we were trying to decide on and ended up not getting either when we read the covenants for the neighborhood. They were in rental neighborhoods and we couldn’t even get mail at our house! At this point I had a minor meltdown because I had to switch gears and rethink what we wanted. Wednesday Nathan and I drove to a neighborhood that had actual yards and we were going to sign contracts to build a house until that builder wouldn’t build a covered lanai on the back of the house so we left them and went to our second pick for neighborhoods. We liked the floorplans better for the second builder but there isn’t much yard.

The model office was supposed to be open but for the second time we had stopped by it wasn’t open. Our realtor called the main office and found out their was a realtor at a neighborhood 30 minutes away that had a furnished model of the floorplan we liked. We drove to her office and agreed that the floorplan was perfect for us but she wasn’t allowed to cross sell and we were leaving the next day. She called corporate and got permission to sell us a house in the other neighborhood. So we went to lunch, drove back to the neighborhood we wanted, picked out our lot, drove back to the office that had the realtor in it and started typing up the contract and picking exterior colors. We left the office at 8:45 or so at night. We arrived with McDonalds at the hotel at 9:30pm! Thanks to grandma for watching the kids all day!! Thursday morning we drove the kids out to the model home and everyone loved it.

We are building a 6 bedroom/4 bath home in the Overlook at Lake Louisa in Clermont, FL. It should be completed sometime in September so we can move in in October when Shenango closes for the season. Here is a link to the floorplan:

http://www.meritagehomes.com/images/data/attachments/0006/0708/83005_MH_Kerrville_ABC_FP-F-1.jpg

Nathan and I were going to drive back down the next week to make all of our interior choices but we were moving too fast for them. Apparently people don’t buy houses in 2 days!! Anyways… we will fly back down the first week of May to make all of our interior choices.

We celebrated Easter a week early with the Focht family and left for Pennsylvania on Monday morning. I didn’t realize that you had to have the truck in tow/haul or that having the AC on while going up mountains was a bad idea and the first day after driving 5 1/2 hours I overheated my mom’s truck going over the first of the mountains in Virginia. We ended up calling AAA and Nathan had to turn around and bring us some distilled water for the truck. Between having been shut off for an hour waiting for Nathan and the tow truck driver and the addition of 1 1/2 gallons of water the truck recovered enough to make it to the campground for the night without having to be towed. We stopped in Wytheville, Virginia for the night and the next day I put the truck in tow/haul and kept the AC off. We only came close to overheating once and it was on a really big double hill. We made it to Shenango in time to go to Carini’s for dinner.

The weather leaves much to be desired. It isn’t freezing but it isn’t warm and it has rained every day except for one since we have been here. I will try to do better at updating but I have now gone back to work as the comptroller for CommerceV3 so my time is limited more than usual! :)