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Christmas Paper Chain

I've had a ton of ideas for Advent calendars and countdowns and activities and the like, but what with the busy season, visits from my extended family, and a short bout of stomach flu (just me, thankfully), I decided to keep things simple this year.  After all, Levi's really the only one of my three children to have even a little sense of what's going on, and I have plenty of years ahead for toddler and preschool activities!

So yesterday afternoon, in one of the few hours I was upright and not curled up on the couch nursing peppermint tea, Levi and I made a traditional paper chain. I let him do pretty much everything: cutting the paper into strips, deciding on a color pattern (red-green-white), arranging the strips in the pattern, writing a number 1-25 on each strip, and applying glue with a glue stick to the end so I could attach them together.

Levi now thinks he has to smile every time the camera is out, even if he's not looking at it.

I discovered too late that I'd made the strips too short and fat to link well, so I had to trim most of them a bit slimmer.

Never mind the pile of dirty cloth diapers waiting to go downstairs . . . or the random sweet potato . . . This is  my real life, folks. 

The chain is now hanging on the wall, but I forgot to take a picture. Levi ripped off the first link this morning while Owen got to sample the chocolate from the purchased Advent calendar. They'll switch jobs every day until Christmas!

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