New Year’s Eve at Home With the Family
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If you’ve been directed to this blog post it’s probably because you have generously donated a gift to Big Brothers Big Sisters at the TD Bank in Kemptville and taken your gift from me off the tree. The Christmas gift we are giving you is a family New Year’s Eve pack. Your pack includes party hats, noise makers and some special items for your little party animals.
Spending New Year’s Eve at home celebrating with your children can be a wonderful thing, just as wonderful as going all out and celebrating in style. The best thing about being at home is being at home…if you’re a home body like me.
I am going to share with you a few details on how to make your family celebration such a hit that you’ll be hoping to do it every year.
1. Explain to your children what New Year’s Eve is all about. Talk about how wonderful it is celebrate a new year. Explain to them how a new year can be a new start.
2. Decorate the room you will celebrating in. It doesn’t have to be over the top but be sure to make it special. If you’ll be eating dinner at the table, try using a tablecloth and fancy napkins. Everyone can drink out of wine glasses, you can buy plastic ones at the dollar store if your kids are too small for the fancy ones. Using simple paper streamers and a “Happy New Year” banner would be great too. Something the kids would think was really fun would be if you moved the kitchen table right into the living room, down in the basement or wherever it is you will be spending most of the evening.
3. Although watching the ball drop in NYC won’t ever be the same without Dick Clark, I still recommend putting it on in the background so the kids can keep an eye on the celebrations. Perhaps you’ll make plans to take the family there when they are old enough.
4. The food you choose for the evening should be easy. It can still be fancier than a normal meal but there shouldn’t be a lot of cooking time required. A great idea for this type of meal is finger foods or a fondu. If you haven’t done a fondu with the kids yet I would highly recommend it. They’ll love it!
5. If your family is like us and enjoys playing board games together pick a game that takes some time to complete and you can play while you wait for midnight to arrive.
6. A new year means new goals and new challenges. Why not encourage your family to each write down a goal for the year. For the kids it can be something like trying to be nicer to their sister or brother or to learn how to snowboard. For mom and dad it can be to spend more time outside together or to spend less time working. If you want you can have everyone in the family write down their goals on a really nice piece of paper and put it up on the fridge to be seen every day.
7. As midnight approaches put on your party hats and grab your noise makers. Gather together in a big family group hug and count down to midnight together. Then when the clock strikes 12 be sure to tell each of your little munchkins and that special someone in your life how much you love them, how much you enjoyed the last year together and how much you are looking forward to the next year.
8. Now for the best part of the night, put the kids to bed and stay up a little later, just the two of you. Stay up and truly enjoy this moment with the love of your life. Have another glass of wine and talk about your future, your hopes and dreams. Then call it a night and fall asleep in each other’s arms. What better way to start a brand new year.
If your children are really little and the thought of them staying up until midnight is totally out of the question make midnight at 8 or 9. If they are that little they probably can’t tell the time anyway and they won’t know the difference. You can still make it just as special and just as much fun.
Oh and don’t forget to take pictures….lots of pictures.
Spending a special night together like this is one that your children will remember forever, even when they are out with their friends at a bar on New Year’s Eve when they are 24 and are so drunk they can barely remember their own names. They’ll be blabbering to their friends about their favorite new year’s ever and then they’ll sneak off to a quiet corner and drunk call you saying how much they love you…lol.
I hope you enjoy your gift from us. I hope you see it as more than just a goody bag of New Year’s Eve fun but as an opportunity to create a wonderful family moment.
