I had more pictures for this post.  Then a certain 5-year-old decided to erase all the pictures on the camera's memory card.  And replace them with about 100 out-of-focus pictures of the couch.

Anyway, this recipe was born out of desperation - I wanted cheesesteak for dinner and I wanted it bad.  There are approximately zero places to get a good cheesesteak in the DC area (do you know of any? Tell me!!!).  But I had the ingredients except...

No bread.

And no time to bake sandwich rolls.

But...  A lot of tortillas?

So I took a chance and made the filling like I would, wrapped it in a tortilla, and toasted it on our griddler (one of my absolute favorite appliances!).

The verdict?

Delicious!  AND less messy, and the kids actually eat the entire thing because there's not as much bread!

(I don't know what it is about our kids, but they mostly won't eat the hot dog bun or hamburger bun or sandwich roll or whatever.  They just want meat and cheese.)

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs thinly sliced ribeye, or one of those big old $10 packages of Steak-EZE at Sam's or Costco
2-3 bell peppers, sliced thin
1 medium sweet onion, sliced thin
At least 12 slices Provolone and/or American cheese
12 large tortillas
4 tbsp butter
Salt
Pepper

Instructions (so easy!):

1. Melt 2 tbsp butter in a large pan.  Sautee onions with salt until soft, then add peppers and cook to desired softness (I like mine to stay a little crisp).  Set aside (if you have picky eaters who won't want these on their wraps)
2. Melt 2 tbsp butter in another large pan, add beef, sprinkle with salt & pepper, and cook until brown.  Drain fat.
3. Layer beef, peppers & onions (add mushrooms if you like those), and cheese.  I did 1 slice provolone and 1 slice of american for each.  Fold up wrap and cook until crispy either on a griddler, a panini press, a George Foreman grill...  Something to add those nice grill marks!

Slice and enjoy!  Makes about a dozen - 5 of them fed our family of 6 easily (with pepper strips on the side), and I wrapped the other 7 in foil and stuck them in the freezer for lunches for me.

Life, Uncropped & Unedited {WIWS}

Every Sunday I keep meaning to take a What I Wore Sunday picture, but I usually end up too exhausted to set things up for a picture by the time the kids are all down for naps...

Confession:  When I take my usual outfit pictures, I sweep away any mess on the floor, move the side table to hold the camera, and crop the heck out of it to make it less cluttered.

This dress was an AMAZING find and so worth the low price - perfect for maternity, post partum, and any stage! 

See?  That's my usual location, free of all distraction (and weeks ago, hence the much smaller belly!)

So yesterday morning I was VERY limited on time - we managed to sleep in a little bit, so by the time I had eaten breakfast I only had about 5-10 minutes to get ready for our usual early Mass.  And it was COLD, so my shorter maternity dresses weren't going to work because they would require tights and yeah, maternity tights take waaaaay too long to put on.

But my good friend the maxi dress came to the rescue!  This thing has been serving me well since I was pregnant with Cecilia - it's non-maternity but has the right waistline to fit a growing bump, and it's dressy enough to wear to Mass.  I threw on a slouchy sweater to stay warm and basically felt like I was wearing sweats.  So comfy.  So cozy!

(More maxi skirt & dress styling ideas here)

And yeah, no pictures were happening...  But with the kids occupied watching a movie and soup simmering on the stove, I thought maybe I'd take off my apron and try to get a picture.

And then Elizabeth came upstairs and just wanted to snuggle and snuggle!

So I thought, you know, whatever.  Let's just do this.  Propped the camera up on a basket of dirty laundry and let the timer snap away.

Bare feet, train tracks galore, slipcover askew, Calvin & Hobbes book newly unearthed from its hiding spot (providing John Paul with all sorts of non-age-appropriate vocabulary), undressed toddler, muffin tin being used to hold magnets, Cookie Monster on the couch, and bins of toys hiding in the dining room waiting to be rotated out (or given away forever if it were up to the husband).

This, my friends, is life right now.  Normally we do a big clean before anyone goes downstairs for TV time, but it's been an exhausting week and the kids have decided they'd rather keep playing than watch TV, so cleaning just hasn't been happening.

The belly still seems remarkably small to me because I keep comparing myself to where I was with the twins at this point!  35 weeks, and when I was pregnant with them I only had 2 weeks left!  It's hard to imagine I've got 5-7 weeks to go, still...

And yes, these photos are now cropped & straightened because I can't *not* when they're so crooked!

Sweet Elizabeth always wants to snuggle into whatever scarf I'm wearing, and it's just the cutest!

But then she was offended that the camera timer was being weird...

So that's life right now.  I'm thankful for hardwood floors that let it all be swept up in minutes when I need to feel like things are a little less chaotic.  And I'm thankful that if need be, we can just let things get messy for a bit because that's just where we are right now!

Linking up with Fine Linen & Purple for What I Wore Sunday - go check out more outfits!

Pizza, Fairy Dresses, Obscure Saints, and Applesauce {7 Quick Takes}

--1--

What's for dinner at your place tonight?

A friend posted a link about Chicago on facebook and there was a picture of deep-dish pizza and now I can't stop thinking about it...



Seriously, it's magical.  But there's nowhere around here that sells anything close!  Luckily, I found a recipe is pretty darned awesome, if time consuming.  If you find yourself in a situation craving Chicago-style pizza but no way of getting it except mail order Lou Malnati's, just use this recipe!

--2--

Zulily is seriously winning today and I'm trying hard not to spend a ton of money...  These wooden puzzles are amazing and get played with ALL the time at our house.  BabyLit books are super-adorable!  The Rollipop that the twins got almost a year ago STILL gets played with on a daily basis (by kids of all ages AND adults...).  Aaaand I'm trying hard not to buy more of these princess dresses - I got this fairy one for Cecilia because she's outgrowing hers and wears it several times a week...

Usually it's easy for me to ignore the sales but ALL THE PRINCESS DRESSES for actual decent prices?  Sign me up.  (And if you're not signed up, here's a link that you can use to get $$ off and it gives me credit too!)

--3--

This week's posts:

Are We THAT Family? - thoughts on being that embarrassing family in public whose kids never behave...

Fall Finds & Clothing Budget Questions - really cute clothes that I'm not going to buy because I realized they'll be ruined by spit-up, and questions about how YOU budget for clothing.  Some really helpful comments in there!

--4--

At what point do you rip everything out in your garden to plant cover crops?  I really want to plant garlic SOON, but the tomatoes are still ripening and it hasn't cooled down enough for me to want to rip them out.  And the carrots are still growing.  The marigolds can probably go (even though they're thriving), and the Mary garden needs to be pruned because the Morning Glory and zinnias went CRAZY and we can't see Mary anymore...  And most of the beans have died, but a few of the pole beans are still producing.

--5--

I was so excited about Jennifer Fulwiler's trip to DC and then... Couldn't go to a single event.  Andrew's meetings & rehearsals conflicted with everything.  Sigh.

--6--

Last night I wanted ice cream (for the second time) after dinner and had applesauce instead.  Not because I have self-control and know that I shouldn't consume too much sugar, but solely because I knew ice cream before bed would keep me up with heartburn.  And then I was still up at like, 5:30 for the day because baby was moving MOVING!

Seriously, the twins moved a lot but it was always at normal times.  This baby?  Always there's a party hour or two in the middle of the night.  It drives me nuts!  I've never had this issue, and I'm thinking it doesn't bode well for the future.  So maybe we'll move the glider downstairs and I'll just spend a lot of time watching Amazon Prime in the middle of the night once the baby's born...

--7--

Still no name, but John Paul is pretty sure that Bonaventure or Wolfgang would make perfect middle names (there IS a St. Wolfgang, did you know?).  It's kind of the most fun thing ever to look at obscure saint names and choose the most ridiculous ones for your future children...  We had a friend who really thought we were going to name John Paul Polycarp!  He was much relieved to find out that it was just an in-utero nickname.

There!  I attempted to make these QUICK quick takes in order to get a start on the pizza, and I think I managed it!  Although with a sad lack of pictures of the children...  Well, just go stalk my instagram and you'll get your fix!

"Mom, I got so much arrows so I can shoot so much fire-breathing dragons and so much wolves and so much invisible monsters!!!"

More Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!

Are We THAT Family?

You see them in the grocery store - the family that can't seem to control any of their kids, and yet they ventured out in public anyway.



At the playground - why would that mom bother bringing her kids to play if she just has to spend the whole time fishing wood chips out of her toddler's mouth while trying to keep the preschooler from bolting down the concrete steps.

At Mass - they have NEVER been able to sit down in their pew without the constant jack-in-the-box motions, taking one child out or another or even two or three at once.

The kids are out of control.  The parenting is probably lacking.  They all look exhausted.

And I feel like that's our family so much of the time.

I never know if it's going to be the 5-year-old messing with the alarm or AC system that happens to be low enough on the wall wherever we happen to be.  Or maybe the 3-year-old will start sobbing when it's time to leave because she wants to stay there forever!!!  Or one of the toddlers will throw every book at the bookstore on the floor while the other does her darndest to rip the tags off of all the stuffed animals and tear open every toy box (on a related note, why so many toys at the bookstore these days???).

We go to a party and I can guarantee you that at least one of the children will throw a fit.

Maybe her sister will look at her tortilla chip the wrong way and she'll let out an ear-piercing shriek, flinging herself and her brownie-covered hands all over the host's white couch.

Maybe a stranger will look at her and say hello, and she'll run sobbing to mom, burying her dirty face in whatever clothing she can find.

Maybe he'll find some sort of electronic device along with a screwdriver, and proceed to unscrew everything and attempt to replace the batteries.

Maybe she'll disappear for a few quiet minutes and then emerge from the bathroom with a scented candle and far too much wet toilet paper for anyone's good...

"Well, you certainly have your hands full!"

Yes.  Yes, we do.  And I know you're probably looking at us as if we're crazy to be having our fifth, when we can't even control the four we have.  I get it - I have the same thoughts from time to time.  There's a reason we don't leave the house very often.

It's exhausting.  It's disheartening.  And I can't help but wonder if we're scaring young couples away from having large families, because the chaos is so continuously present, the discipline lacking, the floors covered with toys and crumbs the moment we're through cleaning up.

And yet.

With that humbling chaos comes such joy that I can't even describe.



The joy that is seeing the toddlers shriek with joy when their older siblings emerge from their room after a full night of sleep.

Or watching the 3-year-old desperately try to snuggle her crying sister when there just isn't enough lap space for Mom to comfort everyone.

The 5-year-old very carefully portioning out snacks to his younger sisters because the clock has struck 10 and Mom is already exhausted on the couch.

The constant need to lift up Mom's shirt to give "Baby Brudder" a kiss and a snuggle.

Even just the simple act of all four of them sitting on the couch together looking at the same book, or setting up pretend sleepovers all over the living room.



This is life.  And we are really, really living it.  Together.  Every day.  Amidst the chaos and temper tantrums and spilled cheerios that they lick up off the floor because they're pretending to be giraffes.

This is the chaos that I know empty arms long for, the mess that some mothers wish would fill their tidy houses, the love that knows no bounds.

So if you happen to see us on a rare occasion that we've ventured out in public, and we're not doing our best to exude the calm that we hope we're feeling, please know that the joy is there.  That we know how blessed we are to have these many mouths to feed.  That life in the trenches can be hard to live, but we'll come through it stronger.

And maybe offer to hold a baby or read to a toddler for a minute or two to give us a break?  We'll always say yes, I promise.

Fall Finds and Clothing Budget Questions

We got a Lands' End catalog in the mail the other day and I took a second to flip through it during lunch and WOW, when did it stop being old lady clothes there?  Or am I just gravitating to old lady stuff now?

Anyway, tons of beautiful prints and lots that looks super post-partum friendly because it's not so fitted that I'd avoid it because of a lingering belly.  How beautiful are these tops?

Floral Boatneck Tee

Button Boatneck Top

Art Print Tee (on SUPER sale right now!)

Lace Front Top

I'm contemplating ordering a couple of these t-shirts for John Paul (Mars and T-Rex - he'd DIE of excitement!) and leggings for Cecilia, since we need sturdy girl leggings to last through the three of ours!  Any experience with Lands' End kids stuff?  Is it worth the price?

Their friends & family discount (25% off) ends today (and an extra 3% cash back through ebates), but they run sales so frequently that I'm not worried about missing out if I decide to get something.  And I know that long-sleeved tops are lacking in my wardrobe, and I'll need some in the winter & spring, it's just so hard to actually buy new stuff for myself when I feel like the money should be spent elsewhere!

What do you do when it comes to budgeting for clothing for yourself?  I feel like a lot of moms just...  Don't buy any clothes.  And I know I did that for quite a while, but I've been fortunate enough to get credit to Twice and ThredUP that I've been able to grow my wardrobe without spending much at all.  But eventually the credit runs out - how do you justify buying stuff for yourselves when the money needs to be spent so many other ways?

I'd love to hear your wisdom, and what you do in this situation - I know we really need to sit down and work out a *real* budget, but it's just never the most attractive use of our time once the kids are in bed!