New Years Eve with Some Grands

Lloyd and I in the past few years have hosted a New Year's Eve party in our home with family and friends.  It was a fun time. This year everyone agreed that it would be good for us all to stay in our own homes and celebrate quietly with their families and not have to venture out on the dark cold roads. (We're getting older, you know!)

So, this year we were available when our son Mike and DIL Avril had a fancy party to go to and we got to have their three kids stay with us for a New Years Eve sleep-over.

Mike and Avril, heading out to welcome in the New Year

Alex, Hannah and Kenny arrived with their parents sporting masks they had made earlier in the day.

They are very creative children

They were excited to have a sleepover with us and wanted to try their best to stay up until midnight to see the new year in for the first time.  That meant that we had to have something to keep them busy for four long hours.

We made goop...fun and easy.

Hannah was the only one who actually got her hands
in the mixing bowl and worked the slimy stuff

The boys and Hannah all liked working with it and stretching it until it snapped, then watching
as it all came together into one blob again.  Magic!

We had individual balloon pinatas.  This was tricky.  Putting the little trinkets in the balloons was more challenging than the instructions on Pinterest led me to believe.  I had them ready before the kids got there so they wouldn't know what was in them.  There were three balloons with prizes in them, the rest were empty.  The kids took turns bashing at them until they each burst one and scrambled for the prizes (have to keep everything fair, you know).

Then we opened up their sofa bed (just in case someone fell asleep) and gave them noisemakers to practice on in preparation for the stroke of twelve.

In the meantime, we watched The Lego Movie, and still no one fell asleep.

We watched the countdown on television and at the stroke of midnight we all shouted and made noise and Papa snapped a selfie of the excitement.
 
The kids were so proud that they managed to stay up and see the new year in.  This was a fun party group.

Twenty minutes later, they were sound asleep, with the old folks not far behind.

I hope you all had a good New Years Eve and will find 2015 to be a happy and healthy year.

Happy New Year!