Tuesday Tell All Catch Up

What's in a name?

Kristen Kathleen

My mom and dad both loved Kristen. Kathleen is a derivative of Catherine, my mother's mother. i was supposed to be Ginny after my aunt Gigi but that didn't happen.

Travis Lee

Trav's mom and dad liked Travis. His father's middle name is Lee.

Aiden Parker

When we found out we were having a boy, Travis and I were going to name him Andrew. Then Andrews started popping up everywhere amongst our freinds and family. In order to avoid so many kids with the same name we chose Aiden instead. Little did we know there would be thousands of Aidens. Traditionally his name is spelled Aidan. I chose Aiden because Kristen is spelled Kristen.

Parker was always in the running. However, Parker Heckel sounded like a sneeze (as did Cole Heckel, another option). Everyone who knows my husband knows about his obsession with Spiderman whose real name is Peter Parker. I didn't want to use Peter so we used Parker as his middle name.

Audrey Elizabeh

After loosing two pregnancies Travis and I prayed for another child. I told God I didn't care if he blessed us with a boy or a girl, I just wanted to add to our family. In order to show him I was serious, we didn't find out the sex of our second child. I loved not knowing because it kept me focused on getting mentally ready for a baby. Plus we were going to move and didn't plan on decorating a room for the baby for less than one month.

If Audrey was a boy his name would have been Cooper Drake. I just liked Cooper and it sounded cute with our last name. I chose Drake because it is my mother's middle name.

Since Cooper will never have a chance to make it into our family's name database (two kids is plenty for us since we both work), I "gave" the name to my friend Amber who just had a baby boy, Cooper Adrian Jaggers (the first leap day baby in Louisville!).

However, we had a beautiful baby girl. Audrey comes after my father's mother. Elizabeth...I just loved the sound of it with Audrey.

My Snow Babies

Two polar opposite things I always wanted for my kids to love: swimming and playing in the snow! So far they are adhering to my plan...somewhat at least.

We have had two larger snows this year. No, Wendi, they are nothing compared to Utah but they were pretty big for Kentucky (I'll get into the wacky weather in my next blog). The first snow was right before Valentine's Day. The ice storm came first (beautiful and Ansel Adams-y) and started in the middle of the day so school was let out early. I think that makes teachers happier than the students! The snow fell on top of that and we ended up with about 6 inches of snow. Aiden had strept throat so we made him stay inside. Audrey said it was "pweeedddy" and wanted to see it. Even though she giggled when the snow fell on her, she wouldn't touch it. She kept her hands up the whole time to avoid touching it (as is evident in the second picture of her).






At the beginning of March we got quite a large snow over a two day period. We ended up with a 12 inch accumulation. Audrey was snowed in at my mom and dad's so I was determined that Aiden and I go out and play. He was in his room listening to music and reading his Star Wars book when I bundled up and snuck out of the house. Stealthily I snuck to his window and bombed it with snowballs. I saw his little head pop up and stare at me. Then I heard him squeal, "Hey! Daddy get my coat!" He came out and we had a fun little snowball fight. He even helped me shovel. Poor thing doesn't realize that will be his job in a couple years. Good times!