Focht Family Blog

This year Nathan was put in charge of pirate weekend at the campground. We hid treasure boxes throughout the campground and people chose which maps to follow and had to find the treasure boxes. Once they found the boxes they would take one jewel from the box. Once they had collected one jewel from each of the boxes they took their jewels in to the office and exchanged them for some pirate coins. Everyone had a fun time. Nathan decided to shave his head and decorate it for the occassion…

Needless to say I was thankful that he was able to wash the sharpie off of his head by Sunday morning. I was starting to worry about sitting next to him in church.

My mom requested that I post a picture for her friends of the family dressed up for 60’s weekend. My mom, Samantha, and I were all in matching dresses. I found a t-shirt for Timmy and only recently realized that the reason it is so big is that it is an adults shirt. Joshua is in tie-dye as well but his is because I acidently put his pants in bleach.

One of the big reasons we decided to visit New York was so that we could celebrate Samantha’s and Timmy’s birthdays with my in-laws and Nathan’s older sister and our niece. Nathan’s younger sister and her friend came to visit at the same time so we had a huge birthday party. Since we celebrated Josh’s half birthday this year we decided to add him to the mix as well. I arranged for us to go to a place called Young Chef Academy where everyone learned how to make pizza dough and then we all made our own pizzas. Then we decorated cupcakes. I wanted to find something that Josh would enjoy but that wouldn’t be boring for Samantha and Alex. Even the adults enjoyed the night.

Here is a picture of Samantha showing off her goodies from her bag. I bought all of the kids a personalized apron, a chef’s hat, an oven mitt, a spatula, a rolling pin, and a pizza cutter…

Here is a picture of our niece Alex and her dad Jim…

And all of the kids sitting down before we got started…

Here is Joshua helping to mix the dough…

Here is a picture of everyone that I could get in one shot…

Here is a picture of the biggest “kid” rolling out his pizza…

Samantha and Alex working on their masterpieces…

And the bigger kids finishing their pizzas…

Another picture of the kids while their pizzas were baking…

Now for the cupcakes…. I took a picture of each of the kids with their cupcakes that they frosted themselves…

When we were in New York visiting my in-laws we decided to take a cruise down the Erie Canal to go through the locks. Here are a couple of views going down the canal…

And some pictures of everyone sitting on top of the ship…

Here is a picture of an old grain silo that they have converted into an office building. I thought that was a cool thing to do with a grain silo…

Here are some pictures of the locks going each way…

During the trip we had to go under quite a few low bridges. When we were approaching they would remind everyone up top to not stand up. Here is a picture I took as we were about to go under one of the low bridges…

I don’t feel old enough to have a child who is 11. Can I just tell them they can’t have any more birthdays?? My beautiful daughter is now taller than my mother and quickly catching up with me. She can wear some of my shoes but they are starting to get too small for her.

This summer Nathan’s younger sister, Christina, moved into my in-laws Winnebago and has been camping at our campground so she could go to the back doctors that took care of me because her back was in such bad shape. She had already had two surgeries on her back. Anyways, because she is at our campground my mother-in-law drove up with Christina’s friend, Bridgette, so Samantha had Aunt Christina, Own Grandma, and Aunt Bridgette at her birthday which made her very happy!

Here is Samantha waiting to open her presents…

Here is a picture of Samantha’s dessert choice. We had strawberry cupcakes (her favorite cake). Half of them had strawberry frosting and the other half had pink colored vanilla frosting with sprinkles…

Samantha received a Nintendo DSi, and a new game from us. Aunt Christina and Aunt Bridgette got her a case for the Nintendo and a purse to carry it in. Here is Samantha showing her purse off…

After Samantha’s birthday we left for New York to spend the week with my in-laws at their summer campground and to have a big joint birthday party for all of the kids with the whole Focht side of the family. While we were driving Joshua crawled up onto the mound of my mom’s stuff and fell asleep. I couldn’t resist taking a picture… or I should say my mom came and woke me up from a nap and forced me to take a picture! :)

On to New York….