New Years Eve

Well the craziness of Christmas is behind us and I am able to start relaxing again.  This year for the first time I'm going to have my girls try to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve.  I have fun family activities planned for every hour to celebrate.

I got a 6 pack of small blue canvas bags at Walmart for a dollar and wrote a time on each one in permanent marker.  Then I put a card in each one with an activity to do that hour and any small supplies to go along with it.

For example...
In the 1:00 bag, I wrote do a puzzle together and included a $1 puzzle.
For 2:00, I put in a few cookie cutters and a cookie recipe for us to make.
3:00 will have a winter craft inside the bag.
4:00 will have "snowballs" in it for an indoor snowball fight.
At 5:00 we will be making a dinner from another country (I'm thinking French crepes) and learning about how people in other countries celebrate the New Year.
For 6:00 I have hot chocolate packets and a note saying to read a book in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate.
In the 8:00 bag I have a New Year's Eve printable that I found on Pinterest for each of us to fill out about the best part of 2013, what we are looking forward to in 2014, etc.
9:00 will have watch a movie.
11:00 will be eating the cookies we made earlier and the bag will have noisemakers in it for using at 12:00.
And finally at Midnight we will ring in the New Year with the noisemakers and a sparkling apple cider toast (I put small plastic wine glasses in this bag).  I also found a small disco like silver ball at the Christmas Tree Shop that we will be using as the ball drop.

If we have any down time, I also have cards that say things like play Wii, play a board game, shoot balloons with a dart gun, play a CD and have a family dance party, dress up in fancy clothes for dinner, etc.

I had also considered celebrating New Year's when it is midnight in another country so that it will be earlier here and the kids will be able to stay up for it, but then I found this idea on Pinterest that I liked even better.  I'm not sure how long my girls will last though.