...just enjoy the ride: New Year's Eve 2012

Taking a little break from the quiet book for a day, I wanted to share my New Year's Eve night with you. I must admit it turned out WAY better than I ever expected. And, all the kiddos actually made it!

It first started with an idea on Pinterest that was to pop balloons each hour until midnight. While I loved this idea and might use it in the future, I have no balloons and do not have helium anywhere near where I live. (If I was going to do the balloon thing, I wanted to do it right have have the balloons floating in the air.) So, from this idea came what we actually did:

First, I wrote down many activity ideas on strips of paper. Some were Wii games, puzzles, color, watch a 30 minute show, make cookies, etc. All things I knew my kiddos would enjoy. I ended up writing 8 activities because I wanted to start at 8 pm- the kids normal bed time- and do an activity every 30 minutes to keep the pace for the night quick. This was probably the best thing about the entire idea because there was such short amount of time to get the activity out and do it before it was time to open the next bag, the night flew by! We were constantly going. Then, we filled the bags. I put the quiet, little movement ones toward the beginning and kept the more active ones for later in the night when I figured the little ones would begin to get tired so we could try to wake them up a bit. I figured that I'd loose one or two to sleep and that would be just fine.

After putting the activities in each time labeled bag. I asked my mom, so creative, to come up with some tags for each bag. We tried to make them shiny and fun. We started at 8 and counted down to 1. On each bag, we wrote the name of the child that would open the bag. It ended up perfect because my little brother was here so they each got to open 2 bags. As they opened the bags we all gathered around in anticipation of what was next. It was so cute!

TIME TO BEGIN:

So, we set out these bags in a couple lines on the kitchen table. Then, we got the kids ready for bed, brushed their teeth, read a story, and said a prayer. We said goodnight to everyone. The kids looked so disappointed and a little confused as to why these exciting surprises were out but they were going to bed. Finally, after holding them off as long as we could, we told them that because they worked so hard during the day they got to stay up and celebrate new years eve. (They really had worked hard that day cleaning and organizing their clothes and toys and books.) The were beyond excited.

We began our "Kiddie Countdown." You can see the excitement and enthusiasm they have. We even kept the activities a surprise for my younger brother. *It actually occurred to me that I can no longer call him my little brother as he is most definitely taller than me now.*

As they opened their bags they got to pin their tags onto their shirts. Which made the night even more exciting! These four pictures were taken earlier in the night when they were still awake.

The puzzle activity was a possible turning point. I thought for sure my two youngest would fall asleep. They looked at me like they were ready to fall over they were so tired. I kept asking if they were ready for bed. Everyone said, "No!" I knew after the puzzle activity we'd need something to wake us back up, by this time I think it was 11ish, so we got to eat the cookies we made earlier that night. Plus we had those little hot dog things cooking in BBQ sauce the whole night, so we snacked on those.

The last activity was to make party hats. Right after that, each kid got a bag that was filled with a noise maker, ribbon strings, and a piece of candy. We all sat around for about 30 seconds waiting to rip open the bags and throw the ribbon around. As we were getting ready for the countdown, my hubby and mom came back from touring his work. Just in time... 3, 2, 1...