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I love this CD so much! I think it's a beautiful album and I enjoy all these tracks. It was a great deal of fun making this one. We went through all our old journals to track down the key moments in our courtship over the years. Then we painstakingly chose some of the favorite instrumental tracks from our music collection to represent these moments.

I'm not going to go through and explain the significance of every single track, but I will discuss an interesting phenomenon about our relationship that this CD brings to the forefront: there tended to be a movie involved during several key moments of our relationship, as evidenced by the fact that many of the tracks on this CD come from movies we watched at crucial junctures in our relationship. Allow me to elaborate a bit.

The theme from Sneakers is significant because we first held hands while watching this movie at a party I threw to celebrate the purchase of my new DVD player (back when DVD players were still a novelty).

Gabriel Yared's "The Unfeeling Kiss" comes from the movie City of Angels. Chris and I almost kissed for the first time while watching this movie---but we resisted because we had agreed we were "just friends" at the time.

Yann Tiersen's "Comptine d'Un Autre Ete" comes from the film Amelie. Chris and I watched this movie together once and afterwards went for a sweet walk in which he confessed his love for me. It scared me a little bit because he came on so strongly and I didn't feel ready to jump into a relationship with him just yet. So I broke it off again, which is why we chose a bittersweet song from the film to represent this moment.

The theme from Eternal Sunshine represents a significant moment in our relationship---one in which I doubted we would be able to have a successful marriage if the results of that date didn't work out. I'm intentionally not giving tons of details about this evening, but maybe you can read in between the lines based on the film.

This CD is awesome. By far my most favorite of all the CDs. Alyssa had the idea of creating a "soundtrack" for our lives, mainly so that we could put on some of our favorite instrumental songs because it's hard to put them onto normal CDs. The end product is a (mostly) instrumental CD rich with personal meaning. Everytime we listen to it, we remember the events that led up to us being together.

Here are some of the songs that I suggested:

• "The True Spirit of Mom and Dad" - Alyssa and I went on a date and while driving around, I had her listen to this song, which is one of my favorites. She mentioned that her Dad liked New Age music as well. I remember being excited about sharing the song, which is weird enough, but Alyssa didn't seem to mind.
• "Namida" - A song from the Japanese anime Evangelion. The song is really sad, but ends on a major, hopeful chord. It refelcts the way I felt after Alyssa told me that she was really interested in someone else, just after I started getting excited about the idea of dating her.
• "Prelude to Suite for Cello..." - This is one of my favorite classical pieces.
• "Behind the Waterfall" - During on of our "on again" times in our "on again, off again" relationship, we went on a date to Stuart Falls, which was beautiful. We had a great time.
• "Ralph's Rhapsody" - This is another great song, which plays on multiple, intertwining melodies, so it's perfect for the times when we were each doing our own thing.
• "Barcelona Nights" - Alyssa and I went out for a friendly dinner at La Carreta's, a Peruvian restaurant. I was during this dinner that we both felt that we really wanted to start seeing more of each other. This song is upbeat with a Latin influence and fits perfectly.