New Car

Now, I’m thinking that my luck at the Subaru dealership had everything to do with my wonderful personality and the fact that I’m knowledgeable about the in’s and out’s of wheeling and dealing in new car salesmanship, and NOT because I brought the sales associates a dozen homemade doughnuts from a mouth-watering bakery in Jeffersonville. Sparkling, sunshiny, fun-loving Jenn, NOT the maple-glazed, and apple cider-cinnamon sugar doughnuts that I brought….just in case.


I LOVE MY NEW CAR!!!!!!

Densmore Family Reunion

Outside of weekend day trips to my parents house, phone calls from my sister, surprise visits from my grandparents, trips to visit my NY side of the family, poor ‘ol Mike can’t seem to escape our one constant weekend theme: My family.

This Saturday wasn’t any different. Welcome, come one come all to the yearly Densmore Family Reunion!!!

(The Densmores being on my maternal grandfather’s side of the family.)

This yearly gathering of Great Aunts and 3^rd cousins twice removed is a family event that I struggle attending. Outside of my immediate family (that I see almost every weekend anyway) I don’t know any of these people, needless to say that I haven’t attended a family reunion in approximately 7 years.

My grandfather’s cousin and his wife (Ira and Lavonna) are the ones who usually host this gathering and two weeks prior to the reunion Lavonna passed away from breast cancer. Lavonna was a wonderful woman with a powerful energy and loving spirit and the news of her passing caught us all a little bit off guard.

It was decided that the reunion would go on in Lavonna’s memory so Mike, the boys and I once again loaded up the Toyota, and cooler, and hit the road to southern Vermont. Our trip takes us south of Rutland and from where we live there is no direct route that we can take to get there. We have to drive East into Burlington (45 mins), then head South on Rt 7 to Vergennes (30 mins), then take a network of state highways further south for another hour, then hook up to some po-dunk dirt back road until we get to the camp. It’s a long trip that makes the adults in the car want to repeat, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Thankfully we were following my mother otherwise I think that we would have found ourselves caught off guard on a dead-end dirt road where we would have flashbacks of the movie ‘Deliverance’.

The turn out for this year’s reunion was surprisingly nice. There were only 5 people that I didn’t know but by the end of the day we all were introduced and enjoying each other’s company. My mother brought along 2 kayak’s and their new puppy, Lily. My sister brought her 3 dogs, her big’ol pregnant belly and an appetite that could challenge any grown man there. My grandfather came solo as my grandmother isn’t as up to traveling as she used to be. Ira and Lavonna’s 3 grown children were there with their families, along with a few cousins and one Great Aunt that looked ancient when I was young.

Thankfully the rain held off and as a family we were able to share a few laughs, chase a herd of dogs, reintroduce ourselves to each other, enjoy a meal, and say farewell to a woman who touched almost everyone in attendance.

4th of July

Every year my family participates in the 4^th of July parade. You see Jeffersonville may be a small town in rural Vermont but this community knows how to throw a party. Every year the celebration seems to grow bigger and bigger yet all the while keeping that small town charm. We are talking a parade, live music on the green, craft & food vendors AND a magic show -- It’s entertainment for all!

The day kicks off at 10am with a parade through the village. Anyone who wants to take the time to build a float and enter it in the parade are welcome to do just that, just be sure to be at G.W. Tatro’s (our local trucking company just outside of the village) by 9am. This parking lot is the only one in the town that is large enough to house the parade goers and their custom made floats. Now you have local & small businesses that advertise with fancy trucks and banners. You have local organizations that share their community spirit with flat beds decked out in red, white & blue. You have school marching bands, 4-H clubs & the boy scouts walking in groups tossing out candy to the onlookers and sugar deprived children in the crowd. Then you have the families like mine, the fun-loving, fearless, shameless, assholes who enjoy conjuring up a float of their own and marching to the beat of their own drum. Or in our case it was the B 52’s and the Locomotion.

It’s important to note that when my family does something like this we talk about it for months ahead of time, planning and collecting ideas, but the real magic doesn’t happen until the night before when we hustle about trying to put the damn thing together.

This year the parade theme was Yankee Doodle: red, white & blue. Well, we decided that our floats theme would be “think summer, red, white & blue.” With that in mind we decided that we would use my mother’s Toyota truck as our basic foundation for our idea. She has a rack that is built into the bed of the truck making it much easier to build & stabilize a scene.

Taking our building materials down into Mike and my basement we painted a cartoon underwater scene with red, white & blue fish, crabs, and even snails. Once the basic scene was completed we zip tied it to the rack in the truck. We then topped the rack off with a Kayak to give the impression that the Kayak was floating on this makeshift cartoon water. Haha! Add balloons, streamers, loud fun music and a couple of assholes who don’t mind making a complete fool out of themselves in a public place and you have our float!

My brother Sam rode inside the Kayak and tossed candy to the folks in the crowd. Liam rode in the bed of the truck behind the cardboard cartoon water scene and happily launched water from his water gun into the unsuspecting crowds, while my mother, myself, and two other friends walked along side this traveling band of idiots. Three of us, (including myself) were dressed up in mixed-matched attire of red, white & blue, with beads, flowers, balloons and such, while the 4^th person was dressed as the statue of liberty. For the two miles that this parade route traveled we laughed, danced, got rained on, and tossed candy to those to chicken to create a float of their own.

(enroute to the parade in the back of the truck)

Liam & Sammy

Our group of assholes

My mother

There is something about seeing the statue of Liberty running through a field.

Mt. Philo

Mt. Philo isn't an actual Mountain per say, it's more of a modest hill with muddy trails and a steep one land road for those who wish to see the view from the top but would prefer to do so via car power instead of body power. We decided that this would be a perfect hike for our pint sized companions, so we packed a cooler, loaded up the Camry and set our sites for this adventure.

Now considering that our summer has been a wet and cold one we should have been prepared for slippery, muddy trails and lots & LOTS of bugs, but because the day was so full of blue skies, warm breezes and sunshine this notion completely slipped our minds...that is until we started our trek up the hillside. The boys made it 1/2 of the way up the trail systems but with lots of complaints and breaks for rest. Mike and I were eager to just go, mostly to avoid being an all you can eat buffet for the black flies, and did our very best to encourage the boys to not stop and keep their minds set for the top. By the time the trail crossed the one-lane road we found ourselves caving and decided to walk up the paved road in the sunshine instead of keeping to the woods.



The walking was much easier on the pavement and instead of constantly swatting at black flies we only had to step off to the shoulder every now and then to avoid a car that would be passing by.

Liam found a sudden burst of energy with the sunshine and pavement, and Owen found that hiking was hard work no matter what was under your feet. :)




Both boys did make it to the top and were very proud of themselves for sticking through it. The rocky peak allowed us to see vast miles of the Champlain Valley, Lake Champlain, all the way to the Adirondacks. We stayed and rested for about a half an hour before embarking on our journey back down to where we parked our car.


Thankfully going down is a lot easier then going up.