New Year's Eve/Day ideas

[christyg]

Hi everyone! I am looking for some New Year's Eve/Day ideas. We don't usually go anywhere, so it's just the four of us (my kiddos are 7 and 5). To be honest, we have not done much for this holiday in years past, even before having kids. We usually don't even stay up until midnight. After all of the busyness of Christmas, we are all just ready for a relaxing weekend before jumping back into work and school. But, I would like to do something fun with the kids that is simple.

I was just wondering what kind of traditions you do for either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, like meals, games, movies, etc. Thanks so much for any suggestions!

Merry Christmas!

Christy

[mamanlait]

Christy,
We always played Monopoly on New Years Eve in my family growing up... and drank hot cider. We carry on the simple tradition. I'd love to hear others.
Amy

[mamayi]

An idea I've had but never done (yet) is to spend some time reflecting on the past year and writing down memories in a journal.
With everyone thinking back on the past year I am sure many memories (good and bad) will pop up to be written down.
Then some time could be spent thinking about things that you want to accomplish in the new year (individual goals and as a family).
Then you can pray over all that was written, thanking God for his providence and care over the past year and looking forward to His continued work in the coming one.

And in our house any celebration requires a cake and balloons. My girls love to decorate cakes so we usually do that on New Years Eve. (and my birthday is the next day so we are all ready for that!)
This past year my dc were allowed to stay up as late as they could. (Only one made it to midnight!) We watched movies and ate popcorn and played Wii.

This is a good question and I am looking forward to hearing what other people do!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

[pjdobro]

For the last few years, we've either hosted or attended a party with our "twin friends". We have a group of friends that all have twins within 6 months of age of our twins. There are 6 sets of twins in all. So we get together, play games, eat, and ring in the new year. It's a lot of fun. Then on New Year's Day we always watch the Rose Parade. That's something I grew up doing. Then we have our traditional dinner which consists of black-eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread. Our meat that we have with that has varied from year to year. For a number of years though we've had bbq pork butt. The collard greens and black-eyed peas are another tradition with which I grew up. You can tell I'm Southern.

[raceNzanesmom]

We usually have pizza for dinner and some snack foods on hand. If there's a good family movie out we'll rent that to watch. Then we play board games all evening. The youngest picks first, then we go up from there. At midnight we kiss and hug and make some noise, then someone says a prayer for the new year. It's off to bed after that. Dh always has to work at 7 on NY. The boys and I watch football and put away the Christmas decorations.

[Tansy]

we don't make resolutions nor do we always stay up all night if were tired we go to bed!
But we do have a few traditions that we love!

Mom gets some promise verses and puts them in a jar and we draw one from as God promise to us for the next year.

We also have a blessings jar. We write down all of the blessings answers to prayer God did for us in the past year, and empty last years jar and read them, stuff the new "blessings" in the old jar to read next year.

Tho this year I was thinking of doing Shabu shabu... thats where you have hot broth at the table and cook veggies and thin slices of meat and build your own bowl of soup. This is a new years tradition in China

[moedertje]

Before we had children we used to go to New Years Eve service at church and have people over at our house afterward and eat soup. The last few years have been different as it depended on how little the youngest was etc. Now the kids are 8, 5 and 3.
I would love to just stay home like I did when I was a little girl. We would go visit the elderly people in our family during the afternoon and go home and have soup and different snacks. We would all kneel at Mom and Dad's bed, pray and have sparkling pear juice!
I think a fun game night would be in place in the early hours My kiddo's are not feeling well so I think we will take a long nap, not visit with anyone and just play games, eat soup and shrimp!!! listen to IHOP, Onething Conference than pray and go to bed:-)..
Good idea for a post!

[psreit]

Good ideas. We don't have any traditions, but we usually like to get together with at least one other family and have a fun night. However, with the baby, I didn't even make those plans for this year. I'm the socialite, so I don't think dh will mind a quiet night at home. DD23 is visiting her 'friend' out of state and dd21 is going bowling, so we will probably just play some games with dd7 and hang out here.

I like the idea of the blessings jar and then reflecting on the past year. Maybe we will try something like that this coming year. I would be so good for dd7. The days go by so quickly that we usually don't stop to really count our blessings and thank the Lord for what He has done in our lives. So often, I feel like Martha, worrying about the doing, instead of being like Mary and taking time to just 'sit at Jesus' feet'. The thing I like about New Years is that it kind of gives me that feeling of starting over in some areas that I know I am weak. Not resolutions, just purposing to try to do better. Thank you for helping to renew my focus this New Year on what truly matters.