Focht Family Blog

I wish I had more pictures for this post but unfortunately, the chocolate factory and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame did not allow pictures. So… we left Indiana on Tuesday morning and took the tour at DeBrand Chocolates. Here is the front of the building.

Once inside they show you a video of how the company got started and tell you about how they ship their orders from their catalog. Next they take you into a hallway that has multiple windows looking into the kitchens. The first stop was the kitchen that made the fillings. They then hand out samples of some of the fillings (think sugar overload). There was a soft caramel, fresh raspberry, dark chocolate truffle (my favorite), and a passion fruit filling that goes into one of their specialty chocolates. The next window showed some of the chocolates they make for special occasions and shows. They handed out samples of two of their unique flavored specialty candies. One was a dark chocolate ganache covered in dark chocolate accented with real gold (so dark it was slightly bitter). The next one was a chai flavored dark chocolate (I was on chocolate overload at this point so I didn’t taste it). The final tasting was of their low fat raspberry ice cream. I ended up with three spoons of it because the kids didn’t like theirs. At the end they show you where they package all of the finished products. You then get a choice of a finished dark chocolate raspberry or a chocolate covered pretzel. They then put you out into their shop where you can turn your tickets in for $5 off. Needless to say I spent LOTS of money.

We then left Indiana and headed for Ohio to meet up with Nathan’s parents near Cleveland. They had our niece Alex in their RV so the girls could spend some time together. We arrived ahead of Nathan’s parents and had our camp set up by the time they arrived. The girls had fun playing together and Samantha and Timmy spent the night at Grandma and Poppa’s (mom and I enjoyed having more room in our beds). The next morning we left around 11:00 to drive to Cleveland to meet Nathan’s sister Vicki and her husband Jim to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. We stopped and had lunch at Olive Garden (Samantha’s birthday choice) because Vicki was running behind. Samantha loved her lunch and loved having everyone sing to her. We had to park separate from everyone else since we were oversized so this is when we finally met up with Vicki.

Sorry the picture was dark… anyways in the Hall of Fame there were lots of opportunities to listen to music on headphones and they had many outfits from different singers on display. I wanted to take a picture of the kids dancing with headphones on but no photography was allowed. Definitely for a select viewing audience but I guess at least we can say that we were there and the kids have key-chains from there. I am trying to buy the kids something little from everywhere we go so at the end of our travels they will each have a trinket box.

We then went back to camp and had dinner. After dinner we took out Samantha’s birthday cake (strawberry) and sat around the table and had cake and opened presents. She got a Nintendo DS (her first game system) and received two games, Dogz and Ratatouille. She is busy playing as I type.

We are headed to Lexington, KY for the night and then on to Atlanta Friday…..