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 3rd 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
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.
Every year my family participates in the 4th of July parade. You see
The day kicks off at
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
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 4th 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.
