Flashback Friday: Why our song is our song

Some relatives gave us some money for Christmas, which we quickly spent...mostly on Amazon.com. Our entertainment in Egypt is rather limited. We have satellite TV but 90% of the channels are music videos or shop-from-home stations. Mostly we watch MBC 1, 2, 3, and 4. If we watch at all, that is.

We rarely turn the television on. Occasionally Rachel and I will watch some cartoons that were translated into Arabic from English from Japanese, or sometimes if we know there's going to be a good movie on we'll schedule a time to watch it. But mostly we do other things, which is great.

But there are times we just want to watch a movie and we don't really have many to choose from.

And our Christmas collection is pretty skimpy. We don't even own Elf--except for the fact that we just purchased it from Amazon--and it's "our" movie. How could we not own "our" movie?

Lucky for us, the Lewises own it so last night after we got all the kids (their kids and Rachel) in bed Andrew and I sat down to watch it together.

As per his request I'll explain why it's special to us for this Friday's Flashback.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that we got married in December, right around Christmas. Everyone told me it would be awful and that I'd regret it forever--the date, not the marriage--but I don't. Granted, it was a little stressful at the time with finals and the wedding and Christmas just around the corner but I think it would be stressful no matter what time of the year we had gotten married.

We chose our date for a number of reasons:
a) Finals were over. Not a huge deal because I was only taking internship credit and Italian so I only had one final. I believe it was on December 13th, so it was a couple of days before the wedding.
b) We wanted to get married before Andrew left for his study abroad in Amman, Jordan. Mostly so that I could go with him because we couldn't bear to be separated for that long.
c) We wanted to get married before my brother David left for his study abroad in Brazil. Mostly because I wanted him to witness our wedding because my dad wasn't able to be there.
d) The temple was available that date.

Our most pressing issues were really B and C. David was leaving for his internship in Brazil in January and wouldn't be back until April. Andrew was leaving for his study abroad in Jordan in May, just days after David arrived home. And we really didn't want to be married that soon before moving to the Middle East together. Not that that would have been a bad thing and no offense to anyone who's done that (ahem, Joneses...Schillings?) but I just figured that getting married is stressful enough and didn't want to throw culture shock into the mix.

So we got married in December. The 16th, to be exact. A Friday. At 3 o'something in the afternoon. In the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. In sealing room 6 (or 4...I can't remember but I have it written down).

Wouldn't it be romantic if I could actually remember all those details off the top of my head? Unfortunately I've entered the haze otherwise known as 'motherhood' and my memory just ain't what she used to be.

We had our reception the day after we got married, which was nice because then we weren't all exhausted and/or jittery. The day after our reception we went to church in our new ward since we hadn't left for our honeymoon yet.

I had to introduce myself in Relief Society and said something like this, "I'm Nancy Heiss and I just go married. We moved into the Dillenbeck's old apartment..."

"Oh, when did you get married?" someone asked.

"Friday," I answered.

"Well, no wonder you two were so cuddly!" someone else called out. Many other embarrasing comments ensued. I just sank slowly into my chair, beet red. I couldn't wait to get out of there. And lucky for me we did get out of there and all the way to Italy.

That sounds romantic, I'm sure. The only reason we went, though, was because I had already been planning a trip to Europe and couldn't cancel my tickets. Some friendly people at my father-in-law's office pooled together to buy a ticket for Andrew, which was so very nice of them!

We flew out December 20th and had to fight other passengers to change seats with us so that we could sit by each other on every leg of the journey. It was kind of a hassle, but worth it because we just couldn't bear to be separated.

With it being Christmastime and all the radio station that you can listen to with the headphones (that they used to give out for free but now charge you for) was playing Christmas music and since Andrew and I like Christmas music (and since we were given headphones for free) we were listening to it.

When Baby, It's Cold Outside came on I tapped Andrew on the arm. We both pulled our headphones off.

"I like this song," I mentioned.

"Okay," he mumbled sleepily, put his headphones back on and started dozing off again.

Perhaps it's because I had only recently became aware of the song, or perhaps it's because the song suddenly got really popular in Italy in December 2005, but either way we heard the song all over for the rest of our honeymoon. All over. In metro stations and train stations and air ports and restaurants. We heard it so often that it kind of became the unofficial theme song of our honeymoon.

After spending a day in London and touring through Rome (Andrew's mission stomping grounds) we went up north to Vicenza to visit my...aunt.* It was a lot colder in northern Italy than we were expecting. It was rather drizzly and my coat, we found out, was not waterproof. After spending a half-day in Verona and freezing our little tushies off, we decided to call it a day and go back to the Eldredge's to relax and warm up.

No one was home so we decided to watch a movie. Andrew chose Elf because neither of us had remembered seeing it before. Imagine our surprize when Buddy and Jovie started singing Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Andrew and I both burst out laughing because we'd heard that song so many times already it was getting to be ridiculous. It seemed as if fate was trying to assign us a "song" and since we didn't previously have a "song" we stopped fighting against the inevitable and adopted Baby, It's Cold Outside as our song. And Elf as our movie because, hey, why not? It's just one more reason to get sentimental and lovey-dovey.

*What do you call someone who was your aunt's best friend growing up, who was also friends with your mother, who married your aunt's husband's cousin, who is also distantly related (like 3rd or 4th cousins) to your mom and aunt anyway? I don't know, either.

Growing up we mostly just called them "The Turkey Cousins" because they lived in Turkey for several years (their dad is stationed with the army as a civil servant/school administrator guy). When I was little and we were visiting my aunt at the same time they were I asked my mom if they even spoke English. That's how much I thought they were actually from Turkey. They don't live in Turkey anymore (they don't live in Italy anymore, either) but I still call them The Turkey Cousins.