77. Visit Shannon after she's married and living in Chicago

Those of you who have been following me on my 101 in 1001 quest know that I started my list back in February of 2007. At that time my good friend Shannon was engaged to be married in 6 months and I knew she was moving to Chicago. So I made one of my goals to visit her after she was married and living there. Oh--real quick--you may remember Shannon and her husband Greg from this shot--one of my favorite wedding moments ever captured:
Well, I thought I had all the time in the world to accomplish this goal until Shannon announced to me a month ago that she and Greg were moving back to Arizona at the end of October! So I booked my tickets for 4 days sandwiched between two weddings in the height of my busy season and went this week. It turns out it was just what the doctor ordered. Traveling can be exhausting but this trip was refreshing in so many ways.

I got to see Fall--a season Arizona likes to skip altogether:
And walk through leaves that have fallen to the ground.
And I got to break out my winter jacket (as you can see from the top photo--the temps were in the 50s all week).

I experienced Chicago-style stuffed pizza (cheese-less of course) for the first time in my life:
Saw the famous "bean":
To answer everyone's question from the comments in the previous post--we got the above photo without anyone in the background by brandishing our semi-automatic weapons and screaming at the top of our lungs: "STEP AWAY FROM THE BEAN or we WILL shoot!" JK JK. I don't take out the semi-automatic unless it's a TRUE emergency :). No, we were just lucky I guess. There weren't too many people out and most of the ones that were there were standing under the bean at this particular juncture.

We also got to take in some art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Have any of you ever heard of the board game Masterpiece? I played it a bunch when I was a kid and I guess I haven't looked at a lot of the classics since then because when I turned the corner and saw each of these pieces, a wave of childhood memories came back from when I played that game.
The Art Institute of Chicago houses SO many amazing famous works including this gem:
Not only did we get to see a lot of what Chicago has to offer, I also just had some good old-fashioned down time to not think constantly about my business. And Greg and Shannon love games as much as I do so there was plenty of late-night game-playing shenanigans that took place. Good times.

Thanks so much for your friendship Greg and Shannon! I'm so blessed to have it. And I'm thrilled that you'll be back in Phoenix soon!!
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