Top 2 Tuesdays - Favorite Names

I'm more than a little excited about Taylor's Top 2 Tuesday topic today because I just so happen to consider myself quite a big name nerd, that's an onomaphile. I have fun putting names together in combinations, naming characters and planning future names of children. These are my top two for each gender for real future kids and they have Brian's stamp of approval. They're not final picks of course, because hello, we're not even pregnant, but there's a good chance these names will get some use in the future.

Girls' Names: Our number one favorite is Helen Cecelia. My middle name is Cecelia after my grandmother and I've always loved it and wanted to pass it on. Several years ago (before I met Brian) I had picked out this combination because I love how elegant and strong it feels to me. It just so happens that Granny's name is Helen so it works out to be a combination of both of our grandmothers, perfect!!

Number 2 girls name is Merrilee Claire or Merrilee Ruth. Merrilee is a recent favorite of mine that I thought I had made up based on a mash up of my dad and grandfather, Merril, and Brian's dad and grandfather, Leo. Come to find out this name and variants were actually somewhat popular in the 40s. The middle name is undecided but St. Claire and Old Testament Ruth stand out as good namesakes in my mind.

Boys' Names: Our top pick is William Ambrose. William is a strong, handsome classic and I love it. Doing a little research I found out there's a St. William of York and hey that's kind of cool. St. Ambrose is a great saint and doctor of the church. I also just really like the sound of the names in combination. His initials would be WAY which I'm not sure is bad or neutral.

Second is Casey Fulton. We like the spunk and character of Casey, and the flow of Casey Fulton, but like all our other choices have great namesake models in Fr. Solanus Casey and Archbishop Fulton Sheen, two wonderful American Catholic heroes, both of whom have been nominated (probably the wrong choice of words) to be considered for sainthood.

I'm limiting myself by posting only the top two of each. Just in case we have 12 kids, I have enough favorite names for them too! I'm looking forward to getting more ideas from everyone else participating this week. There's a bunch so far! Head on over to The Undomestic Momma and play along.

Menu Plan Monday and why I started cooking

Monday: The Bible Study gang is coming over here this evening. I'm serving Salem College Ice Tea, Chicken Bites, Lemon Bars, veggie dip and crudite
Tuesday: Ciabatta Cheese Steaks with Butter and Parm Squished Potatoes These were recipes Rachel Ray did on her show. My mom saw it and made the meal and called me and told em about it. She and my dad loved it, so I'm sure we will too!
Wednesday: Pulled Pork Tacos, Cilantro Rice, pineapple mango salad. Making a big batch of this stuff because I'll be taking dinner to friends with a new baby
Thursday: Ginger Lime Chicken Thighs, navy beans, corn on the cob
Friday: Shrimp cakes and cole slaw. I haven't picked out a specific recipe for the cakes yet. Do you have one that you have used? I might end up mushing a few together.

And now for the story about why I started cooking up a storm. I've always enjoyed cooking. Ever since I was a little kid I liked helping my mom in the kitchen and playing with my own set of cooking tools. As a young adult in college though I didn't have a whole lot of opportunities to do much cooking on my own. By the time Brian and I got engaged though I had cooked for him many times sucessfully, and I thought I had expressed a liking for it. It came as a surprise then when we were at his Granny's house at Christmas time and she disappeared into another room to get my gift and then came back. This was Christmas 2008 and she was giving all the granddaughters some of the cookbooks from her own collection. She was holding the book How To Bake in her hands as she says to me "Brian tells me you don't cook, but that you don't mind baking every now and then so I thought you would like this one." My eyes darted over to Brian with the most pointed glare I could muster and tried to transmit the message "you told her WHAT? And why the hell you do a fool thing like that?" He looked all perplexed so I tried to clear the slate. "Oh, no, I told her, I really like cooking. I just don't have that much time to do it maybe." Now Brian's Granny is a very career-minded, modern woman, but even still, What Granny do you know that wants her grandson married off to a woman who doesn't cook?

Here's the inscription which I think further underscores the message that she thinks I don't cook!

Since then, I've poured quite a lot of energy into cooking for many reasons. I like it, it saves us money over going out, to take care of my husband, for fun and to show hospitality to friends and family. But all of it has had a not so subtle undertone that says "yes huh, I do too cook!" And I'm dang good at it too!

Looking at new life

This might be my first post which is more about telling myself something than about telling you something but I want to write it out anyway. I hope it makes sense to some of you, but it's a very personal and private matter that I'm choosing to share even though I have some hesitancy in doing so. I hope you'll understand.

Brian and I didn't get married until we were fully ready to accept children lovingly from God. We promised that on our wedding day and really meant it. We didn't exactly have finances completely lined up, we knew that the house we were in wouldn't grow with us very well, and we were just barely learning how to live with each other as husband and wife without the added adjustment that children would bring. But still, we knew that we wanted a family, hopefully pretty big, and the sooner we could start that the better. Because of our faith, we made the decision to put issues of fertility, and children fully into God's hands and keep ourselves open to new life. As part of our marriage preparation, our church encouraged us to learn the workings of Natural Family Planning and we did our best on a home study course. We knew that we would never use artificial birth control, but accepted the possibility that we may one day need to postpone pregnancy or actively try to conceive using NFP methods. Early in our marriage and even before my friends and family and even some people I didn't know all that well would ask when are we going to start having kids, or how many will we have. I know lots of yall get asked that too. Somehow I don't think that the men get asked that though, do they? I would give vague answers letting people know that we didn't feel that was in our control and didn't want it to be. "Oh however many God gives us." "Whenever God sees fit."

As it turns out however, I hadn't given that control to God completely. I can look at my actions and motives along these past 8 months of marriage and see that I was holding on and asking for God's will to be done but promoting my own. Somewhere in the back of my mind I assumed we would be the kind of couple that comes home with a honeymoon baby and that was a-ok with me. In the first 2 months of marriage I was sure I was pregnant about three times. After that we started looking at some practical complications and avoided pregnancy for a few months. But recently we've been feeling readier than ever and have begun actively trying to conceive. That stage brings me to this weekend. Over the last several days I've been picking up on symptoms and putting them together to build a really convincing argument that I'm pregnant. There are a few that I'll just skip over as unmentionable but my favorite is how full and lovely my breasts had gotten even if they were tender! I'm pretty sure that was hubby's favorite too! Unfortunately, I was mistaken. All of my happy signs of pregnancy amounted to a bummer of a case of PMS. I'm telling you, PMS combined with dashed hopes and a rainy ugly weekend makes for a miserable woman that no one ought to have to be around. I could hardly hold a conversation the first half because I was so excited and "am I or am I not" was seriously the only thing I could think about. And the second half it's all "woe is me, honey will you rub my back?" Ever been there? It's not much fun. It's also unpleasant to be experiencing feelings that you feel guilty for having. After all, I realize that I'm not in a bad situation by anyone's definition. I have a husband who loves me and is eager to create life with me. We have only been married 8 months and really not trying to conceive for long at all. So many women, maybe even some of you, have faced so much tougher circumstances and struggles that I don't begin to know. God forbid that I ever should. But I always try not to diminish a person's pain just because someone else has it worse, and that's exactly where I was this weekend.

One thing is for sure though, God has this whole timing thing figured out! He's had eternity to be working on it and as it happened there was a really poignant lesson scheduled for our teens this week and I was in charge of the teaching for it. The theme was "No Matter How Small" and was focused on life issues that our society faces, the 5th commandment, and Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who. It is our mission as Christians, like Horton, to protect and defend life that is unable to defend itself especially the unborn, the severely handicapped, and those at the very end of their life. I was preparing the lesson with the belief that I was taking care of such a life, maybe only a few cells big, but it gave special meaning to it for me and I embraced the assignment. By the time I delivered the lesson though I knew I wasn't pregnant, very sad about it, and it seemed awfully unfair to have to be talking about baby baby baby. The prayer service at the end though was prepared by another member of the core team and provided a chance for healing for me, and growth for the teens. Our whole parish is participating in the spiritual adoption of unborn babies right now and last night was the teens' chance to "adopt" their own babies. Even as I found out that I wasn't pregnant, thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of women found out that they are. For many that was joyful, blessed and welcome news. For many others though, it was terrifying, unwelcome news. Some of those tiny, brand new lives are at risk of being aborted over the next several months, or may face, along with their mothers, complications, developmental diseases, or other trials. It is those babies that we all chose to spiritually adopt by giving them a name and praying for them over the next 9 months. I chose the name Gloria for my little baby and plan to take seriously my role as intercessor for her. You'd better believe I'll be praying like a crazy woman for this baby that's not mine, and asking for one that is at the same time.

I love me some blanks!

1. One thing I MUST do before I die is have a library in my house! I would love to channel Belle.
2. I would rather be temporarily deaf than listen to techno any day.
3. If I could give my younger self one piece of advice it would be put in a little effort. It's fine if you're not perfect, but you'll have a lot more to be proud of if you at least try.
4. If I won the lottery tomorrow I'd quit looking for a better job and rejoice in the fact that I could stay home with a clear conscience. I'd also let Brian know that if he wanted to go ahead and become a pilot boat captain, that'd be fine with me.
5. The best surprise ever was when I surprised Brian with a weekend trip to College Station. I had as much fun as he did and I can't remember a time when I was surprised.
6. My biggest fault is that I'm a lazy-ass.
7. My biggest strength is that I'm really smart and take pleasure in continuing to learn new things.

Go on over to Lauren's place and join in the blankety blank fun!

Wedding Wednesday - Something Blue

The theme this week is actually Unity candles vs sand. I didn't want to sit out this week for Wedding Wednesdays hosted by Courtney, but the truth is we didn't do either. We chose to plan our wedding in the most traditional, Catholic way possible, and this unity component isn't authentic to a Catholic wedding even though many people successfully incorporate it. We knew that the whole wedding Mass was full of tradition and symbolism and didn't feel we needed to add in any extra. The other reason we didn't have a unity candle (we had never considered sand) is that my mom was petrified of having to go up to the altar and light a candle. She gets pretty nervous about these things, and I had no intention of forcing it on her. We did incorporate our parents by asking them to bring up the gifts which would be used for communion, an offering for the poor, and a small bouquet of roses that we offered to Mary. That plan got a little botched thanks to a completely incompetent "coordinator." The roses were in the wrong spot and the check got left in the dressing room. But our parents did walk up together with the bread and wine which we appreciated even if Brian's parents (not Catholic) were a little baffled.

So instead, I backtracked to the Wedding Wednesday theme from 2 weeks ago which happened to be "Something Blue." We got married on the 4th of July and so as a nod to the patriotism of the day, we did something of a toned down red, white and blue color palette. We used navy, light blue and white as the main colors with deep red white and light pink in the flowers. It all turned out beautifully and there was blue all over! Leading up to the wedding I had been petitioning Brian for sapphires in my wedding band as a something blue, but the ring that he picked out just wasn't working, so we went for a simple, solid gold band instead. I did still have a something blue though in my shoes and garter both of which were blue and white seersucker.

Ok now that I've been through all of my pictures looking, I can't understand why there isn't a color picture of my shoes (I loved those shoes!) or one of my garter at all! Grrr...

Thank goodness Etsy keeps records! My garter was a special order, but was very similar to this one. It was pretty much the wider garter, with the smaller flower. I would definitely recommend that seller, she did a great job!

By the way I picked those up at Payless for $7. Yeah, that's how I roll! I'd be happy to let you use them for your something borrowed!

Tuesday- Top 2 Stores

I missed Taylor's Top 2 last week, but am chiming in this week to talk about my top two favorite stores to shop at.

Number 1. Definitely J.Crew. I've got that loyalty thing going on, and I sure do love the clothes! I always check there first if I'm looking for a certain thing. They've got me covered from the basic to the fabulous!

Number 2. Target! There's pretty much no way I'd rather pass an hour or two than wandering through the aisles at Target tossing things I "need" into my basket. I went yesterday and got a couple of trays Hopsy mentioned, a new Essie nail polish, a thick belt for up around my waist, a really cute anchor gift sack, and gummy worms. You see how I couldn't live without any one of those things and I wouldn't have even known it if I hadn't stopped into to my neighborhood Target.

I'm sew jealous!

If a button falls off of my clothes, I'm going to need a safety pin. Whereas my husband whips out the antique Singer sewing machine and sets up making a wind scoop for the sail boat on a Monday night. I'm feeling a little defeminized (is that the opposite of emasculated?) right about now. He sure is a cutie though, huh?

A little trivia he told me tonight, and I'll ask you... Rip-stop nylon was created as a substitute for what other material? And for what specific use?

I made learning to sew one of my New Year's Resolutions, and I'm even more resolved now. Any suggestions where to start?