The Count-down Chain

Though the kids are 2 years older in this pic, the chains when first put up
were similar in length and have served the same purpose. I LOVE chains!

Meet our Countdown chain. When this picture was taken the chain wrapped around the corner in the hall extending to my bedroom door. At the time of this writing, it barely stretches to the corner. And it seems to be shrinking fast. (The picture I refer to here was erased accidentally. The picture NOW included is of our count down chain for our Seattle trip of 2017.)

While it was a long one to create, our trip to Florida last winter taught me why I wanted to include a chain in our preparations for Taiwan.

First, the chain helps the kids to keep track of time. They have a very visual way to see that our trip IS getting closer, AND that it is still not SUPER close. This is especially helpful for Weese, who struggles differentiating between an hour, a week, and a month. SHE knows we go AFTER her birthday. Maybe in her mind the chain is tracking her birthday too.

So having our chain has been a nice way to build anticipation while at the same time, keeping it at a managable (verses manic) level.

Our wait for our Florida trip was so much shorter that each day had a practice, or focus, written on the corresponding link. This chain has many links with no writing, but I want to describe what I have written on both chains because I've found a count-down chain to be incredibly helpful.

Some links describe a spiritual focus, though perhaps not traditionally "spiritual." They say things like "trying," to remind us that whether or not we try in everything is the key to life, and to have patience with others as they are "trying" as well. It' a reminder for the family that none of us is perfect. Another link says "Mission stories." I felt sharing stories from my mission would help the kids grow a taste for Taiwan, it's people and culture, even before we arrived. AND it might inspire them to think of being missionaries in the future and on this trip. Another spiritual theme is "Immigration." That references all the journeys found in the scriptures. AND I wanted us to study our own ancestors - how they felt about leaving home lands, letting go of the known and holding onto only the hope of a better future. I hope doing so will tie us emotionally to the scriptures stories and our own family history. And we've talked about journaling too - telling our own story and being blessed by the telling NOW as well as in the future.

So those are a few "spiritual" links. Others are very temporal. Things like making money, arranging a budget, preparing the house for our absence, getting yard work done. Both the spiritual and temporal focuses on the links are quite different from trip to trip, but we have and are spiritually and temporally preparing for both.

Also on the links are behaviors, attitudes, and skills we are practicing that make traveling with children easier. These include saying thank you, not complaining, self-entertaining, waiting, helping little siblings, eating out - all those good things we want to know our children can handle BEFORE we take them into the big wide world to embarrass and exhaust us.

Finally, as we've had more time for this one, I've also included fun family events, like birthdays or the Scottish Festival we just attended.

This chain, being over 90 links when it was first created, I color-coded to easily keep track of where we are. It's been nice to not have to count all the links when we miss a day or two to know how many links we should have still up. So Sundays are purple and list our week's spiritual focus. Mondays are yellow and list the physical prep. Saturdays are orange and have the family's fun plan for the week. Color coding has also made it easier to ADD skills, or fun events, or whatever else. I just need to find the right week by counting the number of whatever color of day I'm hunting for. We all have a color we take off the chain, and Arthur has 2 colors.

Finally, what I didn't do for Florida that I'm doing this time is add extra days to the chain. More precisely, I didn't add them. The girls were more interested in playing while I was chain crafting, which was fine as it helped me to construct things pretty precisely. But sure enough, as I thought she might, once it was done, EV wanted to help with the chain. I gave her the left-over colors and told her to put them together and I'd tack them on.

This has worked out perfectly because I had already decided that we will tell the girls we will leave a few weeks AFTER we are actually leaving. What I discovered during the Florida prep was that the kids became SO PUMPED in the final days leading to departure that it was really difficult to maintain order, cooperation, a functional sleep schedule, and all the rest. So we are springing it on them this time. The extra links on the chain (only I know the actual leave-day link) will help us to make that a surprise without having to answer the questions precisely about when we are going.