New Year's Eve Countdown Balloons

Each year on New Year's Eve, we have a little party with our family at home.  There's no way I'd rather bring in the New Year than with my very favorite people in the whole world and we have fun planning some yummy food, activities to do, and seeing which kids will make it up until midnight.  On one of my daily scrolls through Pinterest, I found this idea for New Year's Countdown Balloons and thought the kids would really get a kick out of it.

I used a couple of the ideas from the blog post, but then came up with some of our own as well.  Here's our list of what we did;

1. Play a card game.
2. Put on a Glee CD and have a dance party!
3. Pick out a piece of candy.
4. Have a sword fight with Daddy.
5. Pick up main level...THEN...buy Fruit Ninja for Kinnect!
6. Have a thumb war.
7. Have a Popsicle AFTER you finish dinner.
8. Read a book in front of the fireplace.
9. Get in your coziest jammies.
10. Share some of your favorite memories from 2011.
11. Share some goals for 2012.
12. Toast with Kid Wine, then run outside with your noisemakers and yell "Happy New Year!"

I had the kids pick up their bedroom the morning of New Year's Eve and, while they were doing that, I blew up the balloons and hung them.

They noticed them immediately when they came down and were excited about seeing what kind of activity was in each one.  For the rest of the day, it was a constant countdown to the next hour.  The 3 year old asked every 5 minutes if it was time for another balloon yet.

Most of the activities were a hit!  Surprisingly, the 6 year old (not going to lie, I did type 5 at first, so not used to him being 6 yet!) was not happy with #8 but, after a couple of minutes of pouting on his own, decided to join us.

Surprisingly again, they were all excited about #9.  May have been because just before that they noticed it was FINALLY snowing and, with their dad, all went out for an impromptu snowball fight and came back in wet and freezing.  Cozy pj's probably sounded pretty darn good right about then.

~Happy New Year 2012~

The 9 year old said that he think this should do this every year and make it a tradition and the 6 year old has decided he wants me to do the same thing on his birthday next year too.  It was a great, fun, easy, cheap activity to do and everyone enjoyed it.  It will become an annual tradition at our house.