This is for the people (Scott and Nancy) that check my blog but aren’t on Facebook. We just received some more pictures of the house from our realtor. We picked out a nice tan color called Sourdough for the exterior. This is the picture we just got in email….
What do you think??? It looks orange to us….
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! :)
Well… we bought the kids two Guinea Pigs for Christmas. Unfortunately, right before Christmas Dawn died and Twilight got sick. Because Twilight was still under warranty she went to the vet for Christmas weekend and then was on antibiotics for two weeks after. We waited until after Disney to purchase another Guinea Pig. At that point we decided to get 2 more so there was enough for everyone to pass around. So we picked out two new Guinea Pigs and named them Brownie and Oreo.
What we didn’t realize was that Brownie must have been pregnant when we bought her. We were a bit surprised when we came home from Chicago and this is what Brownie looked like…
This picture does not do her girth justice. The poor girl has looked ready to pop this week. I have been Googling all over trying to figure out when we would know it was time. Friday night I couldn’t sleep and I checked her every half hour and it looked like aliens were in her. You could watch the babies moving. Saturday morning came and I had some errands to run. I looked in on her and she looked like she was about to go into labor. I just knew it was going to happen in the next couple of hours but I left for my errands. While I was out Nathan called me to tell me that Samantha had just looked in and the babies had been born! Everyone missed the birth!! I knew I shouldn’t have left. Brownie had 3 beautiful babies… one is albino, one is tri-colored, and one is brown and black. We will keep one if there is a girl but I can’t tell what they are. My guess is that the brown/black one is a boy and the other two are girls. I am hoping I am wrong because I love the coloring of the brown/black. Here are a couple of pictures of them while they were hours old…
Everything I have read says I need to get any boys out by 3 weeks so we don’t have more babies. I am checking them but if there is any question we will take everyone to a vet in the next couple of weeks and make sure what gender they are. Hopefully Petco will take the other two that we do not keep. Otherwise I don’t know what we will do!!
This is a picture of Dory taken on her 2nd birthday in November…
Sunday we decided to drive to Amicolola Falls and have brunch with my brother’s family. Nathan and I had already left the RV and sent Samantha and Josh back in for warmer jackets. Whichever one was last out did not do a good job shutting the door. So while we were eating and hiking to the falls, Dory left the RV. Our only thought is that maybe she was going out to go potty. We now know that two people from the campground saw her walking around. I think that one of them may have yelled at her and scared her which started her running. As we were driving home we noticed cars slowing down for something and two people stopping and pulling over. Now we know that Dory was crossing the street as we drove by.
We got home and noticed that the door was ajar. Nathan and I thought Dory would still be inside. My first thought when we found her gone was that someone had stolen her because Dory doesn’t run off. We called the police and found out there had been two calls about a large dog roaming so we went searching where they had the last report. We found a gravel road that went all the way to a highway. I noticed a pawprint in the mud and we started following the pawprints. They led us in circles where she couldn’t figure out where she was going. This happened around 1:00 in the afternoon. At about 4:00 my brother and his wife spotted her coming out of the woods into a cow field at a neighboring farm. As soon as they called her she ran back into the woods diving under barbed wire to get away. I went back to where we originally were tracking her because it was in the direction she ran. I got to the end of the road and there she was. I called her name and she bolted. We tracked her for a bit in the direction she ran in but couldn’t find her.
Monday was spent with me taking the kids to a gold mine and Nathan working and looking for Dory. As soon as I got back we both went back to searching. We found pawprints but had no clue if they were from Sunday or Monday. We even called a lady who has a dog trained to track lost pets who is in Maryland. She told us to put food and toys out for her where we last saw her so we did. This morning we were back out by 8:00 to check her food dish and look for more prints. We found prints a lot further away than where we were originally looking. We left the woods about 9:30 to start passing around flyers. At around 10:00 or so we were out by the road getting ready to search an abandoned house to see if we could find any sign of her. As I was walking up to the house I received a call from the police saying they thought our dog had been spotted.
Two wonderful women, Leslie and Cheryl, noticed Dory on the side of the road. This was definitely God answering our prayers. They were meeting for coffee and went to a coffee place that they didn’t usually go to. They didn’t usually drive on the road that they saw Dory on. They stopped and found her so exhausted that she was laying down. Animal control was actually worried she had been hit because of how she was acting. As soon as we pulled up she got up and started coming towards Nathan. She was eager to get into the truck. We drove her to the vet’s office that handles mastiffs for rescue in the area. On the outside she is just scratched up and bruised but she flinched when her stomach was touched. Her blood shows that her liver levels are elevated and there was also some blood in her urine. They think she ate something she shouldn’t have. Hopefully it is just bad trash or a dead animal but it is acting like a poison to her. They are keeping her overnight on IV fluids and antibiotics to flush out the bad stuff. They will test her blood and urine again tomorrow afternoon and if her levels are improved she can come home….. after a BATH!! I created a map of Cumming, GA on Google maps that shows where Dory traveled. The middle point is the campground. The spot to the right and below is where we saw her on Sunday. The spot to the left and above is where she was found today!
I am sitting at the Hyatt O’Hare in Chicago finishing up with the CV3 Conference for the year. Nathan and I fly back to Savannah tomorrow and we leave Saturday for Atlanta, followed by Nashville, followed by Indiana (Newmar). If the weather holds we will start driving towards PA after the repairs are made at Newmar. I will try to keep up better.
