Corinne Stuff and Kids at School

In the past week or two, Corinne has learned to roll on her side and swat at toys!  She's also talking alot, it's awesome.  I have to give credit to my other daughter for stealing my phone and getting some of these pictures without permission.
  

  

  

   

Connor and Elise just love to make art.  They do it at home, and at both their school programs, so I feel obligated to save some and take pictures of some (whatever is too big to file.)  These were mostly made at school, although the last picture is from an art show at the other school.  Yeah, my kids' education can be confusing.

Elise made this at home by herself.

The Forest, including a robin, lizard, and bear. (Connor)

Elise

Elise

Connor

Art Show (I'll take pictures of that stuff when I get a chance!)

    
Ryan and I celebrated our birthdays at the beginning of December, but we really didn't get any pictures.  Sorry!  I got Ryan some biking gear he wanted (a new helmet and a headlight,) and he got me bookshelves.  Boring, but totally cool.  Oh, and we went out to eat at a super fancy steakhouse in Burbank.  Elise and Connor both made us cards, although this one was too big to file, so it got photographed.  That's a picture of me ;-)
  

  
The weather has been rainy and cold lately, but that didn't stop us from going to the kids' school cookout.  It was supposed to be a campout, but none of the families wanted to!  We got the most important parts of camping, though.  (The ash-covered charred marshmallow parts.)
  

Evan loves to repeat, "Under the Umbrella!"  From Starfall

   
Evan has such a hard time when I drop the older kids off at school.  Sometimes he cries all the way home because he can't go, too!  So, I try to let him get out and play when we pick them up in the afternoon.  I think I stood there watching them all roll on the grass for an hour last week.  If only we had a lawn of our own!
  

  

Thanksgiving Weekend

This year, due to Ryan's work schedule, we stayed in California over the Thanksgiving weekend.  We actually had a lot of fun, though!  We got together with two other orphaned families from church and did Thanksgiving dinner together.  I made my mom's stuffing recipe, which everybody loved, plus mashed potatoes and set salad.  Other dishes there included coconut-topped sweet potato casserole, bacon-wrapped green beans, pie, turkey, salad, rolls, and sparkling cider.  It was so much easier than trying to do it all myself!  Plus, the kids had friends to play with.
  

I tried to get a picture of the grown-ups table, but they never sat down all at once!

Listening to "Run Turkey Run" - Kind of a dark story if you think about it . . 

   

We did do a thankful tree this year, but it was kind of puny.  Not because we weren't thankful, but because Ryan and Connor got attacked by yellowjackets while finding this stick.  They didn't feel like going out to look for a bigger one.  (Connor was stung twice, Ryan once.)

   

   
The day after that, we had a field trip to the California Science Center with some friends from Connor and Elise's school. We saw an IMAX movie about the Hubble telescope, then saw the Endeavor Space Shuttle exhibit.  It was amazing to see something that had been in space so many times.  I was really surprised by how many space shuttle missions there had been - 135 in all!  Some years in the mid-80's had missions every other month or so.  Also, a large number of the early ones were for the Department of Defense, and were classified.  Makes sense, I guess.
  

They had posters for every shuttle mission wrapping around the hangar.

Evan hadn't napped, and behaved accordingly . . 

       
Saturday we joined friends at Joshua Tree National Park for a day trip (they camped, we did not.)  At the start of one of our little hikes, I decided to stay behind to feed Corinne.  By the time she was ready to go, our group was long gone, so I decided to do the hike myself (I eventually found everyone.)  It was so, so nice to just be alone for awhile, walking in such a pretty area.
   

Just Me and Binny (and all those other hikers.)

Friends and Geodes

The company that sells the history/literature curriculum we use recently had a charity fundraiser that included videos about many poorer areas of the world.  The kids decided to participate, and filled their "radio-box" bank all month with spare change and their own money.  At the end, they worked together to count it (yes, that ended in an argument, but that's not the point.)  They ended up raising/finding $50 to donate!  I was pretty proud of them.
    

    

A month or so ago, a new family moved in to the other ward that meets in our church building.  I had several friends notify me that I "had" to meet this lady, and they were right!  They have a boy, girl, and boy just a year younger than my kids, and they homeschool!  That makes only the third homeschooling LDS family I know in our whole stake (large church region.)  We got together at Descanso Gardens one morning to play.
  

Pretending to be mad.  Connor actually was in time-out for running off.

Nice Cartwheel, Connor.

  
A few days after that, the kids had some of their best friends over while their mom got a haircut.  The little girl is definitely into babies, even stinky ones!
  

  
Since Connor's current passion project is on crystals and gems, I ordered some "break-your-own" geodes on Amazon.  They were kind of hard to crack open, but they were awesome inside!  Yes, we substituted goggles for safety glasses.
  

  

    
Evan decided one day that he wanted to pee in the potty. He did it several times that day, and got to wear training underwear, which he thought was awesome!  Then he had a couple accidents, and while waddling bowlegged back to the bathroom to get changed he said, "No underwear, get diaper!"  Oh, well.  I think we'll get him some pull-ups and take a more moderate approach for awhile.
  

That's right, Evan.  You rock!

    
Kevin's friend Katie requested this video a month back, and I forgot to put it on here.  I don't usually post videos, since I have my blog printed into a book each year, but here it is anyway!
   

 For printed blog purposes, here's the transcript: "Goodbye Grandma Cloe!  I love you!  Hi Katie!  Byebye!"

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.