I honestly don’t remember HOW or WHEN Chad and I finally settled on our baby girl's name. I DO know it’s been in “holding” for MUCH longer than we’ve even been pregnant though. BOTH our names have been. (A name for a boy and a name for a girl I mean…) Tight lipped and in the Kelley vault for well over a year, we FINALLY revealed her name to the world.. (ok, maybe that was a little dramatic), we finally revealed her name to our immediate family and friends the day we found out we were having our sweet baby girl, at week 17.
A family name it’s not.. well that’s not entirely true. Everleigh’s not a family name…we just really fell in love with it. We wanted something classic but not too common. Something interesting but not over-the-top. The one thing, however, that we couldn’t settle on for the longest time was HOW to actually spell it. So many variations, so many possibilities. Everlee, Everli, Everlie, Everly, Everley… none of them though, seemed special enough. They were all certainly CUTE, but definitely not classic. Or at least not to us.
Here’s the run down on our thought process as far as the variations were concerned.
Everlee – was actually a strong contender for me.. but.. Chad wasn’t convinced. We also got comments on how the “lee” part just seemed too masculine. That seemed enough to get this variation…Nixed.
Everli – Too short and trendy. Didn’t think she could carry that variation into adulthood without seeming like she had a little girl's name.. Axed.
Everlie – Looked like Ever-LIE to me.. Next.
Everly – This one looked like it was missing letters. Didn’t seem complete… Nope.
Everley – This one never seemed right… not sure why. It was never even an option for either of us… Eh.
After all was said and done, the one spelling that we kept coming back to was Everleigh. Certainly the LONGEST option of them all.. (which will probably be a problem for her throughout her school days). Curse those dang school scantrons with not enough boxes, or those kids who will probably mis-pronounce her name cause they’ve never seen “LEE” spelled like “Leigh”. But..it was the spelling we liked the best so, it stuck.
Isabella, however, IS a family name (well sorta). My grandma (“Nana”), my mom’s mom, is Isabel. And although we contemplated just leaving it as Isabel, we thought Everleigh Isabel Kelley needed a little something extra.. like.. MORE LETTERS! Longest. Name. Ever. At least we didn’t go super Mexican on her and give her a bazillion middle, hard to pronounce Spanish names like.. Everleigh Don Francisca Paola de los Nopales Kelley. In a way she should thank us. We saved her YEARS and YEARS of a cramped writing hand. Lucky duck. Ha!
My spunky grandma Nana getting down at our wedding. :)
Probably NOT the best picture of her, but I ran across this and COULDN'T pass up an opportunity to show her having fun. I was actually SHOCKED when I saw this.. I don't remember taking this picture and it's VERY unlike her to be doing anything like this anymore. :)
