In years past, we’ve celebrated New Year’s Eve by making gingerbread houses. This worked really well, as it gave the littles something to do, and allows us to spread out typical Christmas activities.

This year, we decided to keep our gingerbread houses, but move their creationism to a local hotel instead.

Those who got bored of playing god with the gingerbread men got settled on a bed to watch the Nutcracker Ballet playing on a cable station.

And of course, we had our most fun at the highlight of any hotel: Swimming! In January!

We had gift cards to the kids’ favorite restaurant and cashed those in for ultimate merriment.

BUT LITTLE DID THEY KNOW that the next morning they would be dining at their other most favorite restaurant in the world: Denny’s!

I want to include this last picture here because it makes me laugh. In all of our planning to have a super fun night for these kids, we forgot that they would be too excited to go to sleep. Taylor & I hid out in this pee colored bathroom (fitting) while waiting for kiddos to talk themselves into sleeping.

I loved having a little event like this to look forward to in the two weeks of Christmas break. It cost us around $100 – much more expensive than last year’s gingerbread house making 🙂 – so we’ll see if it’s something that can become a tradition for the future 🙂

Happy New Year!