New Year's 2012: Bigger. Badder. Later

Usually by the time New Year's Eve rolls around, I'm over it.  I'm done with the running around, the family-togetherness, and the late nights and resulting cranky kids.  This year, though, in a fit of temporary insanity, we decided to let the kids stay up as they wanted to.  We thought they'd conk out around 10:00.  Boy, were we wrong.

Let's back up.

Something you should know about Sarah and Will: the only two components required for a party are 1.) hats, and 2.) balloons.  Cupcakes are a big bonus.  Though we didn't have cupcakes, I did have the two essentials plus a few extras.  And chocolate pudding. 

To kick off the evening, the short ones and I donned pink-and-silver-glittered party hats. 

And here is Sarah trying to blow up 4 balloons at once.

After the novelty wore off the horns and other noisemakers, I got out some sort of confetti poppers.  The kids needed help with them, they left the faint smell of gunpowder(?) in the air, but they sure were fun to pop and shoot the streamers out with.

Bubble wrap was next up on the agenda.  I got this idea from my Mom, because, over Christmas, the kids got into her Snow Village stuff and found the bubble wrap.  They went to town stomping all over it and making some really satisfying POP!'s.  I just got a roll at Staples, but it was the small-bubble kind, and therefore not as fun.

Mid-air

Even pre-schoolers deserve a toast to the New Year, so we had some "spicy drink" and felt super-fancy telling each other "Cheers!" every time we took a sip.

For some reason, blue food-coloring was a necessary addition to the drink.  Hence, the blue pucker on that girl of mine.  True to form, Will was unsatisfied with just having a blue mouth and ended up with blue hands as well.

Smooches.

We all made it to the countdown to midnight in good spirits, and bedtime was a breeze with such tired people around.

I'll tell you what, though.  We are NEVER keeping them up that late again, until they're in high school.  The next day was U-GLY.