Focht Family Blog

Okay… I was having an off day. Cold Hollow wasn’t pressing today so all we could do was look at the machinery and watch a video of what happens to make cider and spend LOTS of money. Their cider donuts were featured in Gourmet magazine as one of the best 4 donuts in the country. They were very good as was the cider.

On to Ben & Jerry’s… as soon as we got out of the RV the kids spotted cows!!

Here is a picture of the milk, cream, and sugar on the way in…

Once starting the tour you are lead to a room where you watch a short film about the start of the company. Here is a picture of the room…

After the film I wasn’t allowed to take pictures! :( But… they show you the process of how they mix the ingredients into the ice cream. And then you go to the tasting room where you get a big scoop of ice cream. Today was a triple caramel ice cream that is a new flavor. Everyone liked it but after eating it I didn’t have any room for more ice cream. :)

As we left the tour there was a lid that you could pose in. Here is Nathan and Samantha posing…

Of course we didn’t realize that there was a fire until we started walking back to the RV. There were 4 firetrucks at the back of the building. Here they are trying to put out whatever was on fire. Nathan thought it looked like the trash compactor…

Before going to the RV we headed to the Flavor Graveyard to see the headstones of flavors that have been discontinued. Here is my favorite headstone…

It says… “Fresh picked peaches trucked from Georgia tasted great but didn’t last, ‘Cause Georgia’s quite a-ways away & trucks don’t go that fast.”

Here is the ice cream RV. The original one burnt to the ground. I tried to talk the kids into trading RVs but they didn’t like that idea…

Well…. I didn’t read the website very well. It turns out that the cafe is only open at 8:30 in the summer season which doesn’t start until July and the first tour doesn’t start until 10:00. Since we were up and had a long list of places we wanted to go, we decided to just create bears when the store opened at 9:00 and skipped the tour. Here is my mom with the kids on the way in….

Here are the kids kissing the hearts that go into the bears…

Here is Timmy filling his dino….

Joshua chose a light blue teddy bear but was shy about pushing the pedal so I had to push it for him so I didn’t get pictures of him. Here is Samantha stuffing her pink bear…

My mom decided to pick out teddy bears for my neices. Here is Joshua helping to stuff the bear for Ashleigh…

And here is Timmy helping to stuff Meghan’s bear…

On Sunday we left our camp and spent a couple of days with Nathan’s parents at their camp. On Tuesday we left and drove from upstate New York to Vermont. Here is a picture of one of the beautiful rivers we crossed over….

And another of Lake Champlain as we crossed over into Vermont…

Tonight we are sitting outside of the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Tomorrow we have a long day of tours planned. We are starting out with the teddy bears, then heading to Cold Hollow Cider Mill, then to Ben & Jerry’s (I am hoping that I like the flavor they are giving out tomorrow), then to Cabot Creamery. After all of the tours we will be heading to Manchester, NH so that we will be near to one of my Garnet friend’s houses. She has generously offered to teach Samantha about horses and let her help with the morning chores on Thursday so she can earn her horse badges. :)

I have been having so much fun watching Tinkerbell and Dory playing lately. Their favorite game is steal the bone. It doesn’t matter how many bones are out, they both want the bone the other has. :)

Here is a picture of them wrestling together…

Here is my favorite picture. Dory decided to go into Tinkerbell’s crate (relatively small) to steal a toy. Tinkerbell followed her in. I am still not sure how both of their bodies were in there or how they got back out without us having to take apart the crate. :)

When we bought our first mastiff, Grendel, Nathan used to let him sit in his lap. I have this same picture with Grendel somewhere. Here is Nathan and Dory….

And another of Dory being a typical mastiff…

And the last one of the dogs… Today while driving the dogs decided to curl up together by the front seats…

Nathan’s older sister Vicki graduated this year with a Masters. Nathan’s parents were throwing her a party the same weekend that Samantha and her cousin Alex were camping for Girl Scouts. So we checked into the KOA where the Girl Scouts were camping and got Samantha settled and we drove to Vicki’s graduation party with the boys. Here is a picture of Vicki with her cake…

Here are some pictures of Timmy and Josh playing on the playground before the party….