A new tradition?

I hope so! While visiting my family this Christmas, my cousin, Wendy, mentioned that she made envelopes for her daughters last year with an activity written down in each one. As the hours on New Year's Eve counted down, they opened up an envelope, one each hour. Her daughters are a bit older than mine, so she let them stay up a little later than normal. They did things like make resolutions and play basketball at 8pm in the dark on their driveway.

I decided to try it with our family. After a trip to the doctor with Kaytlin, we started. At 1pm, they worked on New Year coloring pages from Activity Village. At 2pm, they had a special snack. At 3pm, they drank hot chocolate. At 4pm, we made snowflakes together out of coffee filters. (The rest of the day, Allyssa and David kept pointing at the window and saying, "It's snowing outside!!") At 5pm, we ate supper, and they got to drink juice. (This is a VERY rare thing in our house. I'm not sure if they've had juice in the last 6 months besides on Sunday mornings before Sunday School at church.) At 6pm, they went outside and jumped around and screamed "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!" I died laughing at the sight of this. The neighbors are certainly glad we are moving now. At 7pm, we all gave New Year Kisses to each other, and the kids went to bed being told, "I'll see you next year." It was really actually only 3 minutes later that I saw them, but hey.

It was a lot of fun!