baby names.

since we are mere days away from the the girls' arrival, i thought that it was time that i shared about how we chose names for both of them.  

let me preface by saying that when we choose our baby names, it is mostly me making suggestions and brenner either hating them and immediately shooting them down, or him saying, yeah, that's okay (which means that it is a possibility).  

this goes on and on.  example:  we finally decided on cole's name when i was in labor.  

but with the girls, we felt like we shouldn't keep their names a secret like i was planning on.  

in addition to people telling us that they wanted to monogram and personalize things for the girls, we also felt that with all the complications and the prayer over these girls, we wanted people to be able to pray for them by name if they wanted.  

but then it took us a while to actually decide.  

Clara Elisabeth

clara is a name that we both like.  we liked the way it sounded with campbell, it is not a really popular or trendy name and i like that it is a little old fashioned.  

elisabeth is a family name and i knew that one of the girls would have it as their diddle name.  it was my maternal grandmother's name, it is my aunt's name and it is my middle name.  we considered spelling it with a "z" instead of an "s", especially since spell check always auto corrects it, but we ultimately decided to stay with the family spelling.  elisabeth means "god is gracious" and we fully believe that based on all that he has done in our lives and in his miraculous work in these babies.

Elise Faith

elise is another name that we both just liked.  i have had this name on my "name list" since i was in high school.  i met a girl at camp named elise and immediately thought it was one of the prettiest names.  ironically, she was from texas too.  so when we found out we were having two girls, i really wanted to use this name.  i have never met any other elise, and yet i have learned of 3 of my friends whose daughters' middle name is elise.  but it is also a little old fashioned and not super popular, both things that we liked.

for her middle name, we wanted something that was meaningful and also sounded good with elise.  this was the last name that we decided on because it took me a long time to find something.  but the name faith means "trust in the lord" and we felt that was perfect for the journey that we have travelled over the last 9 months.  

there you go!  

(and just so you know, clara has been designated as twin "a" and elise is twin "b")