Posted in Its a CARNIVAL

My favorite Christmas movie is...



It's A Wonderful Life.

...but not for being a Christmas movie although we do watch it this time of year now. 

Dan and I both love this movie for a very personal reason.

I never watched the movie as a child.  The first time I saw it I was a senior in college at Hardin Simmons University.  My Meemaw had just passed away from ovarian cancer and I was a pretty sad person.  It was late October 1988.  Dan and I had been dating through college and we were both thinking about marriage but neither of us dared mention it yet.  I did not know it at the time but Dan had been paying on an engagement ring for two years and had already asked my Dad if he could marry me.  He was also planning on asking me over Christmas. 

He changed his mind because of the death of my Meemaw.  It was the right time because I had been so devastated by the death of my Meemaw.  So, he planned a night at his house to watch a movie and eat dinner.  We often cooked at his house on Friday nights and ate together.  It was usually four of us with Dan and his two roommates and me.  I often cooked with one of his roommates that wound up becoming a chef (and now here I am in culinary school at 40... LOL).  We ate dinner and went in to settle in for the movie and all of a sudden the two roommates had "something important" to do.  They took off one going out for the night and the other heading to his room to study (on Friday night???).  Something was going on...

Dan and I cozied up on the couch and started the movie.  By the time we got to the place where George and Mary were both listening on the phone Dan and I both were in tears.  What a great movie this was.  I kept wondering why I had never seen it before.

We finished the movie and headed back to the dorm.  I was a resident assistant in the freshman dorm and had a curfew to meet - I had to be an example setter with my job.  ;)  So we pulled into the parking lot and we both got out of the car (a 1976 Dodge Dart - remember we were in college in the late 1980's).  I started to walk toward the dorm when Dan took me by the hand and led me behind the bandhall where there was a small courtyard, barbeque pit and the back door to the bandhall.  It was a lovely courtyard with stones shaping the ground, walls and flowerbeds.  There were beautiful vines that grew all over the tops of the walls in the spring and summer but they were still lovely in the fall even though they were starting to shed leaves. 

At this point the world was spinning so fast all I can remember is that Dan took something that looked like a little box out of his coat pocket and got down on one knee.  He was asking me to marry him and I just started to cry the most joyful tears I had ever cried in my life.  Of course I said yes...

That was 18 years ago and we still watch that wonderful movie every year but now we watch it over Christmas when we have more family time.  I still cry at the scene where George and Mary realize that they love each other on that phonecall they never hear.  LOL  I am a big sappy girl when it comes to that movie and I love it!!!  Dan loves it, too.  I am his sappy girl and always will be...

Oh, and btw, Aunt Vera is keeping kiddos - yes, all four of them - so we can have a couple night on Friday.  It is a birthday present from her to us.  Guess what movie we are watching after we eat dinner...

ummmmm, YEPPERS!!!!!