Abundantly Blessed: New Year's Eve

With all the canceled activities and social distancing, perhaps I'll finally be able to get caught up on my blogging! ;) It's fun to reminisce about when life looked a little more normal!

As per our usual tradition, our family hosted a New Year's Eve celebration at the end of the year. Not all the family was in town to attend, but those of us who were here enjoyed our time together. I chose 8 different activities, wrote these descriptions on paper, and then stuck the papers inside balloons. The kids took turns popping these balloons to uncover each consecutive activity.

First, we played Team Charades, which is like the game Telephone. The kids thought it was hilarious acting out things when they weren't even sure what they were acting out! We got a lot of laughs out of this one.

Then, each child partnered up with an adult to write silly stories. This is an activity that my sister and I LOVED doing with our cousins when we were younger! Each child/adult pair wrote one sentence at a time and then passed the story to the next pair. You're only allowed to look at one previous sentence each time you receive a new story. The end result is, not surprisingly, a very choppy, goofy, mixed-up story!

When our stories were finally completed, we read them out loud to the group. Some of the kids were laughing so hard, they couldn't even finish reading!

Next, we played Broom Limbo. We were pretty lenient with the rules on how the kids could shimmy under the limbo stick. :)

Then, it was time for dessert! I had baked some cupcakes ahead of time but left them unfrosted. The kids used a variety of frosting colors and toppings to decorate 2 cupcakes each. We definitely ended up with some unique desserts!

The next three activities didn't lend themselves to great photos. We played a family game of Careers (trying to guess each person's mystery occupation), brainstormed our favorite memories of 2019, and played a quick game of Head Down, Head Up. After that, each child paired back up with their adult partner from earlier in the evening to create a "Ball Drop" with gumdrops, spaghetti noodles and a marshmallow. It was much harder than it looked to make these free-standing!

Finally, the evening ended with our New Year's Eve Countdown (for us, at 9:00 rather than midnight!) and our balloon drop.

I had seen this balloon drop kit at Wal-Mart and thought I'd give it a try this year. It looked easier to assemble than my typical tablecloth ball-drop. Unfortunately, the rip cord on this balloon drop just tore the whole thing down from the ceiling, so Jason was our designated balloon distributor! ;) I'll go back to the normal ball drop idea next year!