Wow! It's been a long week and a half. I've been subbing quite a bit this last week. I was in Mrs. Coburn's kindergarten class from Thurs to Wednesday (she had a student teacher, so it wasn't bad at all). I had a break yesterday, and today I taught 5th at Woodruff and Monday and Tuesday will be in Aaron's class (Mrs. Romrell). Whew! It's been an adjustment going from being home most of the day and then going to full time. We're all hanging in there. It was fun being at Providence because the kids would come in and say hi to me and I would see them at lunch. Everything else with the family is going good too. Aaron is playing Jr. Mustang basketball, Rachel and Emilee are doing jump rope classes, and Sarah is doing dance with Melissa Jensen.

Saturday we went down to Lisa's and got to see Colt who was in from Virginia. It was a lot of fun. We miss him tons!

Well...today I started substitute teaching. I was in a Kindergarden class for half the day. It was a good breaking-in first day for me. I really did enjoy it though - it's nice to get back into the classroom and be thinking of different things I would want to do and wouldn't want to do in my own classroom. It was also nice to get away and not do "house" things, but I guess the dreaded laundry will still be there for me to catch up on. The kids have been excited for me and have been giving me suggestions on what I could do as a teacher. They also keep asking me if I'm going to sub in their class anytime soon. Sarah did pretty well today too, thanks to good neighbors who help me!

Halloween was a lot of fun! It was a busy day because we had our school Fall Carnival the same day. School was out for Parent/Teacher conferences (which went really well for all three) so we got to spend the whole day getting our costumes ready and carving pumpkins. Rachel was a vampire, Aaron was the Headless Horseman, Emilee was a wizard, and Sarah was a princess. I dressed up as a witch. Brett dressed up as Brett, ha, ha. We went to the carnival, had some chili with family, and did some trick-or-treating. I think the kids had a lot of fun. The weather was awesome - hopefully we'll get the same treatment next year!

Earlier this month we went to Gardener Village while mom was here. All the fall and Halloween decorations out, but it was a little cold. At least it wasn't raining like the weekend before when dad and Judith were here!

So now I'm going to backtrack just a little. A few weeks ago our family went down to Salem for Aaron's baseball tournament. His team did awesome! They were undeafeated (3-0) going into the championship game and Aaron had an awesome triple. You should have seen the grin on his face! His base coach actually told him to stay at second, but being Aaron he kept going while his mom was screaming at him to stay. The other team overthrew the ball and Aaron was safe. I guess it was the "luck of the McNeil" as Brett would say. They won 2nd place and all got bobble-head trophies. It was a really fun weekend!

Here it goes...I'm trying this new blog thing out and I think I've finally started getting the hang of it (thanks Chris!). It's actually kind of fun and even more addicting! I hope this will help everyone keep up to date on what's happening with the McNeils.