[Week 134 New Year Edition] Weekend-Engagement : Busy day but satisfying celebration.

Hello dear community of WEEKEND EXPERIENCES today is January 1, 2023 in Venezuela, and it is 9 o'clock at night, first of all a cordial greeting and happy new year 2023 to all of you, I hope you had a Happy New Year's Eve this weekend.

Source

On December 31, 2022, I was very busy, at first I had to attend to my wife who since December 29 presented an atrocious malaise which was generated from that same day to go to work at his office.

Then, I thought I was going to take a little rest, but the cat we adopted as a pet at home has the habit of waking me up before 6 A.M., as if to warn me that I have to go to work, head-butting me and pushing me to get out of my bed, then she stays on my side making sure I do not go back to sleep.

Very early in the morning my brother-in-law calls me informing me that he is coming to spend New Year's Eve with us, but I had already planned to spend it with my wife, daughter and mother-in-law, so I changed the plans a bit and added two additional dishes to the table, which I didn't mind too much, since the idea at this time of the year is to share with family and friends.

I had to clean the house and I also had to put in the washing machine the dirty clothes that were left to receive the new year with nothing to wash. Additionally, the pork leg that we were going to enjoy that night was thawed but had not been marinated or cooked.

It was already 9 A.M. and I took the pork leg out, removed the excess fat and marinated it with garlic, pepper, thyme, salt, the juice of two lemons, oil and red wine, but my oven was damaged, it only gratinates, I had to take the quick decision to cook it on a tray, meanwhile I let it marinate until 1 P.M.

In the meantime, I put the laundry in the washing machine, and began the job of sweeping floors and then polishing them and arranging the place where the Christmas and New Year decorations are.

At 1 P.M. I started to cook the pork leg on the stove, at first I cooked it a little on the outside to seal it and then I proceeded to bathe it in the sauce resulting from the mixture of all the seasonings I mentioned before, I covered it with aluminum foil, and raised the temperature of the stove. As it had an approximate weight of 4 Kg, I left it cooking until 5 P.M., hydrating it every half hour in the same sauce.

At the time indicated in the previous paragraph, I turned off the burners and introduced the pork leg in the oven to gratinate. However, I had forgotten what the dessert would be, well, I would think about it later.

At that same time my mother-in-law called me to pick her, my brother-in-law and his wife up at her house, I had not even dressed or bathed, and the clothes I had washed were still wet on the clothesline. It occurred to me to use a fan and point it directly at the clothes to dry them. I told the mother-in-law I would pick them up in an hour.

Almost at 6:30 P.M., I went to pick them up, luckily my brother-in-law had brought a pineapple cake for dessert, when I arrived my wife had already picked up the clothesline and put away the clothes that were already dry, she also prepared a whipped cream to eat with strawberries and tangerine.
We arrived at the apartment and it was already arranged, while I bathed and arranged my daughter received to his grandmother and uncles. My wife was getting ready and I got in the shower and then get dressed. We proceeded to serve the New Year's Eve dinner at about 10 PM.

My wife and sister-in-law:

The cake my brother-in-law made:

My brother-in-law, his wife and my daughter, I don't show up because I'm serving the food:

Here I am eating my New Year's Eve dinner plate: pork leg, hallaca, and smoked ham:

Here I am with my sister-in-law and mother-in-law, getting ready for the midnight toast:

Here is the dessert:

During dinner we talked about anecdotes that happened during the year, some very sad, others very funny, at 12 o'clock at night, we toasted and celebrated the arrival of a promising new year, we received calls from family and friends in and out of Venezuela and we went to sleep at almost 3 o'clock in the morning.

With much effort and dedication we must undertake our activities this new year, we must take care of our health and help our neighbors. An excellent 2023, I hope you have had a happy new year's eve, prosperity to all of you.

This is my participation in the initiative proposed by @galenkp called [Week 134 New Year Edition] Weekend-Engagement Link Here

New Years Eve celebrations

What are you doing (or did you do if you're reading this after it happened) for New Years Eve? Did you host or attend a party, spend it with family and friends or just stay home and go to bed early? Tell us about it, but ensure any images you use for this post are ones taken on the night or that you took them yourself. Write at least 300 words.

All photos are my property and were taken with my Iphone 4 cell phone.