Joaquin and Leticia

Here are photos of Joaquin and his fiancee, Leticia, during their visit to Webster last summer.
Joaquin stayed with us two summers as a young lad, and Bernard stayed with Joaquin's family in Zaragosa, Spain as a sophomore in high school. Or thereabouts. Joaquin will always be a member of the family. Joaquin is now a Process Engineer for Procter and Gamble and lives in Italy. If you ask him what he does at work, he'll reply "I make diapers".

Still pawing through the old photo albums and digging-up tidbits. There just ain't enough hours in a day to service all these actives. I did run across this photo (circa 1989) of that trip to the Anza Borrego Desert. We were testing out the new VW Westfalia, camper van. It was a neat machine with a pop-up tent for overhead bunking, a two burner stove, refrigerator, etc. The only thing it didn't have was a potty... no problem when you got boys. (... is this learned behavior or what?!) Nothing wrong with watering a manzanita bush, though. We were just thinking green, right? #5

The girls have it 2 to 1.

Just a little update... Jackie is officially 20 weeks pregnant today (March 11th). So, halfway there. We found out last Monday that it's a girl. Fortunately our neighbor just 2 doors down (that is due the day after Jackie) is also having a girl. Another 2 ladies in the neighborhood are due soon and we're crossing our fingers that they all have girls, so that ours will have plenty of friends (and noone for me to chase around in another 15 years or so).





Also, we're working on the baby room. Without exaggeration, we've tried 11 different colors of green... but I think we're almost there (still in some disagreement).




Til the next update.... Bernie, Jackie and 10oz-er

Coming to you live from Kenmore NY...

Hello everyone. I feel bad that I've never written in the paper version of the family letter and am only now making my first post. I hope the Decker Blog lives on for a long time. So, here goes nothing…

I'd first like to say I enjoy the photos that everyone has been posting. I would love to post some photos of my own, but unfortunately my laptop was stolen. Apparently the town of Kenmore is not as safe as I first thought…while Kari and I were at work, someone broke into our house and stole our brand new laptop, our camera, a bottle of Tanqueray (a delicious bottle of gin that Bernie gave me for a gift) and a bottle of grape vodka. I'm upset about the computer because of the sensitive personal information that we had on it, the thousands of pictures we have on it…and of course the thousands of illegally pirated music (on the brightside I guess the FBI won't be knocking on my door anytime soon). I'm also pretty angry that my wife is afraid to be in her own home sometimes. I'm sure it was just some young misguided youth and not some dangerous heroine addict that broke in.

The picture I am posting, which was taken the other day, is of the bar that I just completed. Bernie helped me out a great deal…the box molding was his idea. Apparently Grandpa's woodworking gene has hit many of the Decker clan…Uncle Martin, Uncle Larry, Uncle Joe and Bernie to say the least. I built the frame of the bar two summers ago, and finally began work on it again last November. Bernie came up from Rochester to help, and the first thing we did was take apart everything that I had worked on the prior year. You'd think building your own bar would be cheap, but if I were to total up all the receipts, I bet it was much more than going out and buying one from the store. Not to mention the $214 I spent on liquor on Saturday, and the $175 I spent on the mini-fridge yesterday.

Saturday is our 4th annual St. Patty's day party. We expect about 40 - 50 people in our small 1,500 sq foot house, but it should be good times. The bar will come in handy for the party. I'm looking forward to playing some beer pong and drinking Irish car bombs…it's the one day of the year that I pretend I'm in college still.

I was reading Uncle John's post the other day and laughed out loud when I saw the picture of Jordan in the ghost buster's t-shirt. I was wearing a ghost buster's t-shirt myself when I read his post. You would not believe the awesome t-shirts you can buy from Target…Wheaties, Transformers, and Ghostbusters to name a few.

Well, my post is getting too long… I'm sure people have stopped reading many paragraphs ago. There is much more to write, but I'll save it to another day. I like how when everyone signs off, they give the # that represents them and not their name. I can picture Grandma yelling at Uncle John at the dinner table back in the day…"#5 you stop hitting #1 or no dessert for you!" Ha. Later.

#1-4

I’ve been meaning to scan some of the photos in our numerous, family albums and save them digitally. After a few computer crashes and the loss of a backup drive I’ll have to devise a well thought-out plan.

… And so, instead of watching the slow crash of the stock market for yet another day, I decided to play with some photos and my digital scanner. Can you guess who this character is? Yes, that’s right the vanity have jumped, not ‘crawled’ forward on this posting. It’s me! ‘Bird-Boy’ circa 1956 or something. Mom gave it to me a long while back and it’s survived the trip from Penfield, N.Y. to Lima, N.Y. to San Diego and the Clairemont house, then the SD Penasquitos house, then the move to N. Charleston, SC and finally back to Penasquitos/San Diego, CA (wow… the poor darn thing!).

I checked out the back of the photo before I scanned it and there was a very faint bit of printing on it. I immediate rummaged around the house for my reading glasses, a common occurrence these days, to get a better look at the printing. It read:

George W. Allen
320 Laurelton Rd
Rochester 9, N.Y.

Wow! So long ago that the zip code is simply ‘9’! I wonder what the zip code for Lima, N.Y. was? …. ‘X’! (just kiddin, just kiddin).

Anyway, I found another picture to scan, in fact I pulled the sucker right off the wall and removed it from the frame. This one feature our three boys. It was taken in the southern part of the Anza Borrego Desert circa 1990.

Notice the coveted Ghost Buster T-shirt on boy #2. It was initially worn by Justin, washed so many times that the 3-D decal on the front, completely obliterated and fell-off and then was passed down to boy #2. Clothes passed-down is a great tradition in the Decker Family. I’m sure that my Sears, Tough Skin Pants are still perfectly intact at the bottom of the old Lima dump… the one at the end of Buell St. or something or other.

Take care and keep on posting to the DeckerFamilyBlog.

#5

Here is a picture from cousin Patti of her parents on their wedding day. I thought everyone would enjoy it!

- Kristen