New Year's Eve 2013

New Year's Eve is a family affair at the Willman household, which means that our celebrations get an early start somewhere around 3 or 4 in the afternoon- a necessity when "midnight" actually happens around 8 pm for us! 

Each hour counting down to midnight (or 8 pm) we had a bag for each of the girls to open that contained a treat, a small gift and an activity (or the supplies for an activity) for our family to do during that hour.

First up, we got our afternoon started with a glow stick dance party. Tiaras and new year's necklaces were included and we played our best dance music. 

Minnette played photographer and helped document the first of our New Year's Eve festivities on the last day of 2013.

Everyone was obviously super into it. (haha)

They were most definitely more interested in the glowing wands and bracelets they each got in their bag than they were in dancing. It was still fun.

Christmas tree turned "New Year's Tree"... just add streamers!

A NEW New Year's tradition... crab legs for our eve feast!

One of the hours all that the girls got in each of their bags was a roll of streamers, which can only mean one thing:

Wrap daddy up in streamers, watch him try to break free of them (which is way harder than you'd think), and play in the leftover mayhem (which lasts much, much longer than you'd think): 

Another hour's activities included New Year's coloring pages and our annual New Year's interview which includes their favorites from the last year and what they are looking forward to for the new year. Eventually, as they get older, this will include more goal making, but for now it is just cute to look back on their answers and remember so many small and funny things about them at this age:

If you click on each image, you should be able to see their answers. These were their actual responses, word for word! I was merely a scribe:

Minnette:

Aurelle:

Jovi:

Waits:

Then, to finish it all off, we had our "midnight countdown" where we watched a video of the Time Square ball drop from last year, counted down and screamed Happy New Year with lots of noise makers, and continued the celebration outside with a silly string fight. 

It is so much fun to be able to include our entire family in our New Year's festivities. And maybe someday they might actually make it to the real midnight!