This year instead of leaving our children and going to the ordinary boring and time wasting adult drunk fest new years eve bash, I claimed we would do another thing as a family.

We planned with some friends to entertain at their home and together we designed a great family friendly new years party. The menu comprised mostly hors d'oeuvre's. There were about eight different ones, all very good. A few examples are chips and salsa, bread with cheese and different vegetable spreads, mini dogs and meat balls. There were a few desert choices as well. We had lots of water and soda to drink also.

A lot of grazing over the hors d'oeuvre's.

Games a foot. There were five or six games that people were paid fake cash to complete and a big payoff if accomplished, like the Oreo cookie from forehead to mouth without touching. A game were one has to pick up candy canes that are laid on their sides over an edge implementing a candy cane tied to a chopstick with a twelve inch piece of string. The chopstick meanwhile is held in the mouth and cleaned each time completely with anti bacterial soap.

More grazing on the hors doeuvre, wow were they all good.

At midnight was of course the countdown and champagne celebration (sparkling apple cider for the children), hats, noise makers and poppers. We had the little plastic champagne glasses that you assemble, about 20 each in two different trays. In one tray all the glasses were filled up with champagne and the other tray of glasses filled up with sparking apple cider.

Following the ball drop celebration at midnight an auction occured for eight to ten items in plain brown paper bags. Each family pooled their cash collectively to bid on the bags. After that was the wind down and goodbyes as each family congregated and left. It was a good time and much better than the usual.