Chasing the Christmas Chain

I don’t know how long it’s been.

Probably since kids were tiny.

Those little countdown calendars of some sort, you know.

Nine years ago the format shifted from adorable and quirky to a low budget paper chain.

And paper chain it has stayed nearly a decade later.

Like EVERYTHING currently, it is more and more difficult to find daily time to chase the tradition.

But if you know me, traditions matter A LOT, so chase it we must.

The kids still all look forward to it, even those teenagers, so I’m willing to make it fit and work it out and do what we can to keep the chain going.

Here are a few paper chain activities so far.

It started with the tree. It always starts with the tree.

The tree chooses Bergen. (Another tradition.) One year it accidentally fell over on him – he was just a little guy. Now we just push it on him.

We’ve opened our new ornaments – each kid receiving an ornament that has something to do with their year.

We drank hot cocoa and had cookies and wrote Christmas letters to friends.

I started this next one last year at the suggestion of a friend and I love it.

New flannel sheets.

(And I plan ahead on this one since there are a plethora of beds to buy sheets for here and sheets aren’t low cost when you multiply it by six.) I just pick them up throughout the year since bed sizes don’t change, unlike shoe sizes.

We’ve listened to music and drawn together, ate cereal sundaes while watching a movie, got donuts and looked at Christmas lights. (Except, now that I think of it, that was one that somehow didn’t happen on the day we opened the chain for it.)

We took our annual drive to Mud Dabbers and looked at pottery and picked out tiny free cups.

We’ve been doing the next one for a lot of years and it was one I thought would be under appreciated this year.

Bake and decorate sugar cookies.

Turns out, it was a big hit.

We made one batch of dough, split it into six parts and every one of us had our own little cookie decorating station. It was hilarious. Piper made royal icing and we used spoons and toothpicks – true tools of the trade – and laughed together in a way we really hadn’t in a few weeks. (Music to me ears – for sure!)

This little ragamuffin Elsa was the star.

There’s still more to come – our annual living room sleepover, the Christmas parade and monster cookie baking and needle tips to bake too. (Apparently, food is a big part of this. Good thing sheets don’t change in size, too bad bodies too.)

I’m painfully aware of the clock ticking with my kids – especially my bigs. Two more Christmases, one more Christmas.

So if they are still curious to see what the chain holds and they still want to make sugar cookies together at our dining room table, you better believe I’ll stay up past bedtime and cancel something else to make it happen.

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