My three oldest (13, 11, 10) wanted to stay up on New Year’s Eve. This is a new request so I immediately said no. They pleaded. So I compromised and told them that I’d wake them at 11:30 to come down and watch the Times Square ball drop. It was dopey of me because the three of them just went upstairs and giggled for three hours and didn’t sleep a wink until I told them they could come down.

But they came downstairs and I turned on the television. I first went to Fox where I saw Marlon Wayans be weird and keep making racial jokes which felt a bit awkward. My thirteen year old turned to me and asked me if he was racist.

I just turned the channel to ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve to see former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy threaten to make out with random people. My ten year old said she didn’t know her and asked what she did to get famous. Well, I wasn’t about to tell her that she got famous for getting nekkid’ and telling people to stop vaccinating their children so I just turned the channel.

To CNN I went and saw Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin standing there. I immediately turned that off. And thank goodness I did because she was completely obscene last night. (Check out Noel Sheppard’s story on it at Newsbusters. If you ask me she should be immediately fired.)

I clicked back to ABC just in time to see Taylor Swift sing because that’s what the girls really wanted anyway. She seems like a nice girl but I don’t know what was going on with her but she sounded…uhm…not good. (Does she always sound like that live?)

After Taylor Swift I muted the television and the girls and I just talked. They were overtired so they giggled and laughed hysterically about pretty much everything and I let them eat Funyuns.

But I won’t be watching any of these television shows in the future. So I’m looking for ideas for what to do on New Year’s Eve. Do you guys have any traditions I could steal? Any ideas?

*subhead*Traditions.*subhead*