Focht Family Blog

Well… I was hoping for warm Florida weather for a couple of weeks so that the kids could have a little more pool time. However, what we got was….

Who would have thought that you would need ski jackets for Florida?? We still had fun and managed a few “firsts” for us. One of the days that we were at Magic Kingdom we stumbled upon an employee that was “painting” characters on the ground with water and a broom. It was amazing. Here is his Tigger…

Joshua wanted some more autographs so we stood in a VERY long line to get pictures of the most popular ones. Here is their picture with Minnie Mouse…

One of the things that Samantha wanted to do was to wake up Tinkerbell. I had read in a book that if you are the first person in Tinkerbell’s Treasures that you can wake her up. Here is Samantha ringing the bell to wake her up…

Here is Tinkerbell after she woke up…

Joshua wanted to get an autograph from Jasmine when we saw her and Aladdin. Here are the kids with them…

Joshua was quite taken by Jasmine…

She was also taken with him… she gave him a token of her affections before he left…

Christmas Eve was a little different than usual for us this year. Since we didn’t get to church Mrs. Claus had to deliver the Christmas pajamas while at grandma’s house for dinner. Here are the kids in their pajamas….

Then they left pumpkin cookies for Santa and clementine slices for the reindeer….

A picture of the tree with the presents from mom, dad, and grandma…

The presents from Santa Claus…

And what Dory thought of the aftermath the next morning….

I am just a BIT late updating. I should be caught up again tomorrow! :)

Our first stop at Animal Kingdom was at A Bug’s Life. I do not like this show because spiders come down over the audience. Here is Josh sitting on Barbara’s lap. They have their “bug eyes” on and are ready for the show…

Next was the Dinosaur ride. This is another one that I don’t like. I wish I had scanned the picture from this ride because Barbara looks like she is about to jump out of the ride and Josh is tucked into my lap and I am ducked down over him so that neither of us can see the ride. I have no desire to see HUGE carnivorous dinosaurs trying to eat me! Here is Josh while we were waiting in line on Uncle Jim’s shoulders pulling on the tongue of a dinosaur…

After Dinosaur Samantha and Alex wanted to go on the Primeval Whirl. Josh is still too little for this one so we sat out and ate some popcorn and took pictures. Here is Nathan, Samantha, and Alex in their car…

And here is Christina and Bridgette in their car…

I didn’t get the timing right to get Nathan’s car on the slide down the hill but I managed to get a picture of Christina and Bridgette…

After Animal Kingdom we headed back to Wilderness Lodge to have dinner at the Whispering Canyon. It was a great meal but I was ready to be home with my sick kid. We sent Josh over to my mom’s that night so that Timmy could stay home and feel more comfortable. Thursday was pack up and leave time. Timmy threw up again in the morning but I think it was because he drank some Coke a little too quickly. He was all better by lunch and ended up eating a few pieces of bacon! :)

I would like to say that the drive home was uneventful but it wasn’t. Everyone left before us and we were planning on getting home by 5:00 and then we were going to go to Christmas Eve Mass at 6:00 followed by dinner at Ron and Barb’s house. However…. Ron and Barb got a flat tire on their way home. We caught up with them and Nathan decided that I should drive Barbara and Christina back with me and he would stay with his dad and wait for the tire service to show up. When we were getting close to Statesboro Vicki had caught up with us (she had been visiting friends) and so we stopped at a gas station and Barbara and Christina rode back to Barbara’s house with Vicki. This ended up being a good thing. We had been planning on me dropping the camper off of the truck and giving Barbara the truck to drive back. The Blue Ox tow bar hasn’t been used in a few months because we have been driving separate (Nathan’s dad took our trailer so we didn’t have to drive both vehicles back from Disney). I had to use the hammer to get the truck off of the RV and it wasn’t a quick task at all. Nathan ended up getting home at 7:30 and we had dinner at Ron and Barbara’s at 8:00 so we missed church. There was another Mass at 10:00 but that was too late for all of us after the day we had so Christmas didn’t quite feel like Christmas to me because we didn’t attend church but it is more important that we all made it back safe and sound.

I lied… I did get some pictures at Magic Kingdom. I forgot that we went to the Barber shop on Main Street and had everyone’s hair done. Here is Timmy’s hair….

Joshua decided he wanted a big boy cut so I had the barbers clean up what I did. They also gave him some color…

Samantha had her hair in braids already but she got some color added…

Nathan decided to get a trim as well. Here is his new hairdo…

After the barber shop we had to catch up with the rest of the family. On our way we stopped for an autograph from some new characters we hadn’t seen out yet. This is the Prince (can’t remember his name) and Princess Tiana from the new Frog and Princess movie…

My mom and I also had our hair done up with paint and sparkles but the pictures didn’t come out good on either of them. I know Christina got a picture of them. I will have to have her email me her pictures and see if they came out better.

My mother-in-law paid for a Disney photographer to meet us at the Wilderness Lodge for pictures. It was a good deal. They gave her 1 8×10, 2 5x7s and a CD of all the pictures that were taken. These are all pictures that the photographer took. Here is a picture of Nathan’s parents, Ron & Barb…

Nathan’s younger sister Christina and her friend Bridgette…

Nathan’s older sister Vicki, her husband Jim, and their daughter Alex…

Our family including sick Timmy….

Here is a picture of just the kids by one of the smaller trees…

A picture of Nathan with his sisters and all of the kids…

The WHOLE family (my mom is even in there)…

And I had to add this picture because it is the ONLY picture where Timmy is actually smiling and his eyes look bright…

Now I am hoping I can talk my brother into driving down to Statesboro for a couple of days while we are here so we can get some Brandt Family pictures! :)