Focht Family Blog

Samantha was thrilled for her birthday. Nathan’s parents came for the week before her big day and stayed for her birthday weekend. Nathan’s sister, Vicki, also came for the weekend with her daughter Alex so Samantha had lots of family as well as all of the new friends she has made this summer.

The morning didn’t start out well. Her party was starting at 10:00 and when Josh woke up this is what he looked like…

For those of you who know of Josh’s eye troubles, the swollen eye is the one he can see out of. So… while the rest of the family was decorating for the party, I took Josh to the ER. We weren’t going to take a chance. The ER doctor didn’t see anything in it (although Josh didn’t cooperate with the exam) and she couldn’t see any bites. She gave us some eye drops for infection and told me to give him benadryl every 4 hours. Neither did anything to help the swelling.

On to the party…. AMAZINGLY Josh and I made it back with 15 minutes to spare! That was a quick ER!! :) The first game we had come up with involved 5 different colors of yarn that the other family members strung around everything in the Pavilion. The kids were grouped into teams and the first team to wind up their yarn got a little prize. Here is a picture of Samantha and her team winding up their yarn…

The other game we had to entertain them was putting them in teams and giving each team two rolls of toilet paper. The first team to use all of their toilet paper to make a mummy out of one of the members got to hit the pinata after Samantha…

I think one of Samantha’s favorite things from her party was the pinata. She has wanted a pinata for years but we have never had her parties where we could have one so she got one this year! I managed to dodge the stick to get a picture of each of our kids taking their turn…

Samantha had a great time. After all of the games we filled the kids up with hot dogs and lots of cake and brownies and sent them home.

Side Note: Nathan said he saw the boys playing with the newly installed tetherball and he was pretty sure Josh took a shot to the head. The swelling started going down the next day but it never looked bruised. We are thinking it must have been a hit from the ball. Everything seems to have healed fine and he can still see! :)

I have watched too many episodes of cake challenges on Food Network. Samantha wanted a Hannah Montana birthday. Since we had so many kids coming to her party (kids from Girl Scouts and from the camp) I made two cakes. The first one was a strawberry cake (her favorite) with cream cheese frosting that I designed into a guitar with the help of rice krispie treats for the neck, M & Ms for the knobs, and Twizzlers for the strings…

Here is her second birthday cake, yellow with chocolate frosting. This one isn’t anything special. I bought a cake kit from the Walmart bakery for it…

Here is a picture of the cakes together…

We saw this restaurant while driving around and decided we needed to try it out. It started out when someone bought an old auto service station and turned it into a restaurant. Everything is decorated with cars including the building…

They are known for their wings (we didn’t try them). Here is a picture of Samantha and Josh posing as chickens (Timmy was at another camp)…

Also… a picture of Samantha and Josh with their cool straws and a picture of the Corvette that was hanging off the wall next to our table…

Samantha also attended Day Camp for a week. The theme for the week was Camelot. Here is a picture of Samantha with her group at the beginning of camp… (Samantha is on the back row, all the way on the left)

Here is Samantha and her group at their group meeting area… (Samantha is in the front on the right)

At one of the end of the day performances Samantha’s group did a skit spelling out Camelot with what the letters meant to them from the week…

Here is Samantha visiting one of the neighboring groups…

Samantha with Nathan (her counselor took this picture when Nathan picked her up one of the days)…

Samantha with one of her new buddies, Savannah…

And lastly… one of the days they had a late day with an evening performance. Here is Samantha and Savannah singing for part of their group’s performance….

This was the weekend Samantha was most looking forward to because it was supposed to be all about horses. Unfortunately it was a bit misrepresented. They had horse crafts but the only time they had on the horse was ONE trail ride that lasted for about 40 minutes. Here are a couple of pictures of Samantha on her horse….

They also took hikes and canoed during the weekend. Here are a couple of pictures from the hike…