New Year's Eve Party 2012/2013

Happy New Year 2013! New Year. New Experiences. New Challenges. As my uber-salesman husband likes to say, New Opportunities! In that spirit, we allowed The Blessings to stay up until midnight for the first time last night. The morning of NYEve, they were greeted by party invitations on their school desks. The entire day was filled with anticipation (and a few empty threats on our parts to cancel the whole thing if the 'enthusiasm' was not tempered) By 5PM when R and I began putting up the decorations, emotions has reached a fevered pitch. I was beginning to think there was no way this thing was going to live up to expectations.

The balloon/streamer wall was erected, complete with glow sticks inside some of the ballons. The numbered balloons had a slip of paper inside each one with an activity of that hour written on it.

The Blessings did not know what to expect. R told them that the numbers were for the multiplication tables they had to recite when that balloon was broken. By 8pm (party time start/regular bedtime) they were convinced that they were in for an evening of rousing multiplication tables, math word problems and sentence diagramming. After all, they had never been to an NYE party, they didn't know what to expect. Finally, the hour arrived. 8 O'clock:

The baby blessing was given the first balloon pop! What did it say?

In the spirit of Christian humility, our baby blessing trampled us all! In our defense, the cards were leveled. She got questions like: Who built the ark and saved the animals during the flood? While we got: How many books of the New Testament did the Apostle Paul write? Name them. To her credit, the Bookish blessing still almost beat her, and the 'boy'sterous blessing played under formal protest that Pastor Gray had fed him incorrect information in a recent sermon.

The 9 O'clock hour:

Boysterous blessing got the ballon pop. The activity for that hour was to make a time capsule. Everyone answered questions like favorite food, favorite book/movie/animal etc, then they popped the balloons with the glow sticks.

that last picture of G cracks me up. She had become a bit 'balloon shy' by then. 10 o'clock:

Making noise makers and confetti for midnight!

11 O'clock: making (and eating) ice cream!

Then Daddy broke open the 'bubbly'!

Yes, F IS holding that glass like a pro! We choose to simultaneously point out and ignore that:) Snuggling under the blankets from the cold ice cream.

Finally the big hour arrived! Happy New Year 2013!!