New Year's Eve Party - People

Here are some faces from our New Year's Eve party. It was mostly neighbors, along with some former neighbors and other good friends. Everyone brought a dish to share, so we had good eats without us having to cook. (I did make deviled eggs, but for once decided to skip making piggies.)


I got to enjoy my drink - a "Snowflake" - Sprite mixed with vanilla ice cream.

Since we have young children, we try to keep our parties child friendly. The kids all got along well (and two neighbor girls even show up without their parents!) and there were no major injuries, although the decibel level got a bit high. The kids pretty much took over the play room. By the end of the evening, the floor had disappeared.



The castle tent had at least four giggling girls in it.


Then the kids found the poppers and invented a new way of decorating the Christmas tree. The poppers look like miniature champagne bottles and have a string at one end. When you jerk the string, there's a loud bang and streams of confetti fly out. The kids lined up and launched them at the Christmas tree, covering it with streamers.


Then, of her own accord, Sparkle got the broom and started sweeping! Too bad she didn't finish the job, after a few swipes of the broom she abandoned the task and left the boom in the middle of the floor next to her dust pile.


The party ended shortly after midnight. Most of the guests had young children who needed to get to bed. The kiddos who made it to midnight got to toast each other with sparkling apple juice (non-alcoholic!) in plastic wine glasses. (Amusingly enough, we ended up with *more* bottles of non-alcoholic sparkling juice than bottles of wine and champagne. Grandma and I each bought a bottle, and several other guests with young children also brought bottles.) I was amazed that Sparkle and Glitter stayed up so late. Glitter had taken a late nap, but even so it was *really* late for her. Sparkle refused to take a nap before the party, even though I encouraged her several times, and she didn't get cranky until after everyone left.


I put the girls to bed and then Wander and I started the long clean-up process. We got most of the big stuff cleared out (both in the house and outside) and the food put away before going to bed. Clearing out the playroom ended up being a good opportunity to throw away a bunch of forgotten and broken toys. The floor got swept (four times!), mopped, and vacuumed New Year's Day.