Dancing with the STARS

At our school "Community Time" which we have about once every other Friday, the 2nd grade students performed a traditional Indonesian Dance complete with costumes. The dance came from North Sumatra. It is a "money dance" (You can come up with your own punch line) which they perform as a way of raising funds for charities. When the dancers are finished with the dance people come and place money between the dancer's outstretched fingers.

Kade really liked the traditional clothing and even though he wouldn't admit it when asked, you could tell by how much he got into the dance that he really enjoyed performing up on the big stage. If you check out the first picture you can see how close the moves and shirts looked like those of the disco era.

This weekend we had the Duri teachers up to our school for a curriculum day. They arrived on Friday afternoon and we had a nice social time that included playing in the pool with the kids, dinner and a movie for the kids and a 80's themed quiz night.

On an aside I just wanted to let all of our Stanwood Bible Study crew know that due to my exposure to your love of everything 80's, my team emerged victorious even though my preferred decade is the 90's. Thanks for all of your training. I knew that 80's knowledge would come in handy sometime!

Happy Birthday, Sydney!

It has been a long time since our last post. Getting back in to the swing of school took some time but I think we are now back into the routine. This past week we celebrated birthdays for both Sydney (Jan. 20) and Kathi (Jan. 24). Kathi did a great job decorating for Syd's birthday. If you know Kathi you know she is quite the party planner and even in Indonesia she was prepared. She had the place looking great and we packed in the gifts from home so Syd was well taken care of. She is now eleven years old. Boy how time flies!

For both parties our cook made a great chocolate cake. It was a nice treat. Kathi turned 25 again so that was a nice celebration. We were able to celebrate both big days with our good friends the Austins. We are so lucky to be surrounded by such good people here and they are at the top of the list.

This weekend we have the teachers from our sister school in Duri come visit for an inservice. We will be busy Friday and Saturday working on our school accreditation. This has been the main focus for both staffs this year. It is a big undertaking that requires a lot of time and effort. It is a good process but we will all be glad when it is over!

A Message from a Friend

Dear friends and family,

 

A lot of people in the community have been calling us to see if/what they can do to help Haiti. Most of you know our family adopted our son Jeremiah from Haiti a little over a year ago. Aaron and myself have both been to Port au Prince Haiti (Aaron twice) and have seen the devastation/poverty and that was before this terrible earth quake hit. Haitians are a remarkable people who have already had to handle such awful circumstances.

 

Then Team Larson came up with an idea. My friends called me when I was sitting home watching CNN crying for two days straight. They said come over and lets have a bake sale. I can't tell you how nice it felt to actually do something personally!!! Thanks Guadalupe Dwyer and Cristy McFall. I think we made 21 loaves of banana bread and made over 200 dollars just walking around our neighborhood selling the bread. We have only hit two streets so far and the bread is gone!!!

 

Our idea is such:

 

1/23/10

Community Bake Sale

9:00am-3:00pm or until supplies last.

Where: 44 Lucky Lane

Camano Island WA 98282

We live in Thunder Ridge.

What we need: A few Volunteers, BAKED ITEMS packaged and ready to sell. We are not picky... you decide how you want to divide the item up. It could be baked pies, cookies, brownies, etc. Whatever... be creative. If you want to sell them individually or as a whole it is up to you, but please have them packaged and ready to sell.

I will be excepting items on Thursday and Friday; 1/21 and 1/22... just drop them off. I will be here all day!!!

 

This will be donation only... items will not be marked with a dollar amount. All money will go to 3 different charities of your choice if you want to write a check and all cash donations will go to The Everett Clinic (where I work) who has agreed to match money up to 25,000 dollars. Imagine that!!! What an amazing answer to prayer. The three charities are: World Vision, Red Cross, and Camano Chapel (there money goes directly to fund airplanes flying into Haiti to drop off aide). So you can choose how you would like us to forward on your donation.

 

Please Please Please consider how you can help us on this endeavor. Donations, Baked Goods, etc. If you live far away you could always mail us your donation to 44 Lucky Lane, Camano Island WA 98282 and make the check out to one of the three charities of your choice and we will mail your funds to the charity.

 

Please forward this email on to anyone you know. If you facebook or twitter please paste and post this message on to your sight. That would be much appreciated.

 

Any questions call me.

 

If everyone makes an effort to help what amazing challenges we can meet together. Thanks so much in advance from our family and friends and especially the people of Haiti.

 

Jennifer Larson

360-387-0489

Back to Work

We just completed our 1st day back to school after a great, but hectic trip back to the good old U.S. of A. We had such a great time seeing friends and family, attending church, and getting some good Starbucks! I think the people most excited to see me were the baristas at the local Starbucks. We had a ball catching up with people and if we missed you we are very sorry and know that we would have loved to see you too. It was a very busy time and we did not get to all of the things we were hoping to however with Kathi's calendar we were able to get all of the dentist, doctor, and haircut appointments in as well as make sure we celebrated Christmas. Without her type A personality we may have missed that one.

The kids too loved being home and seeing all of their friends, family and pets. Our dog Ember is probably glad we left so she can get some rest. It was hard when it was all over to say goodbye again to everyone but we know we will get to see everyone in 5 short months. We should then have a little more time to get everyone and everything in we wanted to.

The flights back to Pekanbaru went off very well. They were all on time and our baggage made it back in one piece and we didn't even have to pay extra to get in through in Jakarta which we were afraid might be the case. We did get back on Sunday afternoon which meant we had to start work the next day. So needless to say we are quite jet lagged but hanging in there. It would have been nice to have a day or two to re acclimate ourselves to the time change but we wanted to get the most time back home possible.

One of our flights was on Singapore Air. If you ever have a choice of taking this airline we highly recommend it. The service and accommodations were the best I have seen and the leg room in the economy class was like many airlines business class. Too bad for us that is was only one of our 90 minute flights not the 9 and a half hour or the 7 hour one. All of our airline miles are on United so we don't get to fly on Singapore unless it is a fluky thing.

We just wanted to say thanks again to all of those people who made our trip so fun. Especially Kathi's family for getting us to and from the airport, my brother's family for hosting us, and my Dad for helping me repair a toilet. That my friends is an example of unconditional love.

Christmas 2009

Sorry for the delayed post. We are having an amazing time in Stanwood. It is hard to believe that is already time to start packing for the trip back to Sumatra. It has been wonderful catching up with friends and family.