Decker/Drake/Frink Family Reunion

The annual Decker/Drake/Frink reunion was held today at the Community Park in Clarence. Unfortunately, no Drakes were present this year, but the Decker and Frink blood lines were both well represented. We had a wonderful time getting reacquainted, and as always, the food we all brought to share was wonderful. There were all kinds of great-tasting casseroles, German potato salad, home-grown tomatoes, breads, and other yummy things. The desserts were especially tasty this year, including fresh peach pie and a raisin pie to die for. Phyllis gave us orders to go back at least two extra times to refill our plates. I must admit that I complied.

We all agreed that we want to work hard through this next year to set the schedule for next year's reunion and to advise everyone early enough to get even more family to come in 2007. So those of you who are reading this, please watch your mail for details about next year.

Above is a picture of everyone who attended--Uncle Ed and Aunt Irene, Bob and Phyllis Hunwardsen, their daughter Lynn and her family, Kathie and I, and all the children of Bob and Anita Decker and their families. Other miscellaneous photos are attached here as well.

Canadian Pacific Train

Here is my new toy--an O guage Lionel train modeled on the Canadian Pacific SD90MAC engine and a set of CP cars. I found the hobby electric train store to end all hobby electric train stores here in Florida. Got some extra track and switches too. Am beginning to think about layouts, scenery, and other playing. Stand back, Henry! You and Grandpa are going to have some fun now!!!

Ohio and the South

As you may know, we have been traveling by car recently. Our first stop was Troy, Ohio, where we visited Paula, Ron, and Zipper. Zipper is turning out to be a pretty sweet dog. She has her first official haircut now in the style of the breed (Soft Coated Wheaton Terrier). However, she is still very much a puppy and wants to play nearly all the time. We have Josey with us, and she had a bit of a difficult time tolerating all the puppy playfulness. We have not seen so much teeth-baring and snapping impatience ever before. Maybe they will become friends sometime in the future. Zipper is a great friend for Paula and Ron, as you can tell from these photos. We had a great time playing cards, playing Perudo, seeing a couple of movies (including Pirates of the Caribbean, which actually includes a scene of pirates playing Perudo), eating Paula's great cooking, and visiting.


While there, Paula was using her cutting board--the one shaped like a pig that Robbie made for her (with a little help). Aunt Paula commented how much she likes the board and how she always thinks of Robbie when she uses it.

Our two-day trip to Florida from Ohio included a stop overnight near Atlanta. In Acworth, Georgia, just north of Atlanta, we stopped to see Kathie's relatives David and Vi. Their daughter Lori, son-in-law Tim, and children Brennan and Amanda also joined us. David and Vi prepared a wonderful barbecued chicken dinner, and we enjoyed visiting and seeing their home nestled in the Georgia pines.


On the day between Atlanta and Clearwater, Florida, we passed numerous signs for Georgia peaches, which are in season. We were finally unable to resist and pulled off to visit the Lane Packing Company, which offered fresh peaches in about every form imaginable. We sampled the peach cobbler with ice cream and a peach fritter, and of course we had to purchase a quantity of fresh peaches to take to Florida. We have been enjoying them thoroughly, while here in Florida, although I have to admit that I prefer fresh Colorado peaches, which I have frequently been able to buy when in Snowmass in August for professional meetings. Fresh peaches are probably my favorite fruit. Yum!!!!

It has been quite hot and very humid, but then what's new? Maybe more humidity here!! We have been helping Kathie's Mom with some home maintenance projects, usually early before it gets way too warm, and two evenings ago we attended a Florida State League baseball game (class A minor league) between the Tampa Bay Yankees and the Clearwater Threshers. Today, Mom treated us to a most amazing exhibit called Bodies--the Exhibition. (Note, the hot link I put here. Do yourself a favor. Go examine the Bodies web site!) This was simply amazing--an exhibit of at least 16 actual human bodies and many separate body parts, prepared with a special anatomical process, and presented in a very fascinating way to let you marvel and learn. I was blown away and highly recommend a visit to one of the exhibits that is around the country if you are ever in the vicinity. I don't know if they are traveling or not, but you can probably get more information here.

Animal House

We are watching Animal House, and, of course, this leads to lots of reminiscing about dead horses, togas, fraternity initiations, golf balls, mashed potatoes and zits, ladders, and on and on. Among other things, the song "Louie, Louie" brings up lots of memories and lends itself to some serious lyrics research. I found this definitive (?) source on the words to this great tune. I especially urge you to check out the link on this page to "The only REAL lyrics." There will be a quiz.

Whole Again

Let's hope that these all too frequent entries about the garage are over. All fixed again and back to normal, except that this time we need to add some stain. That's OK. With the new deck color, we were planning to restain the house and garage anyway.

Stensvaag Visit

John-Mark and Nancy Stensvaag have been visiting us here at the lake the past few days. We have spent lots of time on our porch eating meals and playing games. Among other things, we finished a picture puzzle, played horseshoes, took a boat ride, played Hand-and-Foot (and several other card games), played Monster Bash (pinball), listened to recordings of Garrison Keilor stories from Lake Wobegon, shared lots of news with each other, and generally enjoyed the peacefulness of this getaway of ours. It is a special privilege and joy to be able to share this place with such good friends. We will be very sorry to see them leave.

P.S. No, my head has not swelled up (any more than usual)--I used my wide-angle lens, and this is the price I pay for not framing the shot well.

Card Flinging

Here is a belated posting, which you can tell by looking at the condition of the deck. This all took place last week prior to power washing, sanding, and staining.

Kathie decided we needed a new game. Late afternoon libations may have had something to do with this. The game is card flinging, and it is actually quite complicated. Some of the rules include: pursed lips is a requirement, one point for each card that successfully reaches the basket, elbows must be kept on the arms of the chair at all times, cards that fall through the cracks to the deck below result in a penalty point and mandatory retrieval by the offending flinger, and tough luck if natural hazards (such as dogs) pass through your line of play unexpectedly.

Decked Out

Here is the deck with new stain on it. You earlier saw the cleaned and sanded version of the deck awaiting this staining step. I estimate we spent close to 24 hours total on the whole process. Eventually, we will do the house, lower deck, and dock steps in the same stain color. The color is probably a bit more red-brown that it appears in these photos. For those of you who remember Lincoln Logs (in their new condition), that is the right color to imagine.


P.S. No further cases of trees falling on the garage to report.

Tree Magnet

Very high winds this morning at 5:30 AM for about an hour. All the trees in the woods were waving like blades of grass. Scary. The tree magnet managed to pull another one in its direction. Unbelievable. Two weeks. Two trees. Two repair jobs. Lots of branches and twigs down all around the house, but no other damage.

Deck Dealings

It's a bit like that Alka Seltzer commercial, "I can't believe we cleaned the whole thing. I can't believe we cleaned the whole thing." But we did! We had been concerned about the condition of our deck for some time. Most of the stain or whatever finish was on it wasn't on it anymore. The contractor admitted at one point that they probably needed to use a different product in the future. Anyway, Kathie discovered that our power washer would lift almost all of it off, so she and I took turns painstakingly cleaning it. Then we went back over the entire thing with an electric sander to get off stubborn spots and to even it all up. This morning, we are going to buy several gallons of stain and then, when it is cool enough, refinish the deck. It should look really good when we are done, and we hope it will last awhile longer. We need to restain the house too soon, and the lower deck, and the dock steps. But, that will have to be another day and another trip up here. We did clean and restain the steps on the woods side of the house during our last visit--not as perfect a job, but we are learning, and they look better!!

Oh, just in case anyone forgot what it looks like from the deck, here is another shot. It has been really, really hot up here and very dry. If we weren't watering the lawn and flowers occasionally, it would surely be completely brown back here.

Happenings at Home2

They don't mess around up here in WI! Two days after the tree fell on the garage, everything is fixed and back to normal. It helps that we know the young man who built the garage in the first place (and who also finished our lower level). He has been terrific for us to work with, both this year and last. We also had a number of trees removed around the garage to significantly reduce the chances of this happening for a third time. (Those of you who remember will know that we had a tree fall on the garage last year too--also in July!)


One small project we completed was to remove part of an old tree stump and then round off the berm that borders part of the lake side of the home. We put our fire ring there too, and so the yard now looks all groomed and tidy. Thought you might like to see some of Kathie's flowers too.



Readers will remember our first installment on the new bird feeder arrangement, those rascally squirrels, and their constant consumption of the bird seed. We reported at that time that we had a new baffle to install, and so here it is in place. So far, it seems to be slowing the squirrels significantly. One was at the feeder this morning, but we think he/she jumped there from one of the neighboring trees. Josey gave him/her a piece of her mind and a serious chasing. Maybe that will suffice while we are here.


Evidently, we are to be blessed with the presence of yellow and black birds wherever we are--Iowa's Goldfinches at home and these wonderful Evening Grosbeaks here in WI. The Evening Grosbeak is quite a bit bigger than the Goldfinch. A pair has been feeding here all day along with two of its young, who would seem to be large enough now to feed themselves (and do) but who also pester Mom and Dad Grosbeak to feed them. It is funny to watch, because the "babies" are almost the same size as the adults.

If a tree falls in the woods...

Oops!! For the second year in a row, we have had a tree fall on a structure on our property. Kathie and I were on the lake side of our home and heard a loud crash. At first, I thought it came from a neighbor's property just down the shore. However, Kathie wondered if a tree might have fallen, since she had heard one near the driveway creaking and cracking earlier in the day. So, we headed around the house and down the drive to find the extremely disappointing situation pictured here. I had just had two other trees removed*, so now I'm kicking myself for not having asked to have this one removed too, although we really had no clear indication that we were in danger of it falling. I don't know if it might have been weakened in last year's storm, or if, instead, it was just this tree's "time." As you can see, it did quite a bit of damage to the roof of the garage, although you can see that it missed the trusses. So, tomorrow, there will be phone calls to the insurance company, the tree removal man, and the young man who built the garage for us. At this point, I'm inclined to give the axe to any tree with suspicious leanings toward the garage or house. These "popples" (as they call them here) get to be very, very tall, and I'm told that they tend to break like this one did about eight to twelve feet up.

* The trees we had removed were also popples. One was near the parking area near the house. It tended to lean toward the house and also was frequently backed into by persons trying to turn around to leave. The second was one that was leaning badly after last year's storm. It was near the steps leading down to the dock. The view on the lake side is improved with this obviously damaged tree out of the picture.

Back to Home2

We're back in WI at Home2. This afternoon, we paddled our canoe upriver from our home. The area is beautiful there--no development, quiet, isolated, and nestled in the National Forest. The river was very rocky and got more and more shallow as we moved further upstream. It might be possible, if the water was a bit higher, to make it all the way up to a smaller connected lake, but we didn't try that this time. There were some wild roses along the way--a special treat for we Iowans, where that particular blossom is our state flower. We plan to do a trip into the BWCA in late August, and we would like to take Josey along. We aren't sure how she will behave in a canoe, where we really need for her to sit still, so sometime in the next few days, we are going to try taking her out with us to see what happens. I don't think I'll have my camera along for that outing.


Last time we were here, we started another project to improve the steps down to the dock. We wanted some way to step off the steps onto the shore. Here you can see what we came up with, along with some flowers that Kathie planted adjacent to the deck. The bench we bought to dress it up works pretty well, but we may need to add a railing, since the front part of the deck still sits up pretty high. It's a start though. What do you think?



Finally, this evening, we were treated to a spectacular arrangement of clouds, reflected sunlight, moon, and a reflection of the entire configuration in the lake. I took lots of pictures trying to get just the right one. This one turned out fairly well, I think.

Field of Dreams

My daughter (you know, Henry's mom) has already published a blog entry about the "Field of Dreams" that my sister made for me for my birthday. Paula really knew how to get to me by giving me something that I could use to play with Henry. The "farm" is a big square of green felt onto which Paula sowed a number of "fields", each one different in some way. One is dark brown felt and looks like newly plowed ground. Two of them have dark green fringe in rows that you can brush up to look like standing rows of crops. Others have rows of other kinds that could be any crop you might want to imagine. The companion lunch box (more on that in a minute) is full of farm animals, all of which Henry knew, including proper sounds. There are little fences that you can set up, so we corraled the cows and calves in one, sheep and lambs in another, and horses and colts in a third. Then we took the corn kernels that Paula provided and "fed" the animals, which Henry seemed immediately to catch onto. I got out my little John Deere toy tractor to add to the fun. I imagine there will be other farm implements in time. I definitely need to take Henry to one of the local implement dealers with me so that we can buy a combine, a wagon, or something else.

The lunch box was one that my Dad used when he retired from the farm (in about 1976, as I recall). He and Mom built a new house in Clarence, and Dad went to work for Bob Hunwardsen (niece Phyllis's husband) doing construction work. So Dad took his lunch to work each day. I didn't know Paula had the lunchbox. She painted some cute labels on it, including two I especially like, "Oh Boy!" and "Grandpa Came to Play."

When we were downtown for JazzFest, we went for a little walk around the Pentacrest and took a number of pictures. Here is one of me and Henry near MacLean Hall, where I worked in Computer Science for many years and where I studied mathematics and computer science as a student. Maybe that bright little grandson of mine picked up a few extra math, statistics, and/or computer science vibes that will inspire his career choices. Maybe he will be a high paid actuary or a cryptanalyst for the NSA (or maybe not).

Summer Music Outings

The last few afternoons and evenings have been devoted to music in outdoor venues. John-Mark and Nancy Stensvaag invited us to join them for an evening at Brucemore in Cedar Rapids, where a performance of HMS Pinafore was being presented. We took sandwiches, snacks, and wine with us and thoroughly enjoyed the cool evening, music, and conversation. We definitely need to return to visit the Brucemore Mansion on another occasion.



The annual Jazzfest was held in Iowa City over the weekend, so we had a chance to enjoy music on the Pentacrest the last two days. The time was extra special because Pete, Betsy, and Henry were also here to take in the event. Henry decided I should try on his hat, which I'm sure you will agree looks special on me. Then you can also see what Henry thought of the look.



Here is another of him grooving to the music. He definitely has picked up the music genes. He rarely holds still when there is music, and he has some definite "moves" all his own.

Finally, before he left this morning from our house, Grandma Kathie and Henry went stomping through the puddles on our driveway from an early morning rain. Here's the boy contemplating the next stomp. Sorry, but I didn't get any shots of the actual splashing.