Sunday, December 15, 2013

Christmas Party Idea For Bored Kids

My house is small.  Really small... three bedrooms, two baths, a living room, kitchen and dining room all in 1320 sq ft.  We moved here from a big big house and we are loving small home living!  Because it is our first Christmas back in Jacksonville where most of my family lives (sans our two sons and their wives), I decided to host the family Christmas Party this year.  We will have five children from ages 3-10 and sixteen adults.  It's going to be a tight squeeze in our living room, but we are family and everything will work.  I've been thinking of what the children could do to not be bored and considered placing my laptop with kid DVDs to watch in a guest bedroom that happens to have a book shelf of children's books (leftovers from my adult sons), Start a Santa puzzle on the table and that still may be a reality, but I can imagine unsupervised bed jumping and bonked noggins.

We live in Florida and have a nice fenced in back yard.  I was thinking, it's too bad it isn't Easter so we could have an egg hunt.  OH GENIUS IDEA!  I am going to put up a lighted tree on the back deck and buy a bunch of plastic ornaments to hide around the back yard.  Who finds the star for the top wins a prize! They can decorate the tree with their findings.

I went to Big Lots and bought a 4' fake tree for $10, a box of 48 red plastic ornaments for $8 and recycled a gold star for the top.  The kids LOVED it and after they found all the ornaments and decorated, the re-hid ornaments for another round.  Success!