annie kate

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I finally got Annie’s birth announcements ordered and almost all mailed out. Everything seems to take a little longer with the fifth child. Or maybe I am just a little more chill the fifth time around and realize that it is okay if the birth announcements don’t get ordered the day after baby is born. Three months later works just fine too. Ha!

When I started looking for announcements I fell in love with the Big Script Birth Announcements from Minted. I loved the simple design and the script made Annie’s name look so cute. I’m all about a good font. I love the black and white with Annie’s newborn photo. For a limited time Minted is offering free matching envelope designs and recipient addressing.  I have never had addresses printed on my envelopes but decided to give it a try and took advantage of the offer. Once you upload your address list you can select all the addresses or go through and select which ones you want printed on the envelopes. This is the best thing…and so easy! Not only did it force me to finally get organized and put all my addresses in a spreadsheet (I am all ready for Christmas cards now!), all my envelopes arrived with the addresses printed. Amazing. This is such a time saver! When the announcements arrived it was so easy to just stuff the envelopes, add my return address and a stamp, and send them off! Annie’s birth announcements gave me the perfect excuse to buy the cute Rifle Paper Company postage stamps too. Have you seen them? So pretty! I wish they would have had these stamps for my wedding invitations.

I love seeing my kids’ names written out, don’t you? Some of you have asked how we chose Annie’s name. We actually chose Annie’s name on the day of my sonogram when we got the sweetest surprise and found out we were having a girl. I had been keeping a list on my phone of girl names and boy names that I liked. I read the list of girl names to Joel as we drove home and he said no to every one. I thought it was going to be impossible to agree on a name. Then I remembered Annie. I had mentioned the name Annie when we were deciding on a girl and boy name for Jake but it got crossed off the list early on. I decided to throw it out there again. Joel liked Annie and her name was Annie from then on. We never even made another list or discussed any other names. She is the cutest little Annie girl I have ever seen.

We dedicated Annie on Mother’s Day and here is what we shared about her name at her baby dedication:

Annie Kate is named after her Auntie Anne and Grammy, Kathryn. The name Annie means gracious and merciful. We chose Psalm 103:8 for her, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” It is our prayer that Annie would come to know and understand her need for Jesus and His saving grace in her life and that she would also grow to be a woman whose life is characterized by graciousness. The Lord has given Annie three awesome big brothers to grow up with so we might need to pray that she becomes graciously tough as well! Annie has the sweetest, most easygoing personality and we all adore her. She has brought so much joy to our lives as well as a renewed girly flair to our home. Annie’s life is a constant reminder of God’s unchanging goodness and faithfulness to our family.

That is how Annie got her name. I started going through my blog archives and had to go back and find my boys’ birth announcements. I don’t think I ever posted Cora’s birth announcement on here. If you are interested you can go back and read about how we chose our boys’ names and see their birth announcements as well: Levi (and here), Griffin, Jake.

Oh, and I have to show you the back too. We had to include Annie’s cute big brothers on the announcement. Of course. They are so proud of her! You can’t see it very well on this photo but right under the boys we included the verse we picked for Annie.

I love how these turned out!

The photos are from Annie’s newborn session. I’ll have to show you those in my next post. I have documented all of my babies on this blog and I am determined to catch up and document Annie’s first year here too. It must happen. Besides, she is too cute not to share with you all!