annual family gathering

This year we had our annual family gathering in Waldport, OR. It really was a blast having all the family together under one roof celebrating life, eating good food and laughing like crazy. Last year we started this tradition in Napa. We were lucky enough to get a gorgeous home for a crazy good deal. This year, we decided to do it at Jaye and Susan's place up in Oregon. It was really great having all the family together relaxing and enjoying each other's company.

We decided to take our annual family picture here in Oregon and as I was walking to get in place for the picture, Jaye asked "what is the name of the baby". I felt a lot of pressure all of a sudden and I responded "Gabriel". She said to make a sign for the belly and I did. When I walked back everyone saw the sign and shouted in joy that I had picked out Buggie's name. And so we documented with a sign, that Buggie was there too!

I knew that I wanted to pick out his name on this trip. I thought it would be a great thing to do while the whole family was together. We had a few conversations about the name and I told them my top 3-4 names. My top two favorites were Gabriel and Nicolas. Everyone seemed to like Gabriel A LOT! Tony and I had created a top 5 list of names and the common one in our list was Gabriel too. So it made sense to pick that name for little Buggie.

I have to mention that Gabriel was always the name I wanted to name my son (at least since high school). I had told myself I was going to do so after a friend name Gabriel passed away from leukemia. I held on to that name for years and when talking about potential names with Tony for a son, I always spoke about the name Gabriel. Tony, however, was not too impressed with the name and I always knew I would have to fight hard to convince him of the name. Well...now that I am pregnant with a baby boy and it is time to think of names, Nicolas became one of my top two along with Gabriel. I started thinking of other names as I knew that we needed options. I couldn't seem to convince Tony of Nicolas and since we were not coming to an agreement on names we decided to write down a list of our top 5 favorites. The funny thing is that Gabriel was on Tony' s list. I actually did not have to fight at all to get him to consider that name. So when Jaye put me on the spot to pick out a name for the baby, I easily chose Gabriel because...really, that had been his name all along.

So Buggie...Gabriel Alarcon Avila it is...I can't wait to meet you Gabe!