What to do for New Year Eve?

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I have never celebrated New Year's Eve before. It's just a regular day. My sister's family goes with her in-laws. My parents go to bed, and we're left alone. Friends are already all set up, and we never get invited. Parties are pretty much traditionnally all the same year after year after year. So if you're out of the loop, how do you get *in* the loop?

 

I wouldn't mind doing something as a family, just the 4 of us, but what? Hotels are all filled up already. And I'm not sure I would want to sleep 4 of us in the same hotel room anyway, and we can't afford two rooms (or a suite...)

 

As of now, I really don't know what are my possibilities..

[Mejane]

You might have to have a party to be invited to the parties. We are going to a neighborhood get-together this year, but usually we have our own little family party at home. Finger foods, movies and games, watching the ball drop if we can stay awake. Frankly, I'd prefer to stay home. :001_smile:

[mom4him]

You might have to have a party to be invited to the parties. We are going to a neighborhood get-together this year, but usually we have our own little family party at home. Finger foods, movies and games, watching the ball drop if we can stay awake. Frankly, I'd prefer to stay home. :001_smile:

:iagree:Yup, this is what we do. I will probably let my two youngest 'camp out' in the living room but normally I am in bed by 11-11:30 no matter the day.:001_smile:

[Sasharowan]

We buy things like sliced summer sausage, cheeses, crackers, pickles, olives, cheese in a can, etc. and watch movies, play games, be silly and see who can last the longest. Usually ds14 and I win, since we have both stayed up all night before.

[Denisemomof4]

We buy things like sliced summer sausage, cheeses, crackers, pickles, olives, cheese in a can, etc. and watch movies, play games, be silly and see who can last the longest. Usually ds14 and I win, since we have both stayed up all night before.

 

what is cheese in a can???

[Dawn in OH]

We don't like to be out on the roads on New Year's Eve. We just have a party at home, just us. I make appetizers for dinner, we have Champagne and Sparkling grape juice. We watch a movie. The kids stay up late. We may or may not play some board games. We watch the ball drop in Times Square.

 

My parents did this same thing with my brother and I when we were kids. We loved it.

[Heather in OK]

We go to my Mom's and have Christmas with her. We are usually there from the 30th until the 2nd, so we also celebrate NYE with her. Our tradition is to have snack foods, watch movies, and see if we can all stay up to watch the ball drop. :)

[Truscifi]

Cheese in a can, also known (at least at my house) as squirt cheese, is a fake cheese product that comes in a can like Reddi-Whip. I think the most common brand is Easy Cheese. You can squirt it on crackers. Or straight in your mouth. It is delicious and horribly bad for you.

[BMW]

Since our Christmas party was for family and that meant waaaaay too many people in the house to allow the children to invite friends, we came up with the New Year's Eve party for the kids. They can invite one or two friends to have pizza and games with. BUT, we're talking 6-9pm. No one stays past 9pm. Dh is a fuddy-duddy when it comes to sleep. He is ALWAYS sleepy in the evenings, even in the summer and it's really bad in the winter...

 

Anyway, so we're doing that.

[stansclan89]

We have a family friendly party free of alcohol and usually invite 5 or 6 other families to be with us. But we just do what the others said they do. Watch movies, play video/board games, eat lots of finger foods, visit and wait for the ball to drop.

[myfunnybunch]

We stay home too. We make our own pizzas, play games, put the younger guys to bed. Ages 9 and up get to stay awake to watch Men in Black and watch the ball drop, then a champagne/sparkling cider toast and off to bed.

 

Cat

[specialmama]

We usually do 3 cool things, and I believe that they've become our tradition.

1) We parents turn all the clocks back a few hours early in the day so that my kids think they stay up till midnight, but they really go to bed about 2 hours after their regular time. We eat junk, blow horns, and while we're waiting for "midnight", we do the second thing...

2) We write a list called "The 10 memorable things from the year gone by." We also write a list called "The 10 things we home to come" and we date them. We seal these in envelopes and store them away for some day yet to be determined. Perhaps I'll leave them for my kids to pour over after I die. I'm morbid like that.

3) Once the kids are in bed dh and I snuggle with a glass a wine and watch a movie together. We must remember to turn the clocks back!

[Garga]

I have never celebrated New Year's Eve before. It's just a regular day. My sister's family goes with her in-laws. My parents go to bed, and we're left alone. Friends are already all set up, and we never get invited. Parties are pretty much traditionnally all the same year after year after year. So if you're out of the loop, how do you get *in* the loop?

 

If it were me, I'd pick my most outgoing friend and ask if my family could come to the party they're going to.

 

This wouldn't work with all of my friends. But I have a couple of extroverted friends that I could easily walk up to and say, "Dude! We have no stinkin' plans for New Year's! How pathetic is that!?! Can we crash your party!?"

 

This would probably only work for your extroverted friends who love a crowd.

 

I managed to get an invite to a family that has a HUGE bash every year. They play charades, another game that is too complicated to explain here (but tons of fun), and eat MOUNDS of steamed shrimp. They watch the ball drop on a big tv. It's REALLY loud, and the kids sleep wherever they drop. Unfortunately, we moved from the area, and haven't met anyone who does parties like that in our new town.

 

A couple of years ago, my friends and I all had small children, so we celebrated the New Year's of some island in the middle of the Atlantic. (It was 9:00 our time, and midnight on the island.) That way the kids could get home to bed, but we still had fun.

[Cinder]

We usually do a jigsaw puzzle and eat junk food! :D The puzzle is a tradition from dh's family when he was growing up.

 

The last couple years we've been invited to a friend's house for their New Year's Eve bonfire. If it's too cold to sit out and roast hotdogs we just move inside. I'm guessing it might be too cold where you are to do the bonfire, though. ;)

[Caitilin]

We stay up late, as a family, play board games, and eat junk food. :) Not exciting, but fun.

[*lifeoftheparty*]

.

[littlebug42]

Our dear friends have a daughter whose birthday is NYE. We always spend it with them celebrating her bday and ringing in the New Year. We play board games, chit chat, eat and watch the ball drop. The kids play WII etc and play until they drop.

 

If it weren't for this though, we would stay home and just do the same things ourselves.

[TN Mama]

We go out to a very casual dinner with dh's family and then bowling. We always finish the night with a Krispy Kreme drive-thru.

[cathmom]

Dh and I have usually celebrated as a romantic evening. I make him his favorite soup from Outback Steakhouse and his favorite dessert, and we watch a romantic movie and drink something alcoholic usually, and watch the ball drop.

[ConnieB]

Like so many others, we too prefer to stay home. We eat foods that we don't eat the rest of the year because they are so bad for us, lol.....we usually play board games (and if there is a new game we're buying we don't do it for Christmas, it becomes a NYE gift instead, so it's new and exciting for the evening).

 

I'm a morning person so I seldom can stay awake until midnight, so I go to bed and they wake me up around 11:30 to watch the ball drop.

 

Last year, my teenager joked that she has never seen the ball drop...and I was quite puzzled, she's been up at midnight since she was an infant, and I have the photos of her next to the TV with the new year in lights each year to prove it. She quips...yep...and so I've never actually SEEN it drop because I'm posed ready for the photo! Oops. Anyway, it IS a great tradition....as infants they were just "there"...but as they were old enough to pose, we put a champagne glass with sparkling cider in their hands and they stand near the TV for that new year photo. I put the photos in a collage frame and it's really cool to watch them grow!

 

Another tradition we started a couple years ago was instead of talking about resolutions for the new year, we talk about how we grew or changed in the last year, and whether it was good or not, lol. Sometimes it's better to look back on what you did as motivation for those resolutions.

 

I'd also like to encourage you to ignore all of the suggestions if you find it feels forced or awkward. There is no law that says you have to celebrate the new year....and there is also nothing wrong with feeling that it's just another date on the calendar. Do what works for you family! Whatever that is I wish you a happy 2011.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

We are lucky to have a friend with a gigantic house and she invites everyone she knows with kids to come over at 5:30 for dinner and stay to celebrate New Year's Eve a little early. They have actually rigged up a disco ball to drop from the 2nd floor balcony to the living room floor. The big moment happens at 8:00 PM, so that we can all get the kids home at a reasonable time and then celebrate at the real time at home if we want. The best part is that there is usually a theme- this year it's FANCY PANTS! You have to wear your fanciest pants.

 

But, if we didn't do that, I'd party at home like we did when I was a kid. My sibs and I would spend a good part of the day ripping construction paper into little bits for confetti. Then at midnight, my mom would serve sparkling cider and we'd throw the confetti and use noisemakers. Sometimes my cousins would join us, too. We had little party foods and snacks.

[kewb]

We order in Chinese food, drink sparkling juice, and I am usually asleep by 10 and the kids and dh stay up to watch the ball drop. Dh usually gives me a nudge when the ball is about to drop.

[MomOfOneFunOne]

Cheese in a can, also known (at least at my house) as squirt cheese, is a fake cheese product that comes in a can like Reddi-Whip. I think the most common brand is Easy Cheese. You can squirt it on crackers. Or straight in your mouth. It is delicious and horribly bad for you.

 

We use it to train our dog sometimes. :tongue_smilie:

 

My daughter and I went to a demonstration/lecture of a woman who trains working dogs. She uses that stuff, Cheez Whiz or something like that, and since then, every time we intro a new trick for our dog, we use that.

 

We don't eat it tho.

[creekland]

We definitely prefer to stay home. We play board games from supper until about 11:45pm, then turn on the TV to NYC (whichever channel has it) and prepare a glass of sparkling apple cider for each of us. We toast, then turn off the TV and go sit in our living room looking at our Christmas tree while everyone shares memorable moments from the previous year until we can't remember any more and are tired enough to go to bed.

 

I absolutely love it and prefer it to any party (large or small).

[MomOfOneFunOne]

I hate, hate, hate, to be out on the streets on New Year's eve. We stay home. Sometimes we're invited to a day time party to celebrate and we go but once it gets toward evening, we're home.

 

We do what pps do: make something fun for dinner, watch movies till late. At about 11.30 p we turn on the television and watch the embarrassing ppl, music, et c and then the ball.

 

Also, Jan 1 is a holy day so by 12:00:01, we're alseep so we can get up for mass!

 

Oh, last year we said we were going to start the tradition of spending some time looking at photos from the previous year but we never got around to it. I hope we start that this year!

[SailorMom]

We play board games, eat appetizer-y food, work on massive puzzles, and then at midnight we walk down to the fishing pier in our neighborhood and watch the fireworks that are set off in Pensacola.

[DawnM]

I think we are going to watch movies or have a game night and fondue and appetizers!

 

That is my plan anyway.

 

When we lived in CA we had a standing New Year's invite to a party. We would watch the ball drop at 9pm on TV in NY (midnight there) and all go home and then all meet up at a friend's house at 5:30am the next morning since she lived on the Rose Parade route and we would have b-fast on the lawn and watch people walk by until the parade started.

 

I have a hard time New Year's Day because I miss living in Pasadena and we don't have a standing invite here.

 

Dawn

[Impish]

We usually do 3 cool things, and I believe that they've become our tradition.

1) We parents turn all the clocks back a few hours early in the day so that my kids think they stay up till midnight, but they really go to bed about 2 hours after their regular time. We eat junk, blow horns, and while we're waiting for "midnight", we do the second thing...

2) We write a list called "The 10 memorable things from the year gone by." We also write a list called "The 10 things we home to come" and we date them. We seal these in envelopes and store them away for some day yet to be determined. Perhaps I'll leave them for my kids to pour over after I die. I'm morbid like that.

3) Once the kids are in bed dh and I snuggle with a glass a wine and watch a movie together. We must remember to turn the clocks back!

I'm so stealing this idea!

 

As for us, we stay in. I've always wanted to go to a NYE party, but now its out of the question.

 

One New Year's we conceived Princess...maybe a repeat this year? :D:lol:

[specialmama]

I'm so stealing this idea!

 

As for us, we stay in. I've always wanted to go to a NYE party, but now its out of the question.

 

One New Year's we conceived Princess...maybe a repeat this year? :D:lol:

 

 

The ironic thing is that my typo works in your situation! :lol:

[Amy loves Bud]

We host game night here. We get together with 4 or 5 other families and do a potluck dinner. Everyone brings their favorite games and we just hang out, play games, and usually some of the kids watch a movie. It's low key. There is alcohol, but not to excess which is often the case at NYE parties so this works better for us.