Focht Family Blog

Saturday and Sunday were spent at the campground. Monday morning I took mom into the hospital because she doesn’t trust how she feels anymore. She wasn’t feeling 100% better so she wanted to make sure she shouldn’t be on more antibiotics. This time she was fine. I took the laundry with us and we tried to find a laundromat on the way home. When we finally found one, it was 5:30 and they were closed. The campground has a laundry room but it only has one washer and one dryer. So we came home and did the laundry here. I finally went to bed around 10:00. Mom said she would finish with the drying. She finally made it back to the campsite at 11:30! The dryer doesn’t work very well so although we only had 4 washers full, I think we ran the dryer 6 or 7 times.

Tuesday we went to Niagara Falls with Nathan’s parents. We went through the same fun getting into Canada except this time we were standing outside and it was raining and they wouldn’t let us stand by the door while they were inside. When we finally were parked it was almost noon. We wanted to do the Journey Behind the Falls and Maid of the Mist. The bus from the parking lot left us near Journey so we went there first. Here are the kids in the beautiful yellow plastic coverings they gave us to keep dry.

The first part of the tunnels have two spots that you can see behind the falls. Not much of a view…

The other part is a viewing platform next to the falls where I took a few pictures. We didn’t stay long… the kids were not enjoying getting wet. :)

After the Journey we started walking towards Maid of the Mist and stopped for lunch. Josh decided sleep sounded better than eating. While I was getting the food he took a nap. He didn’t wake up until about 30 minutes after lunch was over.

While we were eating lunch we realized it was getting colder outside and decided that it wasn’t a good day for Maid of the Mist. We decided we would come back in July and do the Maid of the Mist. So we walked up the hill and went on the Skywheel. It is an enclosed air conditioned Ferris wheel. While walking Samantha found some pretty flowers and we also found a very interesting colored squirrel.

After the Skywheel we headed back to the shuttle so we could meet Nathan’s older sister, Vicki, for dinner. I took a few more pictures before getting on the bus. This is a picture of a ship that has been stuck for MANY years. I can’t remember what year the bus driver said but I think it was in the early 1900’s. The other picture is where the water starts going over the falls.

Unfortunately I did not get to enjoy the meal with Vicki. I had the worst headache I have ever had and went to the hospital. I knew I was coming down with a sinus infection and they gave me some phenergan and sent me on my way. They said it would help with the headache. They did a CT scan but not far enough to see the sinuses so they dismissed the sinus pain. The next day Nathan took me to an Urgent Care center and they gave me some stronger decongestants and some antibiotics. Hopefully the sinus pain with start going away now.

Tonight we are finally getting around to having mom’s birthday dinner so I will update with pictures of her cake.

Well… we left Chicago and drove to Michigan to get the oil pan fixed. I took the kids to a hotel for the night so we could sleep in and have somewhere they could keep out of trouble while the oil pan was being worked on. Nathan and Misty stayed with the RV. After the oil pan was fixed, we headed toward Canada. Here is the bridge going into Canada from Detroit.

Here are the kids sitting buckled up on the couch waving goodbye to the United States.

We were sent into the truck lines to pay to go over the bridge so we followed the trucks into the border lines. Here is the truck that was ahead of us in line. We thought it looked like he was floating because his back tires are off the ground.

Getting into Canada was an adventure. First, we were supposed to go through the lines with the cars so we were probably making the trucks behind us mad. The border police kept asking us where we were going, how long we would be there and why. Then we had to pull over and everyone and the dogs had to get out while they went through all of our cupboards and storage bays. Next we were sent into immigration and asked all the questions all over again. Seems like a lot of trouble to put a sticker on the map and go camping! :)

Anyways… the first thing we looked for once cleared to enter the country was a place where Nathan could purchase a cell phone and a month subscription for Canada since his current company did not offer any plans that would give him coverage in Canada. Come to find out that cell plans are very expensive in Canada and they have many places where you have no coverage. So… since Nathan has to have a cell phone for work we decided to have dinner at the Applebees at the shopping center and review our options.

We decided that our options were limited so we crossed back into the USA. We thought we would have a problem but I guess having passports they decided we were okay because the USA border police came in and asked us a few questions and sent us on our way without anyone having to get out. Here is the bridge again… this time coming back into USA.

We decided to surprise Nathan’s parents and spend the time we would have been in Canada in NY at the campground that they summer at. We spent the night at a Cabelas in Michigan that had dump and water and then made it into NY by early afternoon on Friday. We will stay here until next Tuesday when we will head to Hershey.

This week has been long…. it started off with Nathan’s birthday. It was our last day in Wisconsin. The kids and I got up, did the dishes, cleaned the house, baked a cake. Then I left to pick mom up from the hospital. After getting her out and filling her prescriptions we stopped to pick up a box that came into town for Nathan. He ordered himself two new hats because the kids hid his and he couldn’t find it. So instead of just a brown hat, he ordered a brown and a black hat. Mom and I got home and I made Nathan lasagna and did the laundry while it was cooking so we would be good for boondocking for a week in Chicago. Here is a picture of Nathan’s cake… the kids decorated it.

Thursday morning was filled with pouring rain and thunderstorms. Always fun for packing up and leaving. We made it to the hotel parking lot by lunch and Nathan went to visit a customer. While he was gone security came by to tell me that we were parked on the wrong side of the hotel so as soon as Nathan got back we had to move everything to the other side of the hotel. Then Nathan and I left and drove 20 miles in about 1 1/2 hours into Chicago to meet a couple for dinner. I realized I am not made for staying out late anymore. By the time dinner was done I was exhausted and ready for bed. Maybe once the kids are grown I will have more energy. :)

Friday we took the kids to the Choo Choo. It is a restaurant I found that has a train that delivers your food. There was a line out the door when we got there. It is a small diner and only has 27 seats that are on the track so we waited for a booth on the track. The food was actually very good. They opened the restaurant around the same time as the first McDonalds (which is right down the road). All of the equipment, including the cash register looked like the originals. I didn’t get a picture of our food being delivered but here is the kid’s dessert being delivered.

Here is Joshua trying out his train whistle that came with the cupcake.

Funny note on Nathan’s hats. He was going back and forth trying to decide if he should order a second hat. He must have clicked on the black hat and didn’t check what size was the default because he has found his original brown hat, he has a new brown hat, but the black hat came in a size small so here is Nathan and his mini-me….

Here is Samantha playing with her whistle while mom finishes her drink before we left.

After we got back to the hotel parking lot, Nathan had to start his week of working all hours. We drove out to get some dinner and ended up at a large shopping area. Samantha was talking about wanting to go to a Rainforest Cafe (why I don’t know) and I looked up food in our new GPS and there was one across the street so we had dinner there.

The kids had a lot of fun although our booth was by a waterfall so it was a bit wet. All of my other pictures didn’t turn out because of the mist. When we left all of the kids ended up with soft stuffed snakes and we bought a couple of Seuss books that had to do with insects and rainforests. Most of the rest of the time while at the hotel was spent dodging thunderstorms and watching radars for tornado warnings. Monday morning we drove to McCormick center.

Nathan took the RV and went ahead. Mom and I drove the truck and camper with the kids and drove to the company who makes her jacks to get them repaired. The problem ended up being a controller issue so they were able to just switch out the controller. She had one jack that wouldn’t stop moving so balancing her was becoming a fun dance of plugging and unplugging jacks. Then on our way to the McCormick center we stopped and took the kids to see Kungfu Panda. They had been wanting to see it and they always enjoy a lunch of popcorn. :)

Tuesday I took Samantha out for a girlie day. We had reservations to go to the American Girl store. She dressed up, put on makeup and made sure her doll was dressed as well.

We checked in at the cafe and were seated at a cute table just for two. The napkins each had a scrunchy on them that we got to keep. We put one in her doll’s hair and one on her doll’s wrist.

There was a special seat for her doll and if you didn’t bring yours then you could borrow one. They brought us cinnamon rolls and a fruit plate before serving lunch and then brought us a dessert plate that had chocolate mousse in flowerpots with silk daisies we could keep, an angel food cake heart and a flower sugar cookie. After lunch we went downstairs to the theater and watched the broadway style Revue. After the show, we shopped. Samantha ended up with an outfit and two pairs of pajamas (with matching clothes for her doll) as well as a mini doll and a hairbrush for her doll.

Nathan has been very busy and we haven’t seen much of him this week. Tomorrow we leave for Michigan once his show is over. We have an appointment Thursday morning in Michigan to get a new, metal oil pan. We have had two of the composites and we are still leaking. After that we head into Ontario for a week and a half and we will not have internet on our aircard at all so updates will depend on how good the wi-fi is at the campgrounds. :)

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday! What did she get for her birthday? She got to use her Medicare card for the first time. Last week mom started to not feel well so she started to take the antibiotics that her gastroenterologist had given her in December. She wasn’t feeling better and started feeling worse when she woke up for her birthday so I took her to the ER at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Unfortunately she wasn’t happy with them when they told her she was staying. They did a CT scan and some bloodwork. Her white blood count was up again and the CT scan showed an area that was ruptured but contained. We had to wait for the surgeons to come speak with us and they felt that her body was keeping it contained so she didn’t need surgery yet. However, they suggested that she schedule elective surgery to remove the section as soon as she gets back to Savannah.

The doctor that did rounds today said that he might have released her today but because we are traveling he wants to keep her another night. So hopefully mom will be out of the hospital tomorrow and will be able to have her birthday dinner in a few days. She had picked out homemade stew and mashed potatoes and a pineapple upside down cake that Samantha and I were going to make her.

Tomorrow is Nathan’s birthday so we will be making lasagna and yellow cake with chocolate frosting for his special meal!

I’m almost caught up. Once we left Iowa, we drove to Wisconsin. Things have been busy here. We started out with a stop at the Mustard Museum. They are one of Nathan’s customers. The owner gave us a wonderful tour and then read the children a book that he wrote called Mustard on a Pickle. The children thoroughly enjoyed the reading. The owner signed a copy for them and we bought another signed copy of the book for my nieces.

After leaving the Mustard Museum we drove to Jellystone Caledonia. I was determined not to like this place because they have rules about not letting people receive mail here and a few other things. I have decided that the difference is that Jellystones and KOA’s are more campgrounds for families on a small vacation, not people who travel fulltime. But we booked the reservations for the children and they are enjoying the activities.

We started out our Jellystone stay with me taking a trip to the ER at the hospital for the Medical College. My rash is not gone and was getting worse. I was losing my grip on sanity and barely sleeping. I tried to get an appointment at the clinic but they were booked for 3 months. The ER doctor consulted with one of the dermatologists at the clinic and put me back on another round of heavy prednisone, a strong antihistamine (on top of my normal antihistamines) and a strong cortisone that can be applied to the skin. He feels that whatever triggered it made it so that things that wouldn’t normally bother me are bothering me. I told him the results of the skin tests in Denver and they gave me a large printout on formaldehyde that mentioned that if you get new bedding or blouses especially that you should first wash them in dry milk. Somehow this deactivates the formaldehyde. I decided I was done dealing with the new comforter. I threw it out. I bought a quilt from a company that I have bought bedding from before with out any problems. It is 100% cotton inside and out. I then took it to the laundromat and washed it three times in a huge washer. Once with dry milk, once with allergen free detergent and once with water to rinse it out good. Here is the new bedding.

Hopefully all of the medicines will give the allergy time to calm down and it will go away now. So far it is better but not gone but I am still on all of the medicines, too.

While we have been in Wisconsin we were able to enjoy a visit with one of our old family friends, George and Jackie Sargent. They live only an hour away from Caledonia. We went to their house on a lake and had a barbecue. One of their daughters, Laura, was there with her husband, Josh. She is pregnant and due in September. Here is a picture of Jackie, Laura, Josh, and the kids.

We gave George a hard time about not being in the picture so I got another picture with Jackie, George, Laura, Samantha and Timmy. Both Josh and Josh ran off.

It was an especially nice visit since I haven’t seen Jackie or Laura since my wedding.

Some of the activities that the children have enjoyed at Jellystone have included getting to tuck Yogi into bed at night and we also played candy bar bingo. Today we took the kids to the pool for a little while and they had a lot of fun. Here is Samantha helping Josh go down one of the waterslides.

Here is Timmy coming down another waterslide.

They had a really fun part of the water area called water wars. They give each person a bucket with 6 balloons. You fill them up with water and stand across from each other and launch the balloons through holes at the person across from you. Here is Nathan helping Josh and Samantha and Timmy trying to get theirs across to daddy.

After the water wars we went back to playing in the pool for a little while before heading back to the RV for lunch.

After lunch is when we took Misty to the vet. We have had to force feed her her medicine and some ice cubes tonight because she is locking her jaws and not letting us open them. We are really concerned about her being dehydrated and she can hardly stay awake. I am going to stay up a bit longer and try to get some more ice into her. I would really hate to see a cut on her foot be the end of her.