Focht Family Blog

I managed to get a few pictures at the wedding and thought I would share them…

Here is my Aunt Beth with a family friend who came for the wedding. Beth is Brian’s mom and my dad’s sister. Both of my aunts are my dad’s sisters. My mom is an only child.

Here is a picture of mom. I am not sure why she looks so startled. We discovered a really good drink while at the wedding. The bartender mixed it up. It was cranberry juice, pineapple juice and vodka. I had the same without the vodka. I was driving and I sometimes get sick from alcohol and didn’t want to take the chance to get sick when I had to drive the next day.

Here is a picture of Brian’s wife, Erika, being walked down the aisle.

Here is a picture of Brian and Erika getting married.

My Aunt Sue and her husband James were being elusive. However, I managed to get a picture of them with Aunt Beth.

It was a beautiful wedding and I really enjoyed being able to see my aunts again. It has been quite a few years since I have seen Brian as well. The last time I saw Brian, Samantha was 2 years old.

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 Atlanta we drove back to Statesboro so mom could buy a truck. She bought a 2004 Ford F250 diesel that has 60K miles on it. It has a club cab so we can all fit in it. She has always felt bad that we didn’t have a vehicle to drive when we stopped places. We stayed in Statesboro for another week so that Nathan could order all of the pieces that he needed to put onto the truck to make it towable and also make it so it could hold a camper. That gave him time for the parts to get in and for him to go to his friend’s house where he works on the Jeeps and get them all installed.

During the time in Statesboro I ended up taking two trips to the emergency room for allergy attacks and went to just about every doctor known to man to figure out why I was all of a sudden having such a bad reaction. I thought it was from a new medicine but they seem to think it didn’t look like a reaction to medicine. They biopsied my skin and ended up putting me on a HIGH dose of prednisone for a couple of weeks. End result is that it was/is a reaction to something I have come into contact with but they don’t know what. The best guess is that this is a really bad spring season and the trees are trying to kill me. :)

During all of these reactions we took a week and drove down to Ocala to pick up mom’s trailer. It was all fixed up but needed a lot of WD40 to get into all of the locks from it sitting for a month. While in Ocala my mom and I stopped to see my grandfather at hospice. He seemed more alert to me than he did when we saw him last. He was suffering from pneumonia the last time we saw him and ended up at the hospital. He is now at hospice. He doesn’t have a feeding tube but is still eating pureed food. The Parkinson’s makes it extremely difficult for him to swallow. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to eat because he wasn’t eating much the day we were there. He used to love lemon meringue pie and I told him I would make him one if he would eat it so I went back to the RV and made him some little tarts and brought those back with some ice cream. His wife and her daughter said he ate all of them. They have his memorial service planned for the end of May but I am starting to wonder if he may be alive for his own service. :) I have tough grandpas.

My other grandpa was kicked out of hospice in Savannah and was sent back to a nursing home. They have now written him up in their journal as one of their success stories. When we stopped to see him before leaving for Florida we had to track him down because he is now spending his days wheeling around the hallways singing.

While in Florida we stayed in Tampa at Lazydays Rallypark. They had a nice pool that I took the kids to one day and they have free breakfast and lunch at the park Monday-Saturday so the kids got to ride their bikes everyday to get meals. I bought Josh a small bicycle while in Statesboro and once we got to Tampa he figured out right away how to ride it and now he is always wanting to ride bikes. Nathan and I spent his $500 gift card at Camping World while there as well. We bought 2 folding bikes with bags and a hitch that goes between the RV and the truck that holds the kid’s bikes. We are putting our bikes in the back seat of the truck while we are driving since they are folded in bags.

Mom had a chance to catch up with old friends while in Tampa. She spent the time we were there staying at her college roomates house. They went out to adult things like nice meals and shows. :) The day before we left mom and I drove to Orlando and attended the wedding of my cousin, Brian. It was a nice wedding held lakeside with a beach atmosphere. There was a luah theme to it including a show during the reception. It was nice to see both of my aunts in one place and get to visit with them without having to worry what the kids were up to. Nathan stayed in Tampa with them. The only bad part of the evening was that we got home at midnight and were up at 7:00 the next morning to get everything ready for a long day on the road. We took turns driving because we had to drive the RV pulling the trailer and someone else had to drive the truck separately. It was a tiring day but we made it back to Atlanta in one day.

We are now in Stone Mountain. Mom traded the trailer in for her truck camper on Tuesday and she has spent the week getting everything settled inside. She had to throw out a few more things and she says that the truck camper will keep her in good shape because she has to climb to get to everything in it. Punch has a new bed in the aisle by the door so she can sleep on somewhere soft because she cannot get up on anything either. I need to go out and walk Misty in a minute and while I am out there I will walk to mom’s site and take some pictures so I can show what is now going to be pulled behind us. I will have to wait until we get to a large parking lot so I can update the picture on the front of the blog to show the truck behind us.

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.