Corinne's Baby Blessing

Two Sundays ago, Ryan had the opportunity to bless Corinne.  I love baby blessings.  It's just neat to have that moment set apart to reflect on the love and hope you have for your new little one.  She was actually very quiet and good!  We've joked that our other kids had more of an exorcism, given the amount of screaming they did.  After church we took a quick family picture.  Corinne wasn't in her blessing gown at that point due to a diaper explosion.
   

   
On the week of the election, the kids' class made entries for a civil rights-themed art contest called "The Dream."  The school website posted pictures, so I stole them.  I totally want to live in Elise's version of America.  Connor's looks pretty awesome, too, but not in the same way.  (Oh, I was just informed by Connor that his picture is entitled, "Money, Money, Money for the Poor."  That's actually kinda sweet.)
   

  

   
I recently pulled the baby dolls and toy food out of the garage, and Evan went nuts.  He's such a tender little guy sometimes.  Last week he started talking about our dogs again, and suddenly asked, "I like Portia!  Where Portia go?"  It was a little sad.  I guess he hadn't noticed that she was gone until now.
   

    
About a year and a half ago, we played a bit with Letterboxing - that treasure hunting game involving handmade stamps.  It was a little too frustrating, so we hadn't done it in a long time.  Then last week I downloaded a Geocaching app to my phone, and we tried finding a cache near our local park.  It's so much better!  Having GPS coordinates makes it way easier to know you're on the right track.  You still have to search - the coordinates only get you within 20 feet - but so far we've found four caches within a mile or two of our house.  Oh, yeah, since it's so popular, it's much easier to get caches than with Letterboxing.  There are hundreds in our town alone.  This one we found on a night hike above our house.
  

  

I'm not sure who put this on my phone . . . 

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.