PORT ANGELES — Every Christmas morning, she had a new pair of pyjamas to wear. Yes, pyjamas, because we’re talking to a Canadian here: Jenny Stewart Houston, bringer of sleepwear to local children this December.
Houston grew up in Millet, Alberta, then moved to Vancouver, B.C., and then to Port Angeles, where she got a job waiting tables at downtown’s Next Door gastropub.
Then the Kula Yoga studio, also downtown, became available when founder Travis Riemer moved on. Houston, an India-trained yoga teacher, took it over.
She recently changed the name to Poser Yoga, and amid it all, began two yuletide giving projects.
First she started a pyjama drive, inviting yoga students to donate either pyjamas or the money to buy and give them to the Salvation Army in Port Angeles.
Then, just a couple of weeks ago, Houston and her students adopted a local family: a single mother and her five daughters age 5 to 16.
The bunch had just moved into a house in Port Angeles. Houston’s mother-in-law Rita Houston knew them through her job at WorkSource Clallam County. She knew also that the family was struggling.
“They needed some Christmas cheer,” said Houston, who put out the call, quick, to the people in her yoga classes: Would you shop for this mom and her girls?
“I would have bought everything, since I took it on,” Houston said.
But about 10 students shifted into fourth gear, shopping for clothes, dolls, jewelry and hair accessories.
These included the “Belle” gown from “Beauty and the Beast,” requested by one of the younger girls and Seahawks finery for one of the teenagers.
“It was so fun, watching the presents coming in,” Houston said, adding that yogini Wendy Greer had a particularly good time shopping for the 15-year-old.
Then came another gift: Country Aire Natural Foods in Port Angeles donated a Christmas tree, which Houston and her husband, Cody, got to set up.
That was last Friday, the same day Houston went pyjama shopping with donations left at Poser Yoga. The studio, which holds a by-donation “karma yoga” class at 5:30 p.m. Fridays, had collected some $250 since the pyjama drive began the first week of November.
Houston took the money to Swain’s General Store and started filling her arms with jammies of various sizes.
She shopped and shopped, and when she finally reached the cash register, found she’d gone a little over $250.
Uh-oh. But “the woman [at the checkstand] said, ‘Let me see what I have,’ and pulled some money out of her pocket,”
Houston said.
Her contribution put the pyjama bill over the top.
From there, Houston brought 39 pairs over to the Salvation Army, where “it was joyous.”
The agency, burglarized a few nights before, was in the middle of an avalanche of new donations of toys, bicycles and other gifts to replace the stolen ones, and then some.
Houston has a history of taking on a lot. She teaches 11 weekly yoga classes, works about 25 hours per week at Next Door — and frankly, wasn’t planning on two Christmas projects.
But when she and Cody went over to see their adopted family, it all felt right.
First she brought the presents in her car; then her husband, with his truck, brought the tree.
“The little girls came running out in their socks,” Houston said, “and they kept saying, ‘Thank you! Merry Christmas!’”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
