Reflecting on a Challenging Year and Welcoming 2024 with Optimism

2023 was a whirlwind of emotions. Oh, who am I kidding? With my dad's dementia, neighbors vandalizing our property and a Big C health scare, 2023 has been a category 5 hurricane!

However, as the year drew to a close, the hubs and I joined hands, supporting each other and celebrating small victories that brought us closer together. Despite the difficulties faced, we decided to commemorate the year with good food, movies, and music. 

If you're wondering which movies, here are the top 3 that we watched on New Year's Eve.

• Evolution
• X-Men Last Stand
• 2012

We actually started pigging out the day before when the hubs returned from a trip to Buenos Aires. He brought home a couple of burgers from Wendy's and some chicken tenders in his luggage. He also brought two slices of cheese pizza and two slices of pepperoni pizza from Sbarro's.

The next day, we planned on making bacon, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast. Unfortunately, we woke up late, so we came up with a much simpler, but tasty brunch menu.

New Year's Eve Brunch

Then, we started prepping the food and desserts, which was a much simpler menu than the one we prepared for Christmas, and yet it took longer to make for some reason.

The hubs prepping our meal.

We boiled some chicken and coated the pieces with a bit of TGIF Barbecue sauce. The result was quite delicious.

We accompanied the BBQ chicken with some rice, some fries, and a cucumber salad.

Our dessert menu consisted of apple muffins, an assortment of candy, some Panettone, and a fruit salad. Actually, there's a funny story behind the fruit salad. In a moment of distraction, the hubs accidentally washed the fruit salad, which was already prepared. We ended up losing about 45 percent of the fruit salad in the sink, but what remained was refreshing.

Like some of the previous holidays we recently celebrated, New Year's Eve became a testament to our shared strength. As we watched the ball drop in Times Square (courtesy of a live stream), surrounded by food and alcohol, we toasted not only to the new year but also to our resilience in overcoming the challenges thrown our way.

And yes! In our household, the New Year is only official when the ball drops. That's 2 am Argentine time.

But as the hubs and I hugged and cheered, I started crying. I haven't done that since New Year 2021. Back then, I lost it emotionally because 2020 had been stressful because of Covid and the long-term quarantine. I was definitely okay when we welcomed 2022 and 2023, but this New Year 2024 celebration had me bawling my eyes out.

Luckily, some alcohol helped. Don't worry. I have my drinking under control.

Now that the new year is upon us, we carry forward the lessons learned from 2023, knowing that together, we can overcome any obstacle that comes our way.