No More Doubts on her Name!

As some of you may know, we considered changing Hana's name a few weeks back. Our neighbors just had a little girl, who they named Hannah Claire. Since the names were so close, we thought it may be confusing for the girls, so we started throwing around new names. But we just couldn't find anything that seemed to fit as well as Hana. First there is the meaning, "Flower", which is the reason we chose the name in the first place. Then there is the Hana Plantation Houses in Maui that Jess and Mark visited last December. They said the road to Hana was very hard and difficult, but that Hana is extremely beautiful and was very much worth the journey. Sounds a lot like our journey to our daughter, so the symbolism is too perfect for me to ignore. Now, if that wasn't enough to convince me, this last reason sealed the deal. Last week, Brian and I were killing time in a bookstore, waiting for Jess to buy some cards. We started leafing through a photo book about China when we stumbled upon a picture of the most beautiful mountain lake, Hanas Lake. Needless to say, I was excited that I found a Chinese connection to her name. But I had to learn more, so I googled Hanas Lake. The lake is located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and is part of the Hanas Nature Reserve. The Mongolian meaning of Hanas is mysterious and beautiful. I can't think of any name that could be any more fitting for our daughter.