The Dupree Family: this week {from my phone}

It’s been another super long time since I’ve updated. The new year always brings with it crazy unrealistic resolutions that I can never keep beyond January or February anyway, so this year I’ve resolved to simplify rather than add another thing to my list of to-do’s. And the fewer to-do’s we have on our plate, the more time we have to stay home in our pjs, cook homemade meals, and finally catch up on documenting our days here!

We rounded out our crazy 2013 traveling schedule with a trip to Phoenix to watch the Bears in the Fiesta Bowl. We didn’t bring home a win, but we ate good food, saw some friends and enjoyed sleeping late with no babies to wake us.

Emory has been hard at work on her rainbow loom that Santa brought her. In fact we were at the toy store on December 26th to buy more bands!

Anna West has clearly learned what she can do and what she shouldn’t do…which is why she immediately crawled underneath the table to check out the bag of candy she knows she isn’t supposed to have! We’re slowly taking down Christmas decorations, which is so sad, since because we moved in just in time to decorate for the holidays, our house is so bare!! The kids wanted to eat their gingerbread houses the same day we made them, so I promised they could have a few bites before we threw them out. Almost six weeks later. Ewww.Kids went back to school Monday and I was so excited to head to the grocery store by myself! I’m trying to cook only new recipes for the month {just to change things up a bit}, which makes grocery shopping a little more exciting! ha!Our first new meal was seared steaks with a red wine, mushroom and onion sauce. It was really good, but definitely not loved by the kids. Especially since I served it with brussel sprouts and blue cheese mashed potatoes. Only one day back into school and we had a couple of days of delayed start due to freezing temperatures. For the first time ever, the kids got up and played {nicely!} instead of coming to our bed begging to eat breakfast. Yay!! Fingers crossed that wasn’t a one time thing!Delayed start meant extra time in our pjs! Another new meal was a lightened chicken tetrazzini. I’m not a huge fan of a casserole, but this was decently good. The kids didn’t love that there were mushrooms, but I kept them large enough so that we could pick them out for those that didn’t like them. Day two of delayed start was going just swell, then Boland threw up. Turns out it was just from drainage, but I kept him home from school to be sure. Which meant there was no point in taking Anna West either, so I had to haul both of the littlest one to the grocery store {in the freezing cold} to get ‘special snack’ for Watson’s class. Ugh.Chicken tetrazzini leftovers were especially enjoyed by baby girl. Emory’s hair is finally just long enough for a side braid. I {much too often} wear my hair like this and she always wants one too. Too bad she’s scheduled for a hair cut tomorrow and it will again be too short. Oops! Emory requested a ‘fiesta with burritos’ for her half birthday celebration. Because that’s a staple dinner around our house, I decided to try homemade refried beans as my new recipe. They were cooked with garlic, peppers and onions, then blended with pepper vinegar, so they turned out delicious!! I doubled the recipe, which made five 2-cup portions. We ate one and froze the rest for use later. Definitely won’t be buying canned beans ever again!!A few years ago I also stopped buying taco seasoning packets, because, not only is it much healthier to make it at home, but all of the ingredients are ones that I always have on hand. Try it!