Focht Family Blog

I took SO many pictures this trip that I decided I will make the Stone Mountain trip 5 posts! We got to the campground late on Friday night. Saturday morning we got up and decided that since we were going to the lights that night anyway we would just drive the RV to the park. They took a picture of our whole group before getting on the sky-ride that takes you to the top of the mountain. I tried to put everyone’s name on the picture but it is my mom, Nathan’s parents, Nathan’s sister and one of her friends with us.

On the way up the sky-ride the man driving told us that we could ride back down or that there was a 1.3 mile walk down the other side of the mountain. The kids thought that sounded like fun. We walked around the top for a little bit. Here are some pictures of Nathan with Samantha and Timmy (Josh was on my shoulders), Nathan’s parents, both of our moms, and a picture of a church in the middle of the trees that I thought was pretty.

Next, Christina and her friend Bridgette joined us for the walk down the mountain.

More to follow in next post…..

I got yelled at because I haven’t been updating our blog. :)

So… not too much to share. Samantha and I are catching up with school work. My mom has Timmy reading the Jane and Dick books. Joshua is still trouble. We have them all in swim classes. They are all enjoying them although they only have one class left.

My mom ended up in the local hospital for two days on IV antibiotics. She had been having stomach pains but was trying to ignore them because she had a visit with the gastroenterologist coming up. She finally decided to go to the ER when the pains started causing her to throw up. Ends up she had diverticulitis and her white blood count was very high from the infection so they felt it would be better for her to get the antibiotics in IVs for 48 hours. She is now out but still has to be on the antibiotics orally for 2 weeks. She is ready for them to be done.

For some weird reason I have started having symptoms of hypoglycemia. Unfortunately no matter how careful I am with my eating, food seems to be an enemy right now. No matter what I eat, it causes me to get dizzy. Now I am having bad headaches. I went to the ER a couple of days ago and they said all my blood was normal and sent me on my way. I have an appointment with a doctor today but I am sure they will do the same.

We are supposed to leave Friday for a short trip. We are going to Stone Mountain for the weekend with Nathan’s parents to do a Christmas thing. We usually go to Calloway, but the displays have been the same for the last few years so we decided to try something different. We are also going to try to drive through the light displays at Lake Lanier while we are up there. Then we will visit my brother Sunday-Wednesday and then we will be back in Statesboro for Thanksgiving.

I will take some pictures while we are at Stone Mountain so I can update again. :)

We decided to pick a halfway point for our travels from Indiana to North Carolina so we stayed a couple of nights in Berea, Kentucky. it is about 20 miles from my Aunt Beth. We got into town late on Friday so on Saturday we went into town and had lunch at a very nice restaurant called Boone Tavern and then we went in search of a laundromat and a Walmart. After doing the laundry and restocking the groceries we traveled to my Aunt’s house. My Aunt works in the International Affairs office at the local college and she has two borders living with her. One is from China and one is from Ireland. They were both very nice. We had dinner with them and then went back to the campground. We left relatively early on Sunday and traveled to Boone, North Carolina where we checked into the local KOA. We will be here until Wednesday. I will try to update if we do anything while in Boone.

Thursday we picked up Aunt Sue and headed to the Cleveland Zoo. Timmy wanted to see the sharks so the first thing we did was walk up a very long high hill to where the sharks were. We found out later there was a shorter not so steep path that we could have taken but I guess we got our exercise.

The sharks are also in with the primates and the cats. I couldn’t get any pictures of the sharks but I took a picture of a cute lemur.

When we started walking back down the hill we went past the gorillas.

Next we went to the Australian section. They had kangaroos, koalas, wallabys, wallaroos. They also had a train ride through this section that we took. Here is a picture of the kids trying on kangaroo ears, a picture of me with the kids on a termite hill and a picture of a koala.

Next we wandered around. We had some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (yum) and looked at more of the animals. We found a pool that had a hippo in it. We waited until she surfaced and I got a picture of her head sticking out of the water. They have a section where you can ride camels but they were during season only so we found the camels in a different section.

Some of the animals were not on exhibit because they have torn down a bridge that travels over the zoo. They are in the process of removing the rest of the bridge and starting construction of a new bridge. I took some pictures of the debris and the polar bears that were still out in this area. They had two beautiful wolves near this area as well but due to glare off the windows I couldn’t get a good picture of them. I asked about the wolves and they said they wouldn’t be adding to the pack until the construction was over because it is stressing a lot of the animals.

Towards the end of the visit we found some monkeys to watch. While we were there we saw a monkey on a bench that scared me. It was a statue but it looked so real that I thought one of the monkeys had gotten loose. We took some pictures with the statue and the kids. At the end when we were heading back to the car I finally got a picture of my Aunt Sue while she was carrying Josh to the car.

We have been enjoying Cleveland. We checked into Jellystone during the weekend because they still had activities this last weekend. It has been pretty dead around here since Monday because it is past season. They actually close in another week or so. On Saturday we went trick-or-treating after going to a costume contest. I couldn’t talk Nathan into dressing up but here is a picture of me and the kids.

After we got back to the RV I made stuffed shells for Timmy and we invited my Aunt Sue and Uncle James to join us. We had a wonderful dinner complete with a salad fresh from Sue’s garden. After dinner Nathan put up a sheet and played Happy Feet on the projector. By the time it was done we had kids from 3 surrounding camp sites watching with us. On Sunday we tried to do all of the activities they had. We took the kids to paint ceramics. Here is a picture of Samantha and Timmy with their finished artwork and a picture of Josh that shows where most of his paint ended up.

On Sunday evening my Aunt Sue brought us her car so we could use it for the week. Tuesday night we went out to Sue and James’ house for dinner. Before dinner we met James at the Cleveland Clinic where he works and got a tour of the Prosthetic/Orthotic Department. The kids thought the legs and arms were pretty cool. Nathan’s engineering side enjoyed trying out the machanics of the arms and I enjoyed it because it reminded me of a lot of the Biology classes I took in college. I think the only part that bothered me was seeing the casts for children’s legs and torsos. It makes me realize how lucky we are to not have to deal with anything major with our children. With Josh the absolute worse case scenario would only be him being blind in one eye, which I feel is extremely minor! :)

Wednesday we took Nathan to the airport to fly to Baltimore and then we went to the Children’s Museum. It was very interactive and the kids had a lot of fun. There was a play town where Samantha enjoyed the nursery. She also found an area where she could do a weather forecast on TV.

As always the boys love anything where they can splash in water and play.

The kids also found an area by the water that looked liked waves that you could climb up. The boys didn’t go too far up but Samantha made it to the top.

We finished off the day with an art class where the kids got to paint. Joshua needed a little help so grandma helped him create his masterpiece.

Tomorrow we are picking up Aunt Sue and we are going to the zoo. I will try to post pictures tomorrow night.