New Year's Eve Cousin Party

We didn't get together with cousins in the area over Christmas, so we were glad everyone was available to come hang out on New Year's Eve! We ate pizza and lots of other yummy food and played games (mostly Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Happy Salmon - another new favorite, and the Couch Game). The kids entertained themselves for a while, and Liza unintentionally ran a one-woman nail salon out of her room. 

I think Liza enjoyed doing nails for the first one or two people,
but then she felt like she was missing out on the fun downstairs.

The other parents (who all have younger kids) wanted to have an early-ish countdown so they could get little ones to bed. We started the process at about 9:30, and I made the mistake of handing out noisemakers too early. The noise was deafening. I figured there was nothing I could do about it, so we just endured it for a while. Then I remembered that Lindsey was gone running an errand and we didn't know when she would be back. So I finally raised my voice as loud as I could while trying not to scare the kids in the house who aren't used to hearing yelling (everyone but my own). I told everyone to put their noisemakers in their pockets, and we did the Macarena and the Cha Cha Slide while we waited for Lindsey to get back. THEN we had a fun countdown with plenty of noise, confetti streamers, and sparkling cider.

The older kids all had things they wanted to do with their friends for New Year's, and we mostly let them, once the cousins were on their way home. Liza had about an hour with her friend group from elementary school. She was glad to see her friends but sad that she was the only one leaving before midnight (we picked her up at 11:00 - 30 minutes past her usual curfew). Jack went to a huge multi-stake dance at the Pleasant Grove rec center and had a blast. We let him stay until midnight and picked him up right after we took the picture below. We also let Cat stay out past her normal curfew so she could ring in the new year with friends.

It wasn't that long ago that the kids were happy to eat popcorn and watch a movie on New Year's Eve. At 10:00 we could watch the ball drop in NYC then put them to bed. We're getting old. They're growing up fast.