Our littlest Lily

One of our favorite flowers to grow are lilies. We fell in love with them when we were planning our wedding and had the opportunity to visit the farm of the family who was supplying our wedding flowers. Their farm was amazing, fields and fields of flowers, but our favorite was the field of asiatic lilies... seriously breathtaking! Until that day I hadn't realized how the wonderful scent of lilies - was like heaven to my nose. :) We knew then and there that we wanted to begin propagating our own lily collection.

Flash forward 5 years later... Travis and I were in the garden this summer where we now have a 4x40 ft bed of a variety of asiatic lilies. (A far cry from the field we saw the summer we got married, but we still love it.) As we were picking flowers to share with our neighbors we were discussing the upcoming arrival of our second child and Travis said, "If it's a girl, how about Lily?" As he said it I got goosebumps as I looked down at the flowers we shared so much love for and replied "It's perfect!"

Flash forward again 2 months... Lily surprised us a few weeks early and was born Sept. 8, the most beautiful Lily we had every laid eyes on! Someday we can't wait to share with her the story of how her name was chosen with such love from our favorite flower.

And for those of you who really love sentimental stories, believe in a higher power, serendipity, or fate here is my favorite story about Lily's arrival... For a good month or two before Lily was born we had been working on counting with Brooke (can you tell we are both teachers?! haha) and instead of starting 1,2,3 she would always say 9,8,9,8 and we just chalked it up to her way of counting. Well as I was in labor in the early morning hours of Sept. 8th I turned to Travis and said, "Oh my, Brooke knew!" Perplexed he looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "9,8,9,8... do you realize what day it is? Sept. 8th, 9/8." We both stood there in utter disbelief not knowing to think if it was coincidence or something bigger, either way it is a pretty special story we will always treasure. I still get a little teary eyed all over as I write it to share with you. All I can say is wow, life really is filled with miracles. Give someone you love a hug today!