I believe I've mentioned in a previous post that New Year's
Eve (NYE) is not a favorite of mine. There's
too much pressure for it to be such a good time. Having kids has been a convenient escape from
having to worry about NYE festivities.
However, the kids are now able to stay up to midnight--they've always
been the early to bed, early to rise type--so the dynamic has changed. Last year was the first year both of them
have stayed up until midnight. Since we weren't sure Aaron would make it, we
kind of winged it last year with some board games and our usual Matt-made lo mein
for dinner. Knowing that we would be
going the distance this year I took the initiative and did an Internet search
to help me gather ideas for our family-friendly fiesta. One of the best ideas I found was on modernparentsmessykids.com for an hour-by-hour countdown activity.
It's made with a poster board, empty paper towel tubes and
tissue paper, all of which I already had here at the house. I was pleased with how well it
turned out and I was careful to make an even number of countdown spaces so they
each, alternating turns, had the same number of activities to discover. It was kind of like our own ball dropping where we counted by hours instead of seconds.
 |
| Leah and Aaron would take turns, on the half-hour, opening up the corresponding tissue paper-covered compartment. |
 |
| Each compartment had a piece of paper with that hour's activity written on it. Some activities took the full hour and some only lasted a few minutes. |
 |
| 11:30 am - Watch Happy New Year, Charlie Brown. (It's OK, not a classic, though.) |
 |
| 12:30 pm - Mentos Geyser. Since the temperature was in the single-digits, this was one of those activities that only lasted a few minutes. |
 |
| "Thar she blows!" |
 |
| 1:30 pm - Play Exploding Kittens. The kids used some of their Christmas money and bought Imploding Kittens, an expansion pack. |
 |
| Imploding Kittens comes with a human-sized "cone of shame," which the kids think is hilarious. |
 |
| 2:30 pm - Create a bucket list of things to do/places to visit in 2018. |
 |
| 3:30 pm - Enjoy a sweet treat. |
 |
| 4:30 pm - Go to church. (I skipped 5:30 pm because I knew we'd be at Mass.) |
 |
| 6:30 pm - Eat dinner. Matt made spaghetti this year instead of his usual lo mein. |
 |
| We totally embrace the Japanese tradition of eating long noodles on NYE to represent a long life. |
 |
| 7:30 pm - Reflections & Resolutions. |
 |
| We all filled out a year-in-review... |
 |
| ...and some of us wrote resolutions. |
 |
| Aaron didn't think he should bother with writing resolutions because they always get broken. |
 |
| Some resolutions were less than serious. |
 |
| 8:30 pm - Photo booth time! |
 |
| "Tell me the truth--do these glasses make me look fat?" |
 |
| 9:30 pm - Watch Ghostbusters II. I chose this movie because it takes place around New Year's. Sadly, it's nowhere near as good of a movie as Ghostbusters (or Ghostbusters 2016, for that matter). |
 |
| 10:30 pm - Glow Stick Fire Knife Dance. We paused the movie for this annual tradition. |
 |
| Leah and Aaron have been performing their glow stick dance every NYE since 2010 (when we went to Maui that summer and they saw a real fire knife dance at a luau). |
 |
| 11:30 pm (or upon completion of the movie) - Get ready to make some noise and ring in the new year! |
 |
| Don't forget the sparkling cider. |
 |
| 12:05 am - Clean up! |
It did take some effort and planning ahead for our NYE
festivities but it was worth it. The
kids loved the countdown board and it did make the day go by fast. I would definitely do it again, but I may have
to start planning earlier this year to be able to put new activities in the
mix.
Happy 2018!
