Focht Family Blog

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 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.

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.

Tuesday was our busy day. Nathan and I got up early and went on an off-road Segway tour around Fort Wilderness. It was SO much fun. I told mom I would take her on the Segway tour of Epcot on our next trip to Disney. Here is a spot that we stopped for pictures. The tour guide took a picture of Nathan and I on our Segways.

After we got back from our tour we made lunch and started to get ready for the Princess and Pirate night at the Kingdom. We arrived early at the park and we had four or five families ask to have pictures with us. They thought we worked for the park. One of the employees near the Pirates of the Caribbean ride offered to take a picture of all of us. Samantha wanted to be a princess so she was our prisoner for the night. We even bought her a pair of shackles to wear.

We were able to catch one of the special shows before dinner. Samantha and Josh took it as an opportunity to dance to the music.

We were also able to ride the carousel. We found out a tidbit of trivia on our tour and we were told which horse is Cinderella’s. We hunted for it and Samantha was able to ride on it. It has a gold ribbon wrapped around its tail.

Here are Nathan and Josh on their horses…

Timmy was next to me so I couldn’t get him and his horse but here is Timmy….

Next we went to the castle to have dinner with Cinderella. At lunch all of the princesses come and visit you so I was expecting the same. You still get your picture with Cinderella before dinner but the only characters at dinner were the Fairy Godmother and a couple of the mice and they didn’t personally greet each table. I would do lunch again but the dinner wasn’t worth the cost. It was wonderful food but you pay extra for the characters and the pictures and that part was not worth it. Here is a picture of Josh. On his left cheek you can see a red mark. He was kissed by Cinderella and it is her lipstick…

Timmy was being very grumpy while we were waiting in line for our pictures. He wouldn’t cheer up for the picture so this is the memory he will have of dinner with Cinderella…

Oh well… he cheered up once we were called for dinner because he received a sword. Both boys got a sword and Samantha got a wand. After dinner we walked around to all of the treasure spots and ended up with LOTS of beads. It looked like we had been to Mardi Gras. We caught a few shows, including one where they teach the kids how to be Princess Jasmine’s guards. The man in charge yelled that they forgot the swords for the demonstration and Joshua threw his in. He was trying to be helpful and the guy took it well and joked about it. However, the Disney employees who were trying to make sure the kids didn’t cross the rope line were annoyed.

While we were walking towards one of the treasure spots we crossed over the path where the parade was getting ready to start. One of the employees was sitting in the middle of the road so my family joined her and waved at the crowd…

The kids enjoyed being on display… we stuck around until the fireworks started going off and then we called it a night.

The next day was spent at Independence RV in Winter Garden. They were able to repair the short that caused the fire and replaced the headlight. Mom and I walked the kids down the road to a local diner for breakfast while Nathan stayed with Misty. We had lunch from a nice lunch truck that stopped at the RV center. I had a wonderful empanada and Nathan had some lasagna. Unfortunately the truck didn’t have anything the kids liked so they basically had chips and soda. After lunch we asked if it would be okay if the kids and I stayed in the coach if we stayed in the back so we spent the afternoon watching videos in the back of the coach where we were out of their way but the kids were at least able to play with their toys and stay out of trouble.

When we got back to Fort Wilderness, Nathan had to take a phone call outside. Josh is getting to the stage where he likes to imitate Nathan so he took his toy phone outside and followed Nathan around. We couldn’t help getting pictures because he was doing such a great job matching Nathan stride for stride and movement for movement.