I love the “idea” of my kids celebrating New Year’s Eve with us, but the reality of it is a nightmare. Around about 8:00 PM, Ladybug is usually a sobbing mess and begs for us to let her go to bed. And my boy gets more and more hyper the later he is up, meaning the more tired he is, the less likely he is to fall asleep and the crazier he gets. And neither one of my kids will sleep in. They will wake up bright and early at 6:30 AM and be total grumps for the next two days.

So a couple of years ago, I started celebrating the Italian New Year’s Eve with them. It turns midnight in Italy at 3:00 PM PST, so we get to do the countdown without all the tears. I picked Italy because my kids love pizza and we do the food in an “Italian” theme. It has become one of our favorite traditions and I love how easy it is to throw it all together. We usually invite friends and we all bring some food and fun activities. I love it because we have as much fun as we do at the kids’ birthday parties, but there is a fraction of the prep work. Here are some of our favorite things to do.

Kid’s New Year’s Eve Ideas

Italian Food: We always order some pizza and bread sticks, and then drink Italian sodas. For my kids, I make them with spray whip cream instead of half and half because they like it better and the tower of whip cream on the top is always impressive. I have a ton of Torani syrups and the kids like making their own concoctions.

Birthday Cake: Since it is the birth of the new year, it really feels like there ought to be a birthday cake. So I make a birthday cake or cupcakes for the upcoming year. Each of the kids get a candle in their cupcake and we all blow them out at the same time after singing Happy Birthday. Usually, kids are always watching other people blow out candles for their birthdays, so getting to do it all at once is a big hit. One year, I hid chocolate kisses inside the cake when I frosted it and told the kids that if they got one, it meant they would have good luck that year. I hid enough so that all the kids would get one. That way nobody felt left out or like they were starting the new year off on the wrong foot.

Minute to Win It Games: I usually throw together some simple, winter-themed Minute to Win It games for the kids to play. One year we did toilet paper snowman race that was a huge hit. We also did the Candy Tape Ball game and it got pretty intense. If you have enough people, holding a Board Game Olympics is also a lot of fun.

The Countdown: For the big countdown, we like to make A LOT of noise. The kids love pop-its and party poppers. But we have also filled balloons up with confetti and popped them. Last year, I saved all those inflatable cushions Amazon uses when they mail stuff so that we could pop those. All the kids jumped on them at the same time and they were wonderfully loud! Then we all toast the new year with Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider.

The best part is the kids get to bed on time and mommy and daddy get to spend their New Year’s Eve doing what they love – watching a movie while snuggling on the couch. I know, I know, we are such exciting people.