New Years Eve… with the kids!

Hello!  Hope you’ve all had a fabulous festive season so far… was Santa kind to you?

Tonight, it’s the big one… the grand finale… New Years Eve!

Since having kids, NYE nights are spent round at friends or family houses… we have been to the occasional party, but long gone are the days of working out whose going where, sourcing enough tickets for our favourite haunt and going #outout on what would inevitably be the coldest night of the year, wearing not very much and then freezing our backsides off walking home because taxis are so bloody hard to find *shudders at the mere thought*

Nowadays, my NYE nights are pretty sedate and I really rather like the pressure-free-ness of it.

So, today, it’s just a quick little post about something you can do with the kids (if you’re stuck at home with them!) to kill time after your evening meal but before any kitchen disco kicks off.  Something where you get together as a family and have a little laugh instead the usual bored board games…

Image taken from Google

Now don’t get me wrong, I rather enjoy a good old board game with the family over Christmas, but its just not my bag on NYE.

Right – what is it I so love doing with my little Threads family of 4 and my sister, her husband and their 2 children?

It started 4 years ago, when my eldest was 4 years old, and my youngest just a wee 6 month old baby: I scoured the net for ‘things to do with kids on NYE’ and came across this idea:

A review of the year gone by questionnaire! Ta-daaaa!

What? Haven’t sold it to you with that oh-so-catchy-a-title? Ha! well, read on…

We basically sit down with the kids, drinks in hand (whether mock or cocktails!)  and go though our year with a series of questions about the previous year:

Kids Questionnaire:

• Favourite Moment of 2016?
• Favourite Song?
• Favourite Film/TV program
• Favourite breakfast/lunch/dinner?
• Favourite toy?
• Favourite book?
• Favourite friend?
• Wish for 2017?

Adults Questionnaire:

Now this isn’t vastly different to the kids one to be honest, just a couple of minor tweaks:

• Favourite Moment of 2016?
• Favourite Song?
• Favourite Film/TV program
• Favourite breakfast/lunch/dinner?
• Favourite gadget/blog/tweet etc?
• Favourite book?
• Favourite news story/world event?
• Wish for 2017?

On the back of the questionnaire we also draw around the kids hands and make a note of their height as well as taking a polaroid of everyone on the night to stick on the questionnaire.

Last years ‘polaroid’ for the Yearbook review scrapbook… we’d all seen The Force Awakens the previous week, so there was a bit of Star Wars action going on in the pics…!

Seeing it written down in black and white like this, I realise it can sound pretty boring… however, the kids LOVE it.

The first year we did it – I only came across the idea online on the morning of NYE so we were missing a vital component to assist us with the questionnaire: a memory jar.

Image taken from Google because my memory jar is not photograph worthy as its a plain, unlabelled kilner jar with bits of folded paper in. Perhaps I’ll finally do a fancy label for it this year?!

It is really, really, really hard to remember things you’ve done as a family, achievements and so on from the year gone by… we struggled with the question ‘favourite moment of the year’.

However, the second year, we had kept a memory jar full of little memories from the year ranging from the cutesy ‘first tooth falling out’ or ‘first words spoken’ through to the obvious family holiday and through to the daft, silly little things such as the time I got ‘goosed’ during my sister’s birthday walk (to cut a long story short there, we came across some angry geese, I tripped and fell and a goose walked over my back…!)

So yes, going through the memory jar was full of laughs for us as a family…

I keep the questionnaires in a scrap book and so the following years we might go through a couple of the old ones that the kids have done to poke fun at what telly program they liked best or song… and luckily the threads kids and sister’s all know how to have a laugh at their younger selves!

My oldest & I busy with our questionnaires last year. He was 7 last NYE, and as you can see, so excited about going through the memory jar and talking about the year, he’s all blurry!!

Because there are 8 of us, the whole thing takes about an hour or so of ‘calmer’ drinking and chatting after dinner, before the kitchen disco kicks off…

We’ll have 3 midnight countdowns to get through:

• 9pm for the 4 year old (he really, really can’t manage 10)
• 10pm possibly 10.30 for the 8 year old and then
• the real midnight!

2013 and an early 9.30pm “new years” countdown with my oldest who as just 5 then and as you can see, he was suffering from tired ‘pink cheek’ and slightly insane “I’m up reaaaaally late” eyes!!

I know this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but we sometimes have friends down and have done this with them and it’s still been a laugh.   My niece is 15 and nephew is 13 so I imagine we don’t have many years of doing this together with them… But for now, it’s become a “thing” for us all.

So what do you think of this… would you do a review of the year? Given how dreadful the political landscape and the sheer volume of celebrity deaths this past year, it might be a nice way to remember the ‘good’ things that happened?

Or do you already do something like this anyway but with different questions?  I’d love to hear your suggestions for any questions to add in if so?

I’ve been blogging for 9 months now and if you’re reading this, have ever commented – thank you.  Thank you for your support this year and I’ll get back to my usual fashion blogging next week once the kids are back at school.

Until then: Happy New Year to you all!!

Bx

PS: here are some outfit pics from the past week:

I’d planned on wearing my lovely Donna Ida On Stage Knit in Noir Stars jumper given it’s got sparkly silver stars all over it, but my boys bought me this pretty H&M top, so this is what I wore on Christmas day:

Not my Donna Ida silver stars, but stars all the same, and stars chosen by my 8 and 4 year old for their mama with love

We travelled up to Winslow in Buckingham very early on Boxing Day morning so that we could go and see the spectacle that is the local ‘hunt’ passing through… as it had been mild, I went for a pleated skirt & jumper option:

Love this Benetton x Stella Jean sweater emblazoned with a capital B (for Bean in my head!) – one of my Christmas presents.

And finally, here’s what I wore on the 27th for a pub lunch with in-laws, and Mr T’s extended family of step-siblings, their partners, kids…

I finally got me a Bella Freud jumper! Though this is an eBay bargain!