Once again, our family spent the New Year's holiday with my college friends Jon and Jenny. She and I both had babies this year, so our fun included five kids under age four instead of the three under three we had last year. Not a dull moment to be found!
6:00pm
In the bag: clear plastic cups, stickers
What they did: decorated cups to be filled with beans and taped together as noise makers
Mamas and babies.
As always, we ate fantastic food during our three-day stay:
Olive Garden chicken gnocchi soup. Levi, who hates anything foreign, actually spit gnocchi out of his mouth. In the end, he got PBJ as a reward for swallowing one bite. Ah, three-year-olds.
Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps. Jen and I have both made these before. Yum!
Honey Sesame Chicken over rice. Two thumbs up. Don't be stingy with the sauce.
Balsamic Honey Pulled Pork Sliders. Topped with homemade coleslaw and sliced sweet pickles. Mmmmm.
Apple Nachos (with nutella, homemade caramel sauce, chocolate chips, shredded coconut)
A Graeter's pecan pie that got re-gifted to me by my mother-in-law
To celebrate with the boys, we snagged this idea of surprise bags to be opened every hour from 4-8pm. (We thought about letting them stay up until 9, but let's be honest: if they're still up, we can't eat junk and play games.)
The bags. Many thanks to Trader Joe's for using a circle in their bag logo. Made it really easy to slap a clock on the front.
4:00pm
In the bag: some play fruit from Caleb's toy box and an empty yogurt container.
What they did: ate a special snack of fruit skewers with strawberry yogurt for dipping
5:00pm
In the bag: paper bowls, pipe cleaners, glitter, glue, markers
What they did: made party hats
Levi's hat. I was particularly amused when he asked me what quotation marks looked like so he could draw some. Caleb's name is tucked in there, but the letters are scattered above and below Owen's name. He requested various shapes, which I drew in glue and then he helped me sprinkle glitter over them. The other boys' hats had similar elements, excepting the name-writing.
My hat.
Modeling the hat.
In the bag: clear plastic cups, stickers
What they did: decorated cups to be filled with beans and taped together as noise makers
Owen was not at all happy about having his cups taped together, preferring instead to pour the beans back and forth between cups.
Time out for a baby shot.
7:00pm
In the bag: glow stick necklaces
What they did: ate cake balls, wore necklaces, had a dance party in the dark (to Sandra Boynton's Dog Train)
Funny thing about cake balls. If you put them in a mini muffin tin, and then store the tin on the floor of the car for two hours while the heat is coming out of the floor vents, they melt into mini-muffin-shaped cake muffins. When that happens, the super-cute faux-sparklers (made from tinsel hot-glued to toothpicks) fall sideways, as they are no longer supported by the solid cake ball. I did the best I could, putting this little batch back together, but the rest of them we just dug out of the tin with a knife and ate in crumbles.
Three boys and their glow stick necklaces.
Dance party!
8:00pm
In the bag: a balloon (not blown up)
What happened: A balloon drop! During nap time, Jon taped a shower curtain to a low portion of the ceiling and stuffed a bunch of blown-up balloons inside. Around 7:30pm, we showed the boys a youtube video of last year's ball drop so they'd have an idea of what to expect. As 8pm approached, we counted down the last ten seconds and ripped off the shower curtain as we shouted, "happy new year!" It was quite effective and so much fun.
The preparation.
Unfortunately, things were so busy that we didn't get a picture of the actual balloon drop. You'll have to trust me on this one. :)
After bedtime, the grown-ups launched back into game playing. Over the course of three evenings, we played Carcassonne with the Traders and Builders expansion several times, Dominion once (not my favorite, but Isaac likes it), and many, many games of Ticket to Ride with the 1910 expansion. Fun for the kids, fun for the grown-ups . . . another successful new year's celebration!
Happy 2013!!!
Your kids are going to grow up with the best memories of New Years Eve. Very fun ideas!
ReplyDeleteFunny -- it never occurred to me that they might actually remember this. That is fun!
ReplyDelete