Halloween

Elise decided a little over a month ago that she wanted to be a dragon for Halloween.  I found her a great costume and dragon makeup, and she was excited for Halloween to come.  Then, the Friday before the big day, her best friend Sarah surprised her at the park with a duplicate of her "Emily" costume (from The Corpse Bride.)  I guess it had come with a backwards hand, but Elise certainly didn't care.  The girls decided they would be twins the next day at the church party.  We then had to buy a copy of the movie, so Elise would know who she was pretending to be.
  

   

Connor, of course, went as Link (he was irritated that some older folks thought he was Peter Pan.)  Evan was given a choice of four hand-me-down costumes: an elephant, a kitty-cat, a doggie, or a chicken.  He followed his heart and was a very manly kitty-cat.  Corinne, following in the tradition of all Brown babies, was a googly-eyed lobster.
  

    

In addition to the trunk-or-treat, we did real trick-or-treating on Halloween night, although I'm not sure why (they had more than enough candy already.)  One nice thing this year was that Connor and Elise were finally old enough to carve their own pumpkins, although I did help Elise scoop out the "yucky" pumpkin guts.  Evan is too young to care, so his pumpkin remains unharmed.  
  

   
After hearing a General Conference talk by L. Tom Perry, we decided to set up an allowance for our older kids, so they could learn to manage money.  I found a great app. for my phone called iAllowance that makes things a lot easier.  Our problem before with money was that the kids loved to dump it out on the floor (not pick it up, of course,) which led to mix-ups.  Also, it was hard to figure out tithing since I couldn't keep track of which money had been tithed and which hadn't.  The app is cool because all the money becomes virtual, just like in real life.  They get allowance deposited each Monday, with tithing automatically sent to a separate account.  Then, they can put as much as they want into savings, which calculates interest (I'm giving them 5% a month as an incentive.)  The rest they spend on TV and video game time, or candy, or stuff they want to actually buy.  I decided not to pay per chore, although I do deduct for having to remind them too many times.  They can do extra chores for money if they're motivated.  Anyway, we'll see if it works.  I had to make icons for both of them, and Evan wanted his picture taken too.
   

   
We were at the park on Friday, and I lost track of Evan for a minute.  When I found him, he was far away doing this.  He stayed there for half an hour before I dragged him, screaming, to the car.