Do you go out for New Year’s Eve to celebrate as a family? Do you do anything special at home to mark the ocassion? We used to go out dancing and drinking before we had children. Once the kids came into our life that all changed.
Over the past 12 years we’ve done many different things on New Year’s Eve with our kids. Depending on the weather, we will sometimes go out or do things at home. Here’s a list of some of our past activities.
1. Drive around and look at all of the Christmas lights one last time. Many of the holiday light attractions are open around here until the end of the first weekend in January.
2. A lot of local establishments hold family night on NYE. We’ve gone bowling, ice skating, indoor rock climbing, roller skating, etc. You can usually get a packaged deal at a bargain price.
3. Movie night at home! If the weather is bad we’ll stay home and order in pizza. Then we’ll enjoy a few games and a movie or two as a family. We typically don’t watch the ball drop or any of the NYE celebrations on TV because most are not kid appropriate.
4. Fireworks! There are 4 firework shows within a 10-30 minute drive from our home on NYE. All are free!
5. Treasure hunt! I started doing a treasure hunt for my kids 2 years ago. I picked up little trinkets and candy at the local Dollar General Store. I hide them around the house and then on NYE they go on a treasure hunt to find them.
6. Family photos. You can do these inside and/or outside your home. We make sure to take at least 5 photos on NYE. Then every year we look back at the previous year’s photos to see how much we all changed. Amazing how quickly your kids can change their looks in a year.
7. If you’re into crafts you can prepare a special family craft project to do together. It should be an easy project that doesn’t take up a lot of time. Not sure what to do? You can find pre-assembled crafting kits at your local craft supply store and on Amazon. They typically have everything that you need all packaged into one kit.
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I love the idea of a treasure hunt, but I have not yet started to do it. I do have a movie night.
Sounds like you guys have a great evening plans to celebrate. I got over going out on New Years a lot of years ago. There are just to many drunks etc on the road new years eve.