did i ever tell you about...

...how we picked the names of our children?

Kirby Isaiah:  Kirby is a family name from my side of the family.  It's my maternal grandmother's maiden name. If I had been born a boy my name would have been Kirby, but since I was born a girl my name is (well was) Rachel Kirby Whitesell.  In all honesty when I was little I hated that my middle name was Kirby.  I wanted my middle name to be Elizabeth, Marie or Nicole like all of my friends.  But suddenly when I reached middle school I finally figured out that being a little different was ok and all of the sudden I loved the name.  So from that point on I always wanted to name my son Kirby.  When Stan and I found out Kirby was a boy--which in my heart I knew from the moment I saw the positive pregnancy results--and he nixed naming our son after himself to be the third (which, for the record, I was in favor of) we agreed it would be Kirby.  Isaiah is Stan's favorite book in the Old Testament, maybe in the whole Bible, so that was what we went with for his middle name.

Bennett Elijah:  Bennett is also a family name.  It's Stan's mother's maiden name.  Seriously I can remember when Stan and I were talking about family names while we were dating and finding out that Bennett was his mother's maiden name and I thought to myself 'Oh I hope I marry him so I can use that as a boy's name and it won't be weird'.  I just loved it so much.  I'm not saying I married Stan only to be able to name my child that but it might have been one of the reasons. ;)  We went with Elijah as his middle name to stick with the major prophet theme and because we both also really like that name.

So basically Kirby and Bennett both had their names picked out before Stan and I were even married.

Judah Wallace:  Judah was the boy name that we never thought we would have to use.  Since Stan and I were both completely convinced that baby #3 would be a girl we struggled and struggled to agree on a girl name (which we had never been able to do with the previous two pregnancies).  Judah was actually the name of the baby in a family we met while at training in Richmond.  They weren't in training with us but came through for another reason.  They had a sweet baby boy with them who was at the time about 6 weeks old.  They are such a sweet family and that baby was just precious (and I'm sure he is a precious  toddler now).  After hearing the name Judah I turned to Stan and said 'if we have another boy I want to name him Judah.'  I even told baby Judah's mother that there was a good chance if we had another son we would steal that name.  She didn't care, of course.  Stan liked it too but we were sure we would never  use it.  Silly us.  When we found out Judah was boy #3, and got over our shock, I still loved the name Judah but had doubts as to whether I really wanted to use it.  It wasn't until April when I was sent to Bangkok with the pre-term labor issues that God confirmed it in my heart that Judah was this precious baby's name.  God continually brought Genesis 49:8-12 to me during that time.  I knew this baby was a strong little lion's cub and needed to be named Judah.  We chose Wallace since it's Stan's first name and obviously a family name...we like family names. :)

So there you go.  Each boy has a family name and a Biblical name.  Next week... something a little wacky.  I promise.