Jesus is a liberal!

How could I NOT share this? : ) Enjoy. Thank you, Colbert.

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Thanksgiving, the season of guests, and our anniversary

Hello again!

It's been a little while—we've been crazy busy the last month, it seems. What's new in Campbell-land:

• Corey and Allison visited us for a night on their way from Oregon to Michigan—so lovely to catch up with them! Humorously, I thought they were coming the week before Christmas, not Thanksgiving; but it was a good surprise. : )

• We had a great Thanksgiving, as alluded to earlier; we spent the day with my grandpa up in Rockford, eating good food, watching football, and chatting.

• We braved Black Friday at the last minute—"braved" being the operative word. We headed home a little early to avoid crazy drivers and were going to go to sleep at a decent time, and then we were looking through the ads, thinking of Christmas gifts we could buy the next day, when we realized that all these stores were only a few minutes away....I'll never go to Best Buy's opening again—though it was amazing deals. We got most of our Christmas shopping done that night, between there and Target and Kohl's.

• My mother visited the next weekend and spent a few days with my grandpa—got to spend time with her for a little while on Sunday.

• The following weekend, Chase was honored as a December grad in Wheaton's chapel, and Erin, Hannah, Marie, Sally and I had a little reunion for the whole weekend! Sally still lives here in Wheaton, Erin and Hannah are in Michigan, and Marie's at school in London....and we hadn't all been together since graduation. Such an amazing fun time of good friends, good food, a good BBC marathon....yep. : ) (Oh, and I tried my hand out at making a meal with multiple courses....which was a lot of fun! Stuffed provencal peppers, followed by bacon and spinach wrapped chicken stuffed with goat cheese, and finished off by dark chocolate truffle cakes.)

Standard breakfast spot Egglectic.

• Fast forward a couple days....it's now my and Chase's second anniversary! Well, technically it's tomorrow, but we celebrated Friday/Saturday with an excursion to the city. Thanks to Groupon, we were able to stay at the new Radisson Blu Aqua, which was a-ma-zing, and visit Shedd Aquarium for super-discounted prices. We also went out for dinner at 312 Chicago, did some walking around the city, (briefly) visited the Magnificent Mile (Black Friday Best Buy had nothing on that orgy of shopping—run away!) and Christkindlmarket (also too unfortunately busy to stick around), found our annual ornament (a little tradition started on our honeymoon) at the State Street Macy's, which was more crowded outside the window displays than in the actual store....it was a great, romantic, fun, relaxing weekend. : ) I'm so lucky to be married to this guy!!!

Our amazing hotel room.

One of the views from our room.

Turtle!

Jellyfish!

Chicago skyline, from the steps of Shedd.

Out at 312 Chicago.

Well, now you know why I haven't written in a few weeks! Today, Chase is at the Bears/Seahawks game with his friend Brent, and I'm having a "me" day at home, recovering. ; )

Hope you're all having a beautiful and blessed holiday season!

Shannon

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I love this video. : )

It also reminds me of Wheaton's annual tradition of singing the Hallelujah Chorus as a student body/faculty right before Christmas break. 2,500+ voices=awesome (even despite mine being mixed in it!).

Shannon

Sad, but true

Sometimes The Onion just nails it.

I'm sad.

Because this is so true.

High Integrity, Moral Decency Has Cost Idiot Man Millions *warning: some rough language included*

America doesn't exactly reward the nice, fair, equitable, kind people anymore. It sucks. And it's true.

On that note....happy Thanksgiving? ; ) Seriously, happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had wonderful times with your families—we sure did. More later. : )

Shannon

What's happening to us?

I'm sorry, but what happened to freedom of speech and the right to assemble?

I think this photo says it all.

Courtesy http://www.treehugger.com/culture/photo-will-start-real-revolution.html

Breaking up a peaceful Occupy sit-in at UC Davis yesterday, a police officer strolled nonchalantly up and down the line of (sitting, heads ducked down, silent) college kids and hit them full in the faces with a steady stream of pepper spray. (For the YouTube video, click here.)

Does no one else see this as disturbing? I don't care what you think about Occupy Wall Street and its thousands of spin-offs in cities across the U.S. Repeat: I don't care. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. These people are crazy. These people are right on. These people are confused. Whatever. It is NOT OKAY to treat them like this, for wanting to put some action to their beliefs and demonstrate peacefully. NOT. OKAY. AT. ALL. It might not be your cause, but you should care, just the same. (At least care more than UC Davis' chancellor.)

It's pepper spray, not guns....but eerily reminiscent.

Courtesy The Digital Journalist/LIFE magazine

And just take a look around the world to remember what happens when decent citizens are silenced, and when good people start to shut up for fear of reprisal.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. —Edmund Burke