Questions and Answers

So, I've gotten several emails asking questions about different things and I thought I would just answer them in a post.

Why do all of your girls have double names?
I have always loved double names.  All of our children have family names (addressed in detail below) and we just liked the way the girls' sounded as a double name.  A few of you asked if that's a southern thing and I'm not really sure, but we do have lots of friends with double names.

Do your children have family names?
Yes, we decided on doing that because me and my siblings have always said the first born grandson should be named after our brother, Brian Andrew, who passed away when he was two.
Anna Cate is named Anna Cathleen- Todd's mother has Anna in her name and my grandmother is Anne.  My mother's name is Cathleen.
Lyla James is named after Todd's grandmother, Lyla, and his grandfather who was James.
Mary Connor is named after my great aunt Mary and Connor (actually Connors) was my great grandmother's maiden name.

Why did you all have to do IVF and how many cycles have you done?
I had an ectopic pregnancy and actually almost died because my tube ruptured and I was bleeding internally for several days.  When we arrived at the emergency room, my doctor said if we would have waited a few more hours, I probably wouldn't have lived.  Having never been pregnant, I thought the pain and nausea I was experiencing was just part of pregnany (and I thought people were crazy for doing this more than once!)  At any rate, I lost one tube from the rupture and the other tube had so much scar tissue, we were advised to look into infertility treatments, specifically IVF.
That was a very frightening and emotional time for us, one of the hardest we have ever faced.  IVF wasn't as mainstream as it is now, neither Todd nor I had ever even heard the word.
But we did a cycle and God's hands were on us because it worked the first time and we soon found out we were expecting twins!  We had 6 embryos left to freeze.  When we decided to try again, only 3 survived the thawing process and none resulted in a pregnancy.  So, we did another cycle of IVF and twins again!  The best possible outcome for us.

Do you all plan to have more children? 
We believe that God's plan for us is already laid out in the way He sees is best and we trust in that.

Have you always had AC and B in the same classroom?
This is the first year we have ever put them together.  From preschool at age 3 through kindergarten we had them in seperate classes.  We actually had several reasons:  we wanted them to really work on some things in their relationship like talking for one another and competing with each other and I knew their teacher would be able to help us with that.  Also, it's easier as far as homework, field trips, class parties.  I don't know that we will always keep them together or what we will do with the little girls. 

I think I covered them all!