Focht Family Blog

Since I think I have a few days of slow time I am going to try to get caught up in the next couple of days.

On Sunday when we were in Boston we went to the Science Museum. Here is a picture of my mom, Joshua, and Samantha making designs with the sand…

In the morning we went to a show about electricity. Here is the main attraction…

At the end the kids got a chance for a hair raising experience…

Of course then they had to discharge themselves. Thankfully Nathan took the shocks for me! :)

Here is Joshua practicing brushing teeth…

And learning about science in playing…

The last show we went to was the Amazing Nano Brothers that Samantha insisted we go to. That will be the next post since I have so many pictures.

We decided that Saturday was our tour day so after the walking tour we went to the Samuel Adams Brewery for a tour. In the past two years, I think it was Nathan’s favorite tour but that might have had something to do with the free beer! :)

Here is my mom and the kids waiting in an old beer barrel for the tour to start. It was metal and apparently they used to have to get inside them and scrub them by hand.

The tour starts out with a description of the different kinds of barley and hops that go into the beer with a sample cup of each of them passed around so you can smell and taste the grains.

Next they showed us the tanks that the beer is brewed in…

After the tour we went to a tasting room. They gave us tastings of three different kinds of beer. Here are the pitchers lined up for the first tasting…

They had root beer for the kids and people who didn’t want beer. I think we know how Joshua is going to spend his college days….

After the tour we found a little Italian restaurant and had dinner before heading back to the campground for the night.

We checked into Normandy Farms Campground in Foxboro on Friday. This was the closest campground to Boston that we could find. Saturday we decided to take a child friendly walking tour of Boston. I’m not sure if you can see the markings on the ground but the markings show where the water used to be to show how much of Boston was created…

The tour talked a lot about Samuel Adams. Every time the tour guide said Sam Adams everyone was supposed to pose like the Sam Adams statue. Here is Timmy in his Sam Adams pose…

The tour showed a lot of the architecture in Boston. One of the things the guide pointed out was all of the different weather vains. Here is one of my favorites…

Here is Nathan showing the kids how the bricks were laid on a building that has made it strong enough to still be standing…

One of the stops was at a statue of the Democratic donkey. There was a spot in front of it for a Republican to stand where they could stand up to the donkey. Here is my mom by the donkey…

The guide also took us to King’s Chapel, founded in 1686. Here is a picture of one of the family boxes that people still sit in while attending services…

The last picture if from the cemetery behind King’s Chapel. Apparently at one point they were fixing things up and all of the headstones were moved and then replaced. All of the bodies are still buried there but the headstones aren’t where they started so no one actually knows which bodies are where. This gravestone was one that shows an “A” that they say helped inspire the Scarlet Letter…

Nathan decided to take a drive down memory lane. On the way to Boston we stopped at a wonderful place that he used to go to as a child. Here are the kids and I showing off our ice cream…

I was holding Nathan’s ONE scoop cone. Here is Nathan when he was starting to give up…

Here is a picture of all of us under the sign out front…

The portions were so huge that my one scoop sundae took me two days to eat. It was so good the whole family decided to make Nathan take us back again before we left Massachusetts! :)

We decided to go to Kennebunkport for a night before heading to Boston.  We stayed at a very nice campground called Red Apple Campground. We found out that President Bush was in town because he was going to parachute the next morning for his birthday. We decided to drive through the town and look at everything. The campground owner showed us where to drive on the map and showed us where the Bush’s house was so we could take a look.

Here is a picture that we took of President Bush’s house…

And here is a picture of the Secret Service vehicle that was sitting where we took the picture…. :)

From there we went to the beach. Here is Nathan holding a shivering Josh. Josh had been sick the day before this. What we didn’t know at the time was that Josh was shivering because his fever was back…

I was the only one brave enough to put my feet in. However, when I took my socks off I found that I had picked up a tick while at the horses that morning. I found out accidentally that ticks do not like salt water. A few minutes after getting back in the truck from the beach, the tick came out on his own….

Unfortunately Josh’s fever did not respond to the medicine so we also got to see the ER at the hospital near Kennebunkport. :) The little stinker’s fever broke in the middle of the night so I guess we should have waited it out for a few more hours. :)