Names, names, names

(one of my favorite pictures of mckinlee in myrtle beach a few years ago)

last friday on kelly's blog was show me your life friday--baby names. i am just a few days behind--but since i am and always have been obsessed with baby names i had to post!

i have been planning my kid's names since i was probably 7 or 8. i just love to come up with names and hear what other people name their children.
(sadly, if you ask me what almost any celebrity named their child, i can tell you.)

so, when the time came for me to actually name my own child, it was much harder than i thought. it's really not a matter of picking your favorite name. it's more like finding a name between you and your husband that doesn't remind you of the boy you "accidently" hit in the 2nd grade because he was such a bad reader or the girl who threw up all over you in high school. (bad, bad memories...)
when i got pregnant, we had an early ultrasound and just assumed because of some things we saw that we were having a boy. ha! we had thought of a lot of names but ended up with:
dylan cole

so for the next couple months we called the baby dylan and took pictures in the boy's department of dillards.
we also came up with girl's names just in case.
we knew if we had a girl her name would be:
madalyn storm

don't really know how we came up with that but that was our choice.
so on ultrasound day we find out that we are not having a dylan.
on the way home from the dr. i suddenly decided i didn't want madalyn.
so that night we sat down and took out several notecards. (i found them just the other day!)
on three we wrote:
madalyn
miranda
mckinlee
(we obviously had a thing for m names)

on another three we wrote:
jade
storm
skye

we played around with them until we both got what we wanted!

mckinlee skye

i had heard mckinlee and loved it and thought it was really different and unique and chris loved skye. i wanted to just name her skyler, but he just wanted skye for a middle name.
so that's how we came up with her name.
(not long ago, mckinlee was upset because she has such an uncommon name and said, "why couldn't you have just named me something like madalyn?" it didn't help when i finally admitted that was our second choice! ha!)

so since it doesn't look like i'll ever need to use all the names i've gathered, i'll just list some of my favorites!

Girls:

avery
lily
brecken
grace
reese
quincy
capri
emerson (call her emmie)
ellasyn (just saw this the other day and fell in love. call her ella or ellie)
paisley
hadley
kate (i love kate with almost any name. ellie kate, lily kate, etc.)
halle
sutton
annabelle
brynn

Boys:
grayson
hudson
cade
cole
dawson
carr
john (i feel about john as i do about kate. it goes with anything--john thomas, john tyler, etc.)
paxton
maddox

that's not nearly all of them--but a good list anyway.
what are your kid's names?
i would love to know :)