Paper Chain

Jonge, Famke, and Kado came over this afternoon.

We are attempting to make decorations for the Christmas tree in 'their' room each time they come over.

Today, it was a paper chain.

I found some gold paper with a bit of weight to it and I set about cutting the paper before they arrived. It being necessary that they go home with all of the appendages with which they arrived.

Jonge and Famke are good crafters. Jonge made an airplane for Kado which kept Kado happy, as did putting glue stick on his lips when he thought I wasn't looking.

They were very proud to drape their paper chain around their tree. I even made a star for the top. It took a few tries. My first attempt came out looking like Patrick from Sponge Bob Square Pants. Jonge colored that one pink and brought it home with him.

Making the paper chain reminded me of the bright idea I got many years ago when THGGM and I taught a Sunday School class of 25 elementary school kids. It sounded so simple at the time. We would make an advent prayer chain! Twenty-five kids, twenty-five days until Christmas! Super easy, I thought. At that time I had reams and reams of brightly colored paper, so I set to writing out all twenty-five names in calligraphy, then copying them. For some reason (the reason being that i'm not very good at math) I had the number fifty stuck in my head. You know. Twenty-five names plus twenty-five kids. That's fifty!

Let me tell you. That is NOT fifty. It took 2 1/2 sheets of paper just for writing all twenty-five names. As I started printing them it slowly began to dawn on me that EACH of the twenty-five kids would need one of ALL twenty-five kids names. And since I wanted all of those children to leave the class with all of the fingers God gave them, I precut all of the names. If you are keeping count, that would be six hundred and twenty five slips of paper. Good paper. Not the kind that you can cut four sheets at a time.

They did come out very nice though. And it was a delightful group of kids, who really were committed to praying for each other through the advent season.

Maybe, and this is a BIG maybe, I might try doing it again using the names of the twelve people presently in our family. But just for Jonge and Famke. And just for the Twelve Days of Christmas.

(i might. you don't KNOW that i won't.)