Kid Names

I was on facebook today and saw an old friend from high school named Aden. He was the first person I ever knew with the name Aden so when I was pregnant with Aiden and we were tossing around names, I always thought of Aden when we came across the name Aiden. Confusing? hahaha. Anyway, with that in mind, I thought you might want to know the meaning behind why our children are named what they are. (If you don't want to know, skip to the next post because with five kids, this may take a while).

Alexis was our first and we just really liked the name Alexis. We wanted a classy name that wasn't overused at the time. Her middle name is Jade because it is a beautiful and rare gem, just like her. She is so precious and valuable to our family that I would pay any amount of money to do it all over again.

When we got pregnant with Aiden, Alexis was only three months old. When we learned it was going to be a boy, we just assumed he would grow faster than Alexis and they would look like twins most of their lives because they would be about the same size. Because they were going to look like twins, we decided to give them twin sounding names. Aiden was chosen because it meant "fire". This may sound cheesy, but we wanted him to have such a buring testimony of Jesus Christ that we wanted his name to match. (The spirit of God like a fire is burning...) He got the middle name Tanner because we had to think of something to put on the birth certificate and that is all we could come up with.

Aspen was originally going to be Andrew. In my journal I talked a lot about "Baby Andrew". About three weeks before he was born we came across the name Aspen and decided to change it. I loved it because when I think about Aspen trees, I think of the highest elevation mountains here in Arizona, up in the white mountains. They are covered in Aspen trees. Next time you are in the temple and you get to the part where Adam and Eve are praying to God (temple worship), look at the trees around them- they are Aspen trees. However, when they are not worshiping God, just doing day to day activities, there are no Aspen trees to be seen. I feel like it is showing us that when Adam and Eve wanted to be close to God they went up in elevation to the mountain, the same as Moses did. Therefore, in naming Aspen, we hoped he would remember that to be close to God he needs to go up to the temple. We also knew Aspen would be our last child so we finished off with one last A. Three kids with the same letter isn't THAT bad, right?


A few short months later, we were blessed with another surprise. However, this time I didn't want to take any more chances- we were having my tubes tied after the C section to guard my sanity. Four kids and three C-sections in five years was enough. Since we KNEW this would be the last we didn't want him or her to feel left out being the only one without an A name so we decided to stick with it one more time. You know how when you are pregnant you sometimes just get feelings about kids? Well, I knew Aspen and Ash were going to be more than best friends- it was going to be a soul mate type of relationship. There is a bond between them that is impossible for me to put into words. The best I can do is say they are like twins- they could communicate with each other in their own language well before either one of them could speak. To this day they are completely inseperable. Dallas wanted the name Ash. I liked it because we already had one tree name and since they were going to be best friends I thought it would be nice. Ash trees are strong and sturdy and that is how I wanted my son to be- immovable. However, Ash sounded more like a nickname so we compromised to get Ashton. Mostly he goes by Ash because Aspen and Ashton sound too much alike.


Ash is the only one to have a family name. His middle name is Harvest after my mom's dad. We tried that name on for size before with the other boys but it didn't fit. This time around Dallas wanted to name our baby after his passion- gardening. Harvest was a perfect match.

Finally, Amanda chose her own name. When we arrived in Ukraine and she told us her name was going to be Amanda instead of Gala we were shocked. I had planned on suggesting Anya, Annika, Annaliese or Aleah but she had decided before we arrived. When we asked her how she came up with that name she said she heard it on a Mary Kate and Ashley movie. It was about a young orphan girl who was adopted by a rich family. While we aren't rich, she definately was an orphan and in her eyes was being brought into an amazing family who lived in a huge mansion. Her middle name is Halley because of the girl my sister adopted from the same school in Ukraine. Both girls were named Gala in the orphanage and my sister's daughter changed her name to Halley. Amanda said she wanted Halley to be her middle name so they could still share the same name.


So that's it- that is how all our kids got their names. Now ya know....