Focht Family Blog

We arrived in Longmont on Tuesday night. Since we weren’t supposed to check in until Wednesday we stayed the first night at a local Walmart. We called in the morning and they said it was fine for us to check in early so by 9:00 or so we were settled into our sites. We took mom’s camper off of the truck and lowered the camper down. I was amazed at how quickly it comes off. Nathan had it off while I was hooking the RV up to electric and water. The weather couldn’t have been better. All day it was clear and high 70’s with a light breeze.

We took it as an opportunity to open up all the windows and do some major cleaning. I drove mom into town and dropped her off with 4 blankets and 4 bags of laundry. Needless to say we didn’t see her for many hours. We decided to wash the comforter on the bed because we started putting two and two together and realized that two days before my rash started was when we put the new comforter on the bed. We washed the sheets but hadn’t washed the comforter. The biopsies came back that the rash is allergic contact dermatitis and they said until I figured out what caused it, if I was still in contact with it, it won’t go away.

The first laundromat we went to was very small and the person who was using the large washers was washing horse blankets in them. I am severely allergic to horses. Cats send me to the hospital with asthma attacks and I am more allergic to horses, so we decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to wash my comforter in that washer. We found a bigger laundromat and mom was talking to the man who was using their big washers. He was a nurse who used to be in textiles. He said that they often put formaldehyde on comforters to keep things from growing on them while they are sitting. He was washing his whites in lots of bleach in the washer mom used for my comforter. :)

While I was cleaning the RV, Nathan was catching up with work and phone calls. While outside on one of his calls he was getting yelled at by a bird… I am trying to get a better picture of her but this is what I have so far.

Nathan started looking around to see what she was mad about. He found this on the ground not too far from the RV…

I am not sure why she has chosen to build her nest on the ground where her eggs could easily be stepped on but we have been keeping an eye on her since the first day. We also had a chance to update our state stickers since the weather was so nice. Here is what are map looks like now…

Wednesday night the wind howled and was shaking both us and mom. We were having gusts that were getting up to 60mph. Apparently it brought a change in the weather because Thursday morning we woke up and it was snowing! Crazy weather here. Nathan had to work on Thursday, so we dropped him off at Paladin Press in Boulder and we headed to Colorado Springs to see Andrea’s sister, Melissa. We wanted to see her while we were here anyways but we had to go and see her May 1st because our bank has merged with another one and our bank cards are no longer good. Our new ones had been mailed overnight to Melissa’s house so I needed to go and pick them up.

On our way to Colorado Springs traffic was slow, I am guessing because of the snow. We finally started to make some good time and then traffic STOPPED. I ended up putting the truck in park and turning it off. All we could see from our vantage point was a double trailer FedEx truck off the side of the road. While we were sitting there three fire rescue trucks, four police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance all went by. Then two large tow trucks came. According to some of the truck drivers that were walking around a truck wrecked with a car. We never did see the car. I don’t think the FedEx truck was directly involved. I think he may have driven off the side to avoid the accident. What I could see as we went by looked like two semis wrecked. Here is what I managed to get a picture of once we started moving…

We called Melissa to let her now why we were so late. We had called her when we were 10 miles from her exit to give her time to get home and the accident was 5 miles from her exit. After traffic finally started moving (only one lane) we managed to get there without any mishaps. Melissa is 35 weeks pregnant with her second child and while we were visiting with her she was having a lot of contractions. She is having a boy. Who knows… maybe we will get to see him before we leave. :) The kids had fun playing with her daughter, Abigail and after playing for awhile we went out to lunch with them. Here is a picture of Melissa, Abigail, and Samantha as we were leaving for lunch.

Friday the weather started clearing up again although it was very windy all day. We were still getting 60mph winds. Saturday it has been much clearer so I could finally get a picture of our view of the mountains. This is the view directly behind the RV…

I am hoping we will be able to get some sight seeing done next week. I went to a dermatologist here on Friday. She gave me a stronger cream for my rash and it is finally going away. It will remain to be seen if the comforter was the culprit. The doctor here also put patches on my back to test for the most common irritants and I know I am reacting to something because my back is itching like crazy under the patches. I go back on Monday to check to see what I am reacting to and therefore I will know what to avoid.

We are trying to get a reservation to tour the Denver Mint but it is showing as full all next week. I am also planning on taking the kids to Hammond’s candies where they still make candy canes and hard candies by hand.

Okay… Here are the pictures of mom’s new home. The truck is a 2004 Ford F250 diesel. The camper is a 2008 Arctic Fox 805. It has thermal windows so if we put mom in the snow again she will do better. The only problem it had was that they were supposed to add a microwave and an electric water heater to it before it was shipped. They shipped it from Oregon in such a rush to get it to her in time that they forgot to add both. They were able to add a microwave from a different Arctic Fox they had on the lot but we will have to return later for the electric water heater. It does have a propane heater so she still has hot water. One of the things mom likes most about it is that it has a generator so now if we stop at a Walmart she has air conditioning and power as well.

Here is the side view.

Here is the door in the back.

Here is Joshua sitting on mom’s bed showing off the flat screen TV that I insalled for her. I am proud that I managed to do it correctly with only making the two holes that were needed to attach the arm. She can watch it in bed or swing it out so she can watch it from the dinette.

Here is a shot that shows the dinette off to the right.

Here is the kitchen to the left.

I tried to get a long shot that shows the whole camper from the door…

I tried to get a picture of the bathroom. It is on the right past the dinette. Josh was standing in the way but it basically is a wet bath like a boat bathroom. The shower, the toilet and the sink are all in the same room so that when you shower you are getting the toilet wet.

And with that I am as caught up as I am going to get… :)

Today we are driving to Chicago. I am not sure if we will make it all of the way but knowing Nathan we will. Nathan has to attend a show of some sort for a day and then we will be driving to Boulder, CO. We are supposed to check in at Boulder on April 30.

I managed to get a few pictures at the wedding and thought I would share them…

Here is my Aunt Beth with a family friend who came for the wedding. Beth is Brian’s mom and my dad’s sister. Both of my aunts are my dad’s sisters. My mom is an only child.

Here is a picture of mom. I am not sure why she looks so startled. We discovered a really good drink while at the wedding. The bartender mixed it up. It was cranberry juice, pineapple juice and vodka. I had the same without the vodka. I was driving and I sometimes get sick from alcohol and didn’t want to take the chance to get sick when I had to drive the next day.

Here is a picture of Brian’s wife, Erika, being walked down the aisle.

Here is a picture of Brian and Erika getting married.

My Aunt Sue and her husband James were being elusive. However, I managed to get a picture of them with Aunt Beth.

It was a beautiful wedding and I really enjoyed being able to see my aunts again. It has been quite a few years since I have seen Brian as well. The last time I saw Brian, Samantha was 2 years old.

I forgot some of what we had done this month until I emptied my camera :)

While we were in Statesboro Samantha was invited to attend the birthday party for the daughter of the campground owners. Her name is Lindsay and Samantha and her have become fast friends.

She had her party at a pottery place. Here is Samantha painting her cat…

After the party Samantha and I drove over to Georgia Southern and met up with the rest of the family. They were having an art festival and they had lots of art stations for the kids to enjoy. They were able to sculpt with clay and paint on various objects. Here is one of the stations where the college kids were helping the younger ones to create masterpieces.

They also had a maze that was on the ground somewhere (I forgot where it was). It is a puzzle that has to be figured out. You have to follow the directions of the arrows but you can go as many spaces in that direction that you want. There is only one way to solve it. Nathan figured it out correctly. Here is Samantha and Josh trying to follow the directions. Somehow I managed to snap the picture at just the right moment that both of Josh’s feet are off the ground.

After Atlanta we drove back to Statesboro so mom could buy a truck. She bought a 2004 Ford F250 diesel that has 60K miles on it. It has a club cab so we can all fit in it. She has always felt bad that we didn’t have a vehicle to drive when we stopped places. We stayed in Statesboro for another week so that Nathan could order all of the pieces that he needed to put onto the truck to make it towable and also make it so it could hold a camper. That gave him time for the parts to get in and for him to go to his friend’s house where he works on the Jeeps and get them all installed.

During the time in Statesboro I ended up taking two trips to the emergency room for allergy attacks and went to just about every doctor known to man to figure out why I was all of a sudden having such a bad reaction. I thought it was from a new medicine but they seem to think it didn’t look like a reaction to medicine. They biopsied my skin and ended up putting me on a HIGH dose of prednisone for a couple of weeks. End result is that it was/is a reaction to something I have come into contact with but they don’t know what. The best guess is that this is a really bad spring season and the trees are trying to kill me. :)

During all of these reactions we took a week and drove down to Ocala to pick up mom’s trailer. It was all fixed up but needed a lot of WD40 to get into all of the locks from it sitting for a month. While in Ocala my mom and I stopped to see my grandfather at hospice. He seemed more alert to me than he did when we saw him last. He was suffering from pneumonia the last time we saw him and ended up at the hospital. He is now at hospice. He doesn’t have a feeding tube but is still eating pureed food. The Parkinson’s makes it extremely difficult for him to swallow. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to eat because he wasn’t eating much the day we were there. He used to love lemon meringue pie and I told him I would make him one if he would eat it so I went back to the RV and made him some little tarts and brought those back with some ice cream. His wife and her daughter said he ate all of them. They have his memorial service planned for the end of May but I am starting to wonder if he may be alive for his own service. :) I have tough grandpas.

My other grandpa was kicked out of hospice in Savannah and was sent back to a nursing home. They have now written him up in their journal as one of their success stories. When we stopped to see him before leaving for Florida we had to track him down because he is now spending his days wheeling around the hallways singing.

While in Florida we stayed in Tampa at Lazydays Rallypark. They had a nice pool that I took the kids to one day and they have free breakfast and lunch at the park Monday-Saturday so the kids got to ride their bikes everyday to get meals. I bought Josh a small bicycle while in Statesboro and once we got to Tampa he figured out right away how to ride it and now he is always wanting to ride bikes. Nathan and I spent his $500 gift card at Camping World while there as well. We bought 2 folding bikes with bags and a hitch that goes between the RV and the truck that holds the kid’s bikes. We are putting our bikes in the back seat of the truck while we are driving since they are folded in bags.

Mom had a chance to catch up with old friends while in Tampa. She spent the time we were there staying at her college roomates house. They went out to adult things like nice meals and shows. :) The day before we left mom and I drove to Orlando and attended the wedding of my cousin, Brian. It was a nice wedding held lakeside with a beach atmosphere. There was a luah theme to it including a show during the reception. It was nice to see both of my aunts in one place and get to visit with them without having to worry what the kids were up to. Nathan stayed in Tampa with them. The only bad part of the evening was that we got home at midnight and were up at 7:00 the next morning to get everything ready for a long day on the road. We took turns driving because we had to drive the RV pulling the trailer and someone else had to drive the truck separately. It was a tiring day but we made it back to Atlanta in one day.

We are now in Stone Mountain. Mom traded the trailer in for her truck camper on Tuesday and she has spent the week getting everything settled inside. She had to throw out a few more things and she says that the truck camper will keep her in good shape because she has to climb to get to everything in it. Punch has a new bed in the aisle by the door so she can sleep on somewhere soft because she cannot get up on anything either. I need to go out and walk Misty in a minute and while I am out there I will walk to mom’s site and take some pictures so I can show what is now going to be pulled behind us. I will have to wait until we get to a large parking lot so I can update the picture on the front of the blog to show the truck behind us.