Focht Family Blog

After Easter we drove to Atlanta so Nathan could move the servers to their new home. While in Atlanta we decided to stay a couple of extra days and visit with my brother. One of the days my sister-in-law and my nieces joined us at the Atlanta Children’s Museum. It was a bit hectic considering there were three adults and five young children. We had to park at a garage a block away and walk all of them in downtown Atlanta to get them in and then of course everyone wants to go in different directions. There were also multiple school groups there that day so I think it was the busiest Children’s Museums I have taken the kids to so far.

Here is a picture of Timmy sitting in the barnyard with the chickens.

Here is a picture of my two nieces, Meghan and Ashleigh…

Timmy enjoyed the chicken nest so much he took his aunt back with him. Here is Andrea sitting in the nest with Timmy.

At one point I took Samantha off to do some of the bigger things while the other children were in various other spots. Here is Samantha lifting levers on a crane to move balls.

Then she decided to plant some vegetables in the garden and they needed to be watered…

While Samantha was busy doing these things my mom had the boys in a section for smaller kids that was fenced in. They were having fun playing in water. It is always their favorite spot in any museum…

After the boys were done playing in the water they joined Samantha and Ashleigh playing in the sand…

Next to the sand area was a large white board area where the kids could paint on the walls and then they just washed the walls down for the next group. Here is Josh surveying his masterpiece and Ashleigh and Samantha painting.

I know I am seriously behind…. but I am starting to feel like I can get caught up a bit.

We went back to Statesboro after the rally. Easter weekend started out with a egg hunt at my in-laws on Saturday. Here is a picture of the kids running around looking for the hidden eggs.

My mother-in-law gave them each tags to wear for their age group and Josh got to start first followed by Timmy and then Samantha and then she gave them special prizes for gathering the most eggs in their age groups. After the hunt the kids played with their new toys and we had dinner with them. I also gave all of the boys a haircut that day so they would be trimmed up for Easter morning.

Easter morning came at the RV and the kids woke up to their baskets and another egg hunt. Here are their baskets this year.

They each got a book and a special toy along with the candy from the eggs. After the hunt we got everyone dressed and headed to church with my in-laws. Here is a picture of the kids before church.

The reason I mentioned the haircuts is that during Nathan’s trim I accidently cut a groove in his sideburn. Nobody would have noticed but it bothered him so Easter morning he shaved his beard off. This is only the third time in 11 years that I have seen his cheeks.

Misty started to get grumpy a couple of weeks ago and would just give us an occasional yip of that hurt, leave me alone. At the rally it was getting to the point that she was snipping more and would cry out in pain while she was getting up. We called her breeder to see what she thought and we found out that 3 of her siblings have auto immune issues so we were afraid that she might have something like that since she also has a problem with her breath getting bad within 6 months of a teeth cleaning.

We took her to our old vet in Pooler and she drew some blood. Upon physical exam all that she saw was some arthritis. Her blood turned out perfect and the vet gave us some medicine that would help with the pain and swelling from the arthritis. After two days she seems to be back to her old self. She is playing again and she hasn’t cried out at all in the last two days so I guess she is just dealing with arthritis. We are now trying to find someone who can clean her teeth. We wanted to get her the new vaccine that is supposed to help with bacteria in the mouth and I cannot find any vets in Savannah that have it. Our vet said she could get it for us but we would have to buy the whole tray of 25 shots and she will only need 2 shots. I called my brother and got the name of his vet in Atlanta. They have the vaccine so we can get the shot there but they want a lot more money to clean the teeth.

Our vet is already booked for surgeries next week so maybe I will call and see if they can just clean her teeth in Atlanta without doing all of the fluoride treatments and coating her teeth with extra. They said that we could just get the vaccine from them so if I can find someone to clean her teeth around here next week we will do that and then arrange for her to get the vaccine in Atlanta.

Other than that not much is happening. We are in Statesboro this week and next. We will spend Easter with Nathan’s parents. I did get rid of our old comforter yesterday. It was getting worn looking. I found a nice set on sale at JC Penneys. It wasn’t the color I would have chosen but I am stuck with the fabrics on my windows and headboard so this is what we found to go with them.

Well… now I am caught up. We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who this afternoon. It was a cute movie although Nathan felt it would have been better if it were only 30 minutes long. Tomorrow we will be doing an egg hunt at Nathan’s parents house and then Sunday we will celebrate Easter with them.

We decided now that we are fulltimers that we would have to do at least one rally to see what they were all about. This is The Rally and it is held once a year on alternating coasts. We checked in at 7:00 and parked. We were told that there were almost 4,000 RVs parked for the rally plus all of the ones that dealers brought for people to look at. Nathan took a picture on top of our roof overlooking our parking lot. We were in parking lot 2. There were 5 lots all together and ours was relatively small in comparison to lots 4 and 5.

I called my friend Claire who lives near Perry and she came and picked me up Friday night to go to dinner. She took me to an Indian restaurant where she knows the owners. One of her favorite belly dancers was dancing that night. Here is the dancer while she is dancing with fire.

After we were done with our dinner (which was delicious!) Claire got up and did some dancing with a lady that was sitting next to us. Apparently Claire does this often since she had her own jingly skirt and jingly head thing (she gave that to the other lady).

The next day I took the kids to a magic show that was at the youth center. Samantha was asked to come up and help with one of the tricks. Her brothers got up to help her as well.

One of the other things they had for the kids was a daily Oreo stacking contest. The kid and the teen who stacked the highest each won a $250 gift card to Target. They also raffled 4 bikes on the last day. Here are Samantha and Timmy stacking Oreos.

The second day while we were walking around you were supposed to look for a matching number from a number you were given while registering. Since we had 6 people with us, we had 6 numbers. Nathan and I were both walking around with 2 numbers each. We were talking about finding our matches and Nathan spotted one of mine. I walked with the lady to another area where you get either a hat or a tote for finding your match and then get to register for a drawing for gifts from Camping World. As I was walking back to Nathan I found my other match so I put in another entry. We finally found one of Nathan’s matches one hour before the drawing for the raffles and Nathan ended up being chosen for a $500 gift card from Camping World. I didn’t win anything.

We were going to stay until Tuesday morning but Misty was crying and was starting to get snippy so we left on Monday morning so we could get Misty to the vet.

Thursday was our last day of Disney so we went to Epcot. Timmy was in a mood and didn’t want to ride on any rides. I wanted to go on Spaceship Earth since I knew it was recently renovated and I haven’t been on it for years. I had to drag Timmy in and it ended up being his favorite ride. He kept wanting to go on it.

One of our first stops was the Living Seas which now starts with a Nemo ride in a clam shell to get you into the tanks. We went to the Turtle Talk with Crush and while waiting there are two tanks with stingrays. Timmy and Josh loved them. They kept coming up to the glass and moving across the glass. Here is a picture of Josh and one of Timmy watching the stingrays.

After that we went to the shark section which is just education about sharks and the kids decided they needed a picture inside of the shark’s mouth.

Upstairs there were manatees, dolphins and fish to look at. The kids decided to take a stop at one of the Kidcot stops and color sharks and dolphins to wear.

Next we had to go see Figment. It is Samantha’s favorite. Figment is a figment of imagination. He is a purple dragon and after the little ride the kids get to play with all kinds of things. Here is Samantha and Timmy conducting an orchestra. The machine picks up on their movements and plays music with them. The bigger the movements, the louder the music.

On another section they can make noises by running over lit boxes on the floor. Here are all three of them running around making noise.

We left relatively early in the day since we needed to drive back to GA to be in Perry early for check-in at the Rally. On the way out Nathan spotted a lizard and the kids decided it needed to be watched. You probably cannot see the lizard because it is in Timmy’s shadow.

The rest of the day was spent driving. We called ahead to find out if the Perry Walmart allowed overnight stays. It is listed as a yes, but I didn’t know if it would be a no because of the rally. The manager said it was okay and we pulled in around 11:00 alongside about 2 dozen RV’s and filled up on groceries.