Noon Year's Eve Party

We met up with our friends Ian and Jake at the Glenview Park District for their Noon Year's Eve party for younger kids. They had a craft room, snack room, game room and a gym with bouncy houses.  You could go to any room that you wanted to in any order.  At the end there was a balloon drop in the main lobby.

We started in the craft room where the kids made magic wands and bracelets.  They really loved adding the stickers to their magic wands.  After the kids finished decorated, staff taped crepe paper streamers to the back.

 Then the kids wanted to go to the bouncy houses.  We had to wait in line for about 10 minutes to do each bouncy house.  It was a lot of waiting!  Then we went to grab snacks and play games.  The kids got little prizes after each game (can I tell you how tired I am of little tiny prizes that they don't really care about?)

These rooms were really crowded just like all the rooms were!  After the games we still had 1/2 an hour so we went back to the bouncy house gym.  We waited in line for one and then waited in line for the second bouncy house and when we were next (10-15 minutes before the balloon drop), they closed the bouncy house :(  We then had to go wait in the lobby for the balloon drop.  Not sure why they wanted a bunch of excited young kids sitting in the lobby for 10-15 minutes. N2 managed to move themselves to closer to the middle after all the kids stood up.  You can just barely see their heads in this picture.

Finally they started the countdown and the balloons came down! N2 were very excited to get a balloon.

But then all the older kids started taking the balloons and popping them which N2 did NOT like.  Noah put his hands over his ears and I swiftly moved in to remove them from the middle.  We did manage to get each of them a balloon and get them out of the crowd of kids.  The popping continued for several minutes.  It was really awful.  Guess I know I don't need to go back to one of these events soon!

Then we enjoyed a nice lunch at Egg Harbor Cafe with our friends (after a 20 minutes wait where I read books to the kids-this place was packed!).  Natalie picked a large kids meal that had scrambled eggs, 2 slices of bacon, 2 sausages and 2 pancakes!  She at all the meat and 1 pancake.  Oh well.   Then we stopped by to see mom and dad.

Later on New Year's Eve we let N2 stay up until 9.  We watched a couple movies beforehand.   Then Brian and I went to bed around 11 so no one saw in the new year!