Forms :: Use The Focus Events Of The Combobox's To Determine?

I have two questions for anyone who can throw some idea's my way question 1:I am currently working on a control with three combo box's. This control will be nested on a form, and I want the on-board timer to track how long each control is active. I am trying to use the focus events of the combobox's to determine if the control is active so the program will know when the timer should be started and stopped. My problem is, for example, when the user causes the text property of the combo boxes to change, the folowing code runs:

[Code]...

As you can see, there are points in this sub-routine that can cause the focus to shift, as well as fire the text changed event. While this all happens faster than is really noticable, I would like to eliminate the extra cycles if at all possible. As I mentioned in question one, I am adding this control to a form, to be more clear I am adding multiple instances of this control to a single form, and I am trying to use the focus events to determine which of the controls within the form are active; however, when the form itself is no longer the active application, whether it is minimized, behind another application or otherwise, all of the timers stop. I want whichever control was active at the time that the form was deactivated, to continue as if nothing changed.