Focht Family Blog

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.

We stayed at some pretty campgrounds on this part of the trip so I thought I would share a few pictures. The first two are of the campground in Minnesota, Dakotah Meadows. It is at an Indian Casino.

After leaving Minnesota we spent a week in Iowa at a nice campground on the river called Upper Iowa Resort and Rentals. They are directly on the Upper Iowa River and they are nestled in a valley so this was truly camping. We had no cell phones, no internet, very little satellite TV and no antennae TV. It was a very nice, quiet campground and we caught up on a lot of reading. We also finished school and started our book burnings. Here is a view of the river across from our site.

We found some interesting animal tracks by a fallen tree at the edge of the river. Not sure what made them, though.

Samantha decided it was very interesting that the flowers that grew by the river were much bigger then the flowers growing by the campsites. Here is Samantha showing the difference and then a picture of all three of the children with the flowers.

Since we finished Mall of America in one day we decided to check out the Science Museum with the kids the next day. Here is a part where they get to pretend they are on TV. Timmy is behind Samantha and Josh being silly.

There was a large section about world health and the body systems. Here is Samantha examining a patient.

Joshua decided he would rather discuss the world’s health problems over the phone.

Samantha was old enough that she was able to do some experiments on her own body. She was able to swab her cheek and examine the cells under a microscope.

Later the children talked grandma into sitting down and playing with puzzles with them.

The relaxation didn’t last long. Soon, Timmy found a section with dinosaurs that had a head that you could move the jaw on. Here is Timmy trying to get the jaw to open and close.

Next the children found a section that had to do with weather. They got a little carried away with the wind machine.

They ended their visit with some more puzzles with daddy and grandma.

After leaving Branson, we drove with Nathan’s parents to Minnesota so we could go to the Mall of America. We were concerned that two days would not be enough to properly do Mall of America but we managed to walk the whole mall in one day. Here are the kids when we started the day..

Here is a picture of the amusement park that is in the middle of the mall. We did not go on any of the rides.

At one point, Nathan’s mom took Samantha and Timmy into a game store to buy a game and my mom and Josh were watching the elevators going up and down while sharing a shake.

Samantha and Timmy discovered a wall of water by one of the elevators.

Needless to say, by the end of the day most of us felt like Josh did….

However, Nathan and I both made discoveries that we ended up having to go back to Mall of America to get more of before leaving Minnesota. Nathan’s discovery was chocolate covered raspberries from Godiva and I discovered some amazing apples from Rocky Mountain Candy Company. They all started out as caramel covered and then were dipped into different combinations.

While in Branson we didn’t do much. Mostly we stayed at camp and got caught up with schoolwork and cleaning. We went there because Nathan’s parents were going through. They went to a bunch of shows. Mom went to Andy Williams with them on one of the nights.

The one thing we did do was take a ride on the Branson Scenic Railway.

We rode the whole way in one of the cars that has the windows surrounding it. Here is a view out of one of the windows.

We bought the kids some snacks to eat while on the train and they got a little bit messy with crumbs. Mom volunteered to clean it so the people working on the train didn’t have to clean so hard. They decided to put her to work.

Downstairs they had a small room that had a toy train set up for the kids to play with. While downstairs playing one of the conductors came down to talk to us and the kids took turns trying on his hat. Here is Samantha, Timmy and Josh in the hat as well as a picture of all of them playing with the train set.