What's in my head lately

Yesterday I found out that my fabulous friend Lindsey (who lives way too far away) is having a baby girl! I also saw from one of her mom's comments on her post that one of their baby name possibilities is the same as one of the names on our shortlist! My first thought: "uh oh!" My second thought "well it's not like the kids would be together all the time, if we do both pick the same name..." My third thought "well, maybe that makes it easy to rule out that name possibility!"




Then I started thinking about the other girl names on our shortlist, one of which is already currently in use by my cute niece Anna.






Side note: I have another cute niece Miriam, who also requires acknowledgement!



(I am an equal opportunity aunt.)

So I'm thinking about how 'Anna' is already in use, and whether it would be weird (spelled right the first time, thanks Paul!) if we used 'Anna' too...and in one way, it would be a nice little tradition, because I also have the same name as a cousin of mine. "Big" Cheril is something like 7 years older than me, and 7 inches shorter than me. Oh yes, there was all sorts of ironic fun growing up when people would comment on how "Little Cheryl" (me) was actually bigger than "Big Cheril". Crazy, crazy ironic fun. So that's kind of a fun tradition possibility (at least it is in my head...I wonder how Paul & Mandy and Anna would feel about it? I wonder how long it'll be before Mandy reads this blog post? They're getting ready to move to Hawaii...she's probably busy packing...I wonder if I could get away with naming my kid Anna and maybe they wouldn't notice until they were back living in Washington? Hmmm...)

And then I realized that there's a good chance (ok, well, at least 50%) that I'm not even having a girl! Bret is abso-smurfly positive we're having a boy. And that brings me to...

My sisters (also cute in their own right) are trying out "Papa Bret" as a nickname for Bretimus Maximus (Christina's old nickname for Bret, due to his fondness for the movie Gladiator).
Every time they say it, I picture Bret in white stretch pants and a blue shirt, a la Papa Smurf.

Except that when I found that picture online, it reminded me that while all the other smurfs wore white pants, Papa Smurf wore red pants. So now I have to start picturing Bret in red pants. Maybe some red leather pants...

And last but not least, I have become a fan of thepioneerwoman.com, along with a million other people. I've seen her site mentioned by a few people, so I finally went there on Wednesday night and got sucked in for 2 hours reading about how she met her husband. And then Bret asked me what I was so engrossed in and I proceeded to tell him all about it - and then he got a look on his face that clearly said "I think you're a little too into this" and I had to explain that basically, it's like reading a book...and it's like when I got sucked into the Twilight series, and I really am quite normal don't worry babe, I'm not going to want to move to a cattle ranch, just like I don't want either of us to become vampires. See? Still have my hold on reality (for now)!