Bella all dressed up with only school to go...

Bella was all excited to wear this outfit to school. She wanted me to take pictures. So we did :


As I am telling her to smile the "crazy one" hears me and she comes running like a bull in a china shop to be included you only see her curl here because I am trying to hold her off....




I had no success. I am scared of her:


OK OK she can sweet when she's working the room and she is so schmoozing both me and Bella here - don't let that smile fool you!

Breakfast with Santa

We had breakfast with Santa this past Sunday. It is an annual tradition and we have been going for the past.....few years. I can't remember how many. So here we are with Santa:


They have this sled set up every year and we try to get some kind of picture with it.


Here is the yearly stair picture. We usually take this at my in-laws house every year at Thanksgiving but since we were not all there at the same time we had to take the picture elsewhere. This worked:



Favorite part of the day! So if you see a few posts below you will see Sophia is not to excited over Santa so for kicks we introduced her to Rudolph

Here she is thinking "Whoa what the heck is this should I touch it"




NO NO NO changed my mind - don't touch me!



Now Rudolph is upset he upset Sophia and Sophia for a brief moment appreciates the concern



and then all hell breaks loose and Sophia has to get out of here NOW.....




Classic - I so can't wait to share these with them when they get older

Oh my CUTENESS!!!

I need teachers gifts and am so tired of the same ole same ole.... The short man has 8 teachers, Samantha has 3, Bella has 4, add in 2 dance instructors, 1 fabulous speech teacher and say 6 more that I am not thinking of at this moment. Anyway, that is a lot of teachers. While shopping today for some last minute Christmas gifts I spotted these cakes made out of DISHTOWELS! Do you believe it. There was cakes, cupcakes and shakes, oh my! Of course I had to duplicate....







Would you like a slice of cheescake - it is totally fatfree!!

Pictures with Santa!

Took the kids to see Santa. Sophia was beyond excited - Can't you tell?!?!


Oh and don't be concerned with Bella - she was discussing her day of problems starting with Sam stealing her makeup and then Sophia ate her lip gloss. She was sulking. Let the teen years being -whoopeeeeee!

Eat your heart out Bob Villa!

So I did my first BIG remodel this weekend. Technically not this weekend - I started around 5pm on Friday and was finished around 1:30 on Saturday. I had just enough time to feed the kids before they all started passing out....lol

Here is the before with the carpet. Which now I hear no one liked. Well thanks for waiting until the carpet was no longer there TO TELL ME!



No more carpet. For a brief moment I thought I would leave it like this. Come on it could have worked. It's only kids in here....what do they care. A few splinters does a body good.



I needed to go buy a new toy to start this adventure - isn't she pretty?!?!



And we're off....a few minor glitches at the start but after consulting with my people (thanks Jen and Jen's Dad - oh and Shawn to for that call on using the block the proper way, oh and Steve's handiness with the jig saw). It was a slow go at first. I was nervous I mean COME ON I woke up this morning and thought "I'm gonna lay a wood floor all by myself - no sweat"

I am freaking idiot!


Once I got the hang of it (oh and over my fear of slicing my hand off) I could have layed this in my sleep. YES even YOU (whoever you are) can do it too!


Coming to the end. This was the tricky part because if you look closely you will see the back of the room has all those angles. Well that was just more wood to cut ON AN ANGLE. It's a good thing that miter saw knew what the hell to do.


TA-DA!!!!!! Pretty good right!! Sorry this is a bit dark. I forgot to take the end result pictures this afternoon so I just took it now and its a bit dark out. You get it though. Of course, the kids love it now they think they have their own personal race track. Note to self - get rid of computer chair on wheels that is doubling for a surf board - possible head injuries to occur.


So I agree it is a much better improvement over the carpet. More importantly I did this myself and I am proud of the job I did. Next stop the master bath - Oh yea baby!!! I'm buying a wet saw an cutting tiles next! Sweeeeet!




So I figure with all the money I saved on labor I am gonna treat myself to a big bottle of advil and some heavy alcohol to chase it down because MY KNEE'S ARE KILLING ME! A tip to wear knee pads would have been helpful at the beginning of this project

The Christmas cards are coming!!

It has been brought to my attention that mailing out my cards close to the holiday as I have in the past might not be such a good thing. I like to mail my holiday cards close to the actual day. The same holds true for birthday cards. I don't like sending them out 2 weeks before you celebrate your birthday. So the point was made that the earlier I send out my cards the longer they get looked at. If I send them close to the holiday then they only stay out for a bit and once x-mas comes my card is tossed - well it should be lovingly stored so that you can admire it year after year. Hey I don't just put these things together in my sleep. So this year they are going out early - possibly by tomo. I am just putting the finishing touches on them.

Here's a sneak peek of 1 part of this year's masterpiece - oh so proud!

It has been an exciting weekend here in the Pepe house!

Now for this particular post I'm not going in order and when you get to the end you'll understand why. Saturday morning at some point it appears that Santa dropped off Elfy to the kids. Elfy is one of Santa's naughty elves. Santa can only handle so much of Elfy before he has to ship him off until all the presents are made because Elfy causes lots of trouble. So Santa drops him off with the kids to watch over him and to make sure he behaves. Elfy has been coming to us for the last 3 years now. Needless to say Elfy RARELY behaves which in turn makes the children happy. So this is how the kids found him. He was in the bathroom and made a huge mess of the toilet paper. As you can see on the faces of the kids these things brings them much joy!




Here is Samantha reading the letter Santa left with Elfy



The mess:


Now Saturday night was my Holiday Party. There is so much to say about this event I wouldn't even no where to begin. The unfortunate thing is I only have the one picture because I just was to busy mingling to remember to take anymore. I invited friends of mine (some new and old) who sell for different companies such as Lia Sophia, Pampered Chef and so on into my home to sell their products. I then invited all my friends and family to come and shop, HANG OUT FOR A WHILE, drink some wine and have a good time. There was no other intent behind this other than a fun night out. That's why it was called a HOLIDAY PARTY! I made no money off of the vendors nor did this night serve as anything other than a fun night out. So for those of you that came and had a good time I just wanted to say Thank you! It was nice to spend time with you especially those that I don't see often. For those of you that couldn't make it because you had a prior obligation and told me so you were missed! For those of you that just didn't feel like coming.....well Bah Humbug to you and (said in my best Soup Nazi (from Seinfeld) voice) No INVITE FOR YOU NEXT YEAR! That's all I have to say about that.....yah right but that's all I am saying here!

Oh and a shout out to my friend TriSHA - we do LOVE you and your BIG (almost as big as mine) mouth along with the accurate opinions that come from it and YES I have told Steve over and over and over that he DOES make the BEST Cosmo's. I promise to send your christmas card to the right address not like how those crazy sisters are always screwing it up. Oh and Lou soooo called to cut you off! :)

One more thing - in this picture is Gigi living it up! I don't even think she had made it into the living room yet where the Traveling Vineyard was set up with the liquor. Way to go with the Holiday Spirit - thatta girl - it must have been the cookies!



Now finally - this was the start of our weekend but as you will see it is not something I wanted to start this post off with. On Saturday morning Steve noticed what he thought was a cut to Lulu's eye. We rushed her to the vet and it turned out to be much worse than a cut. There is no easy way to say it so I will just say it. Her eyeball popped out of the socket. There I said it. Now when your finished rubbing your own eye and squirming in your seat finish reading......

So the Vet explains that it is common in the breed and blah blah blah. He takes her in the back to try and PUT IT BACK IN and when he comes back it is even freakier. Dude her eye was out of her head. NO I didn't take a picture that is just wrong.....plus I didn't have my camera. So leaving out all the technical stuff because if you've spoken to Steve already you have gotten all the gorey details. Sure he likes the dog now it's like his own little Frankenstein. So here in this picture you will see her eye lid has been sewed shut. It must stay like that for 2-4 weeks. Her eye is very swollen and this will go down over the next few days. It looks even worse because they needed to shave around the eye when they knocked her out. She has a 20% chance of regaining the sight or even keeping the eye at this point. They might need to remove it and if that happens really you won't even notice because she is so dark and her hair is crazy that you never see her eyes to begin with.

Picture not intended for small children or any adult that is squemish for that matter....











ready....are you sure







here ya go....our little Humpty Dumpty...lol - get it Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall...