I'm going to warn you up front, I did NOT get good pictures from Thanksgiving week! Oh well, we still had a wonderful time!

Most of the week was pretty chill and relaxing. The girls played with all of their friends in the neighborhood, and Joey had a friend over on Tuesday.

Ellie was picked for "Leader of the Week" this week for her kindergarten class. It brought back memories of when Joey and Hannah were students of the week in kindergarten. Too. much. cuteness.

When Hannah was student of the week, she had Joey come in and read her favorite book to the class. This time Ellie had Hannah come in and read The Giant Jam Sandwich.

For her sharing days, she brought in Bananas, her favorite Beanie Boo, and her Elena of Avalor guitar that she got for her birthday. She was very, VERY excited about her special week!

For Halloween this year Hannah and Chloe wanted to match again so they chose to be pirates. Joey wasn't sure what he wanted to be, so when he found out that little Luke was going to be a skeleton he thought it would be fun to match with him. So cute! Ellie got this Elena of Avalor costume for her birthday, so she was easy!

Friday we went to the Halloween carnival, but it was also Joey's birthday! We got up extra early for donuts because I was subbing at the kids' school that day. (I actually subbed in Joey's class that day.) Yay for the big 1-1!

Friday night we had the annual Harvest Carnival at Emmanuel Faith Church. This year we had Elena of Avalor (with her hair sprayed dark brown!), a skeleton and a pirate.  

With all the Halloween craziness this coming weekend, we had Joey's birthday party a weekend early. For his birthday party this year he decided to invite all of his school buddies to a park to play their favorite games that they play at recess like Infection, Lava Monster and Lava Monster Infection! We ended up having thirteen boys there with a few siblings added as well.

This year it's been so different getting into our fall schedule for a few different reasons. One, it's the first time all three kids are in school. Two, it's the first time they're all playing soccer (which means soccer practices five days a week and three games on Saturday!), and I started subbing at the kids' school on Fridays. 

For the past couple of years I had started to think about what I wanted to do when the kids were all in school. One of Joey's substitutes in third grade was the mom of a girl in his class. I thought that would be a fun way to get back in the classroom on a very part-time basis. When I ran the idea by the kids, they were thrilled with the idea! I figured I would start subbing when Ellie was in first grade since she only has kindergarten for half a day, but the kids were SO enthusiastic about the idea, I asked my mom if she could pick up Ellie for me on Fridays and she agreed! Honestly, it was harder than I expected to be back in the classroom after ten years, especially as a substitute, but I'm getting into the swing of things and really starting to enjoy it. So far I've subbed at every grade level K-5th. The best part is how much the kids love when I'm at school subbing. I'm really not sure why they love it so much, but it's their favorite day of the week.

Other than that, here's what else is going on around here...