Focht Family Blog

I am trying to be a better mom. The kids haven’t had many outings lately because of my mom and I being under the weather. So today my mom and I took them to the Children’s Museum at Charleston. They had an art program for the boys so they spent the first hour of the morning painting. I snuck over to where they were painting and took a picture. This is Timmy. Josh is on the other side of the easel so you can’t see him.

While Timmy and Josh were painting Samantha spent her time on a shrimp boat and at the grocery store. The grocery stores are always her favorites at the children’s museums. She likes to pretend to shop and ring things out and prepare food. Here are pictures of Samantha.

Once the kids were back together again they found a room where they had golf balls that you could put into all kinds of different loops and twists. Here are two pictures of the kids on top of the mountain where they were launching some of the balls from.

One of the other golf ball items was a pole that had the golf ball run down in twists. Josh loved this one. He would start the golf ball and then try to race it to the bottom. Here is Josh running after the ball.

After this room the boys found their favorite… a water room! While they were playing Samantha talked my mom into taking her back to the grocery store. Here are two pictures of the boys playing in the water.

We had a lot of fun today. After lunch we had schooltime with all three kids and then Nathan took them for a bike ride around the campground. Tomorrow will be an indoor day for the kids so hopefully they blew off some energy today.

I have decided to start taking pictures of each campground and make little notes about them so that I can remember the different campgrounds and what we liked about them or didn’t like about them. So here is my first installment of campground pictures.

This is site 20 and 21 at James Island County Park.

Things I like: When you call to make reservations they know which sites are good for receiving satellite signals. When we were here for my surgery we had a pull through site which also had good signal for the satellite. They also have Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi signal was stronger at the pull-through site.

Things I don’t like: The spots are sandy so we are getting a lot of sand tracked in every time the kids go in and out. Pricier than most county/state parks.

Poor Nathan. I think he was getting a bad case of cabin fever. He was so happy to be moving again even though we only went about 3 hours away and are spending the week in Charleston. Timmy requested one last meal at the Japanese restaurant by the campground so mom and I took the boys to lunch on Saturday. Samantha was spending time with Nathan’s mom. Here are the boys outside the restaurant.

I also had to share a picture of the two of them hamming it up…

They are just too cute. I went to the surgeons office today for my recheck. He removed the stitches and the surgical glue. He also scoped my throat and I found out the reason I have been having problems with swallowing and talking. One of my vocal cords is paralyzed. He warned me that this could happen. It could have been from the surgery or the intubation. He checked his surgical notes and he checked both vocal cords with an electrical current before closing and both responded. He said that most likely what has happened is that the swelling from the surgery cut the blood supply off to the nerve. Now it will have to regenerate and heal itself. He seemed to think that it will heal but he didn’t give me a time line as to when that might happen. They also took blood to test all my levels and I meet with the endocrinologist on Wednesday so I will see what the levels are doing.

It is hard to believe that Timmy is 6 already. I decided that even if mom and I were not 100% that Timmy would have what he wanted for his birthday this year since last year his birthday is when the engine exploded. So… the other day I picked up one of those little craft cookbooks that was a Halloween book. Timmy loved it and decided to build a meal around that. So we had a swamp brew punch that had bug ice in it. Nathan found gummy eyeballs at the store so when we made cups for the kids each cup had a floating eyeball in it. :)

Next on the menu was mummy dogs followed by a spiderweb cake that we added bugs to. Here is a picture of the mummy dogs and the cake.

We had the party at the meeting room at the campground and invited the campground owners and their kids as well as Nathan’s parents. Here is Timmy blowing out his candles and opening one of his gifts.

One of the gifts that Timmy has been asking for was a skateboard. Nathan and I gave consent so his parents bought Timmy a skateboard and all of the safety equipment to go with it. Here is Timmy trying out his new toy.

Mom had a set back on her recovery this week. She ended up back in the hospital again for a couple of days because her incision opened up because of a secondary infection. She is back home again and we are hoping to leave Statesboro September 28 and spend a week in Charleston so I can have my return appointment with my surgeon and also an appointment with an endocrinologist there that the surgeon recommended. They will decide at that point if I need supplements for my thyroid or if the left half is supplying enough hormones. Mom is having a home nurse come once a day to change bandages and I change the bandages in the evening. I have to wonder what the nurses think when they pull up to a truck camper. :)

We have a friend who lives in Charleston who dives at the aquarium twice a month so we will stay in Charleston long enough to take the kids to the aquarium while he is working. He said if we came while he was working that he would give us a behind the scenes tour. :) So… I am hoping in the next few weeks that we will be back on the road and the blog updates will start getting more exciting again. :)

I survived the surgery. Anesthesia was not fun. I think I feel more pain from the intubation than the surgery. I am having problems being able to clear my throat. Other than that the pain isn’t too bad. I woke up and still have the left side of my thyroid so I guess that means the cyst was benign. Here is a picture of my main incision and bruise.

I realized while I was uploading the picture I had a few miscellaneous photos that I hadn’t posted yet. The first is of Timmy in a bunny suit at his grandma’s house.

The next two I have a cute story to tell on my mom. While we were in Indiana it was my youngest niece’s birthday. We asked what she wanted and my sister-in-law said she would love a long Amish dress. Andrea likes cultural clothes and Meghan loves long dresses. So we decided to see what we could do. Mom went shopping in town to see if she could find something in one of the antique shops. They send her to an Amish store but they only had dresses for babies up to size 18 months.

On a side note every time we go to Nappanee we go to an Amish bookstore that is owned by one of the men who works for Newmar. They have two kids and their little girl is about the same size as Meghan. I had told mom to go and ask her if she could buy a dress from her. So she asked the owner of the dress shop if she knew the family and if she thought it would offend the wife. She said no so she went to the house and asked her. She brought her into the house into the laundry room and gave mom one of the dresses off of the line that had just been washed. She had never sold one of the dresses before so she was going to sell it to mom for $5 but mom gave her $20. Here is two pictures of Meghan in the dress that mom bought off of the back of an Amish girl! :)