Elijah means "My God is the Lord" an it's a name we've both loved for a long time. Actually some of our good friends named their first son Elijah and we were extremely close with him when he was young. Daniel is both Jeremiah's middle name and his dad's first name. We really wanted to be sure to incorporate family names into their new names.

Ellianna means "God has answered" (Pretty stinkin' appropriate if you ask us!) We had kind of just come up with the name because we liked it and then Erin looked up the meaning online. She started crying right there in the coffee shop when she realized the meaning of the name. After all of these years of prayers, God has answered. We really love the name Ellie but really wanted to include Anna in her name somehow. With our niece's name being Anna this posed quite the challenge. When we were in Indiana we were extremely close with one of our students, so much so that Erin and her were like sisters. She passed away in 2004 during her freshman year in college and it was devastating. Erin really wanted to be able to incorporate her name into our daughters name somehow and we know that she would be so excited to have our daughter named after her. Rae is Erin's mom's middle name and once again we wanted Ellie to have a family name as part of her name. Oh, and "Ellianna" is pronounced like banana...or Indiana...or our beautiful niece's name, "Anna."