Thanksgiving at Great Wolf Lodge

The Burns clan decided to make a repeat visit to the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky for Thanksgiving. This was our second annual trip. This year, in addition to Grandma and Grandpa Burns, Aunt Shana and Uncle Derek came along with Zane and Scarlett. We spent a lot of time swimming. The three of us got there around 2:00 on Wednesday and Syd immediately wanted to start swimming. Grandma and Grandpa got here about 2 hours later and the Nold family got there around 7:00. We all swam again in the evening and then, of course Thursday morning. Then we enjoyed the buffet feast the lodge puts on. Then Grandma and Grandpa and the Nolds left, but we stayed to do some more swimming. In all, we were there for about 27 hours and 9 of those were spent in the water. Syd went on every slide in the place and really had a ball. Below find some pictures including Syd and Zane enjoying some strawberries, Grandma and Grandpa (taken by Syd), a family picture, and good-bye hugs from Syd and Zane.

Chicago Trip

Mom had a conference in Chicago this year so Dad and Syd went along to have some fun. We stayed in the Chicago Hilton, which was very nice and had a great view. The first picture is from our window... we went down to Navy Pier (where the ferris wheel is) on the second day. The rest of the pictures are from there. There is a mall there where we shopped and ate. And the Chicago Children's Museum is there so we checked that out. It was pretty nice and Syd had some fun as you can see.

Here are Dad and Syd at lunch enjoying their fortune cookies.

Mom and Syd posing.

Mom and Syd playing checkers.

Syd, showing off her height - 3' 9".

And here's Syd leaving the pier to go catch a cab. This one is reminiscent of the Minneapolis picture without the umbrella.

Halloween 2007

For the two months before Halloween we asked Syd what she wanted to be. At first, she changed her mind every couple of days, but then about a month before the big day she decided she wanted to be a mummy. We have no idea where the idea came from, but from that day on, no matter what, she wanted to be a mummy. We even took her to one of those Halloween USA stores and told her she could get anything she wanted. She still stuck with a mummy. And, of course, they had no mummy costumes. So I bought some gauze wraps from the dollar store and we created our own mummy costume. I attached the gauze to her sweatpants and sweatshirt rather than wrapping around her body thinking that would be more comfortable and more easily taken on and off (like for going to the bathroom). You can see from the pictures below what we came up with. She wouldn't let me put it over her face so we ended up attaching gauze to her hood that stayed up some of the time. It was really windy that night and she was running a lot so by the time we got home the gauze was almost entirely around her ankles, but oh well, tidiness probably isn't a trait of a good mummy anyway.

The pictures below are of her getting ready and her coming from the first house. By the third house she was fed up and wanted to quit because everyone was giving out chocolate. As most of you know, Syd does not like chocolate. We had to convince her that some house would have something other than chocolate, she just had to keep going. She did, and ended up with a pretty good take, about half chocolate and half non-chocolate. Dad and I helped her with the chocolate stuff.