Panama was awesome!

Panama was my very favorite place to live growing up.

Ariana, Jesse, Christian James, Melanni, and Rebecca

Melanni performing a Panamanian dance in her pollera dress. I loved seeing her all dressed up. The pretty ornaments in her hair are called tembleques. I loved how white and sparkly the tembleques were. I remember Mom telling us that they were made from fish scales. I still don't know how they make fish scales look so white and pretty.

Ariana

So, that's me in the gym at my school, Curundu Elementary. I have no idea what is going on here. Maybe an assembly? I don't know. I have a few memories of this gym. 

1. There was a short boy named Eduardo in my class, and he could run REALLY fast. I remember thinking that he looked like Mario from the Mario Brothers Nintendo game when he ran because his arms moved so fast they looked blurry.

2. One time in gym class, it started pouring rain. You can see that at the top of the gym, the walls are just chain link fence. The rain came in gushes and flooded the room. Soon, we were soaked and standing in inches of water. I thought it was really fun, but I bet the teachers were scared.

3. During recess, one of my favorite things to do was dig for ant lions in the dirt with my friends outside the buildings.    

If you don't know what an antlion is, here's a picture:

  

Here's the weird thing. I didn't know this was an antlion until about 20 seconds ago when I searched online to find a picture for you. Apparently, what I was catching all those years ago in Panama was the antlion larva. Yep, I liked stuff like that.

  

We used to catch these all the time and hold them in our bare hands. Panama was awesome! (Oh, and this is blown up like a thousand times. They were only the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil.)

  

This is how we knew where to dig for an antlion. (Ahem. Excuse me. Antlion larva.) There was a definite technique to it because those buggers were fast and the mound of sand around their little sand pit trap would always start caving into the hole.

I loved it! Although, you couldn't pay me to hold one now!

Mom Looks Like a Flippin' Model!

I was looking through some of the pictures Mom digitized, and couldn't help thinking how pretty she is. We have a beautiful mom.

Christian James, Mom, Jesse, Melanni, and Ariana at the beach in Alabama.

 In our living room in Panama

Holding Richard in Panama.

Ariana and Melanni in Hawaii

Ariana (left), Melanni (right)

This picture brings back a lot of memories. Like, those encyclopedias in the background, I think Mom and Dad still have these. I remember pouring over these and looking at the pictures. Also, the giant speaker behind me is the same speaker that fell on James's toe. I just found out from talking to Mom that she put his toe on ice, got Ariana and I to a babysitter, drove James to the hospital and THEN she passed out! 

VOTE!

Ariana, Melanni, Christian J., Jesse, Becca, Richard, Whitney, Lyndsay and Collin,

 

 We need to vote on a title for this family blog! 'Christian and Denise Larson Family' is pretty awesome, but I think we can do better(0: everyone put your ideas for what we should call this blog in the comments section and then we can vote to officially name this blog!

 

Mom and Dad gave all of us Larson kids an amazing Christmas present this year. They archived our family pictures from growing up online. I found this is my stocking on Christmas morning: (minus the computer chord hiding the web address...hey, I don't want EVERYONE to be able to access akward pictures of me growing up!):