New Years Eve Par-tay!

We had a festive evening on the last night of 2009. We had two other families come over; we had a total of 10 kids, aged 2 through 15, and 6 adults. Fortunately they're all well-mannered children, so no coup was staged.

Because we had so many kids (and because I am so old) we opted for celebrating New Years in Nova Scotia. That would be at 9pm Utah time. You know, it's always New Years someplace every hour!

Leading up to the raucous celebration at midnight Atlantic time, we ate delicious food and had lots of activities for the kids (and some for the parents, as you'll see.)

One of our first activities was a dog sled race. No, not that kind.
You see, we had the kids put a stuffed dog into the sled and they relay raced around me without letting the dog fall out of the sled.Yes, that's Pongo and Purdy of 101 Dalmatians making the trek through the snowy yard...on sleds.Next was the indoor snowball throw. And no, us old timers weren't stupid enough to actually have snowballs inside. We used indoor snowballs (more familiarly known as cotton balls) and the kids had to throw them into bowls about 6 feet away. The team with the most in the bowl won.

Big fun.

So much fun, the adults had to join in.Note the looks of determination on a few of the faces.
Taking it way to seriously. I think because we were split up guys against girls.

Next was Hot Bag (as opposed to Hot Potato). And no, there was nothing disgusting, warm and stinky in the bag.
We passed the bag around the circle until the music stopped, then whoever had the bag ripped off the outer bag and did whatever was written on the next bag.Like make your scariest face.Or your silliest face.Or do jumping jacks while you sing "Happy Birthday".Or hold your nose while you sing the ABC song.Or hold your tongue and say "I love olive juice" 5 times.Or lead the group in the pledge of allegiance.Or howl like a coyote for 10 seconds - which Emily could NOT do because she was too busy giggling - :)Or run around the circle flapping your arms and quacking like a duck.Or putting your fingers in your ears and turning around 10 times.Soon after this picture I about fell over on the rest of the group. Old guys should not do the spinning around thing. Bad idea. I bobbled like a sailor after a night of shore leave.

Mild amusement/fascination on the part of Abe.As we approached the magical 9pm hour, the kids counted us down, each one holding a number from 10 down to 1. As we counted down from 10, each one ran into the living room while we cheered them on, and when the final "1" came in, we celebrated a happy new year.
Balloons dropped from the ceiling...well, we poured them out of large black garbage bags anyway...and everyone had a grand time popping balloons and yelling "Happy New Year!"

And everyone was in bed well before midnight.

Lovely.