A Family Friendly New Year's Party

I have to admit something and it may seem strange to you: I love New Years.

Don’t get me wrong- the fall warmth of Thanksgiving and the warm fuzzies of Christmas are fabulous and they seem to get ample attention at my house- but I love New Years. The idea of a fresh start and the anticipation of the year to come gets me as giggly as a kid with a new batch of play-dough.
Every year I have a celebration with my closest friends and family and I’d love to share some of my traditions with you. Here is what our family will be doing to ring in the New Year and some tips I have found to keep it memorable for all the right reasons:

Celebration gluttony: New Years around the world

To get the most out of our party, every year we celebrate New Years around the world. (Why only celebrate one very late celebration when you can have many celebrations all night long?) Above the buffet of family friendly snacks- chex mix, taquitos and other fun finger foods- hangs a giant clock (A great goodwill find a few years back) You can find one like it by searching for over-sized wall clock at http://www.target.com/. Beside it I hang 4 clocks, set at the appropriate times (see below), each with its own label for the location it represents. Through out the evenings festivities we can watch the wall clock and celebrate each city’s new year as it approaches.
Avoiding the mid-night meltdown:
My kids are young (all four under the age of 11) and the idea of keeping them awake until midnight seems like quite an undertaking. (A little research on my part has shown that most kids aren’t really ready to see the ball drop at midnight until about the ages of 10 or 11, anyways.) In order to avoid the “up waaay past bedtime meltdown,” we will celebrate New Years around the world.
Check out http://www.timeanddate.com/ for a nifty little new years calculator. I used a world map and stuck flag pins in the places we will “travel” to celebrate. Use this site for flag images: http://www.flags.net/indexa.htm

We will celebrate these cities (Since we are in California PST, United States)
London, England :4 pm
Buenos Aires, Argentina :6 pm
Santiago, Chile :7 pm
New York, New York: 9pm

At each given hour we will do the count down and run outside with our home made noise makers (decorated painted plastic soda bottles filled with beans and decorated with ribbon and stickers) Each kid gets to open up a goody bag for each time zone with activities to entertain for the next hour- a coloring page and crayons, some play dough and a cookie cutter, stickers and a frame- whatever makes your wee ones excited. Set the bags out for display on the buffet and decorate them with a clock for each hour you celebrate.
Our own New Year’s ball drop
I love the ball drop at times square so this year we will have our own version: Our New Years Pinata Party ball. Using paper mache and some foil paper squares- make your own pinata (or buy one at the store) Hang it from the highest point of the house and lower it each hour until the long awaited ball drop (We will do ours with New York, USA.) where you can give it a whack at “midnight.”

Reflection: Looking back at the past year
I love to scrapbook. Each year I grab a few pictures of each child during a memorable event and make a scrapbook station where they can scrapbook the past year and make a page for the next year’s resolutions. Each kid makes their own page and adds it to their album. I help the young one’s with their journal entries. It’s fun to watch how their pages morph from messy toddler pages to coherent school age creations as time goes by.

No matter how you choose to celebrate the New Year with your family, you too can create traditions that they will cherish for a lifetime. I hope you enjoyed taking a peak at our New Year's traditions. We sure enjoy participating in them.