New Year's Eve Report

*Note. I found several draft posts that I had never finalized. This is one of them. I think I was waiting for pictures? Who knows.

We have a family tradition of holding a New Year's Eve party here at our house for just our family. I have blogged about it before but it began back when the kids were little (still trike-riding age).

The general party format has been as follows (with some variations through the years): we start out making wish bags--we use gift bags and apply things like glitter, stickers, paint, or whatever we want to decorate our bags. Then we have a big meal with lots things to snack on besides. Then we play games. These used to be skill games and trike races in the basement and we've graduated to board games upstairs or games like Apples to Apples or Curses.

We used to do a pinata in our basement until we finished our basement and swinging sticks while blindfolded no longer suited the space. Then we moved it to the garage. We haven't done the pinata for a few years--I guess that is how it is when the kids become teens. It was a main-stay in earlier years and second to the wish bags as must-haves.

When we ring in the New Year, the wish bags are passed around. This time they hold small gifts, hats, noisemakers and other celebratory items (we have used silly string, plastic leis, poppers, streamers, etc.). Then most years we would have fireworks in the backyard.

This year, my husband saw some construct-them-yourself bird houses at Lowe's that he thought would make a fun New Year's Eve activity. He bought a bird feeder and four houses. We skipped decorating the wish bags and simply reused some from last year. The bird houses were so fun to make and they took longer than we guesstimated.

My husband had searched all over the county for a particular board game for us to play--and he did find it--and we were too tired after the bird-house building to do anything but break out the wish bags and ring in the new year! We even postponed painting and staining the bird houses until another day. We didn't have fireworks. I'm not sure we thought about it in all the search for that darn game. Besides it was too cold.

We had a good time and we look forward to a good year ahead. After all, why shouldn't it be a good one since the new year was properly greeted?!