The Name Game

I don't know how many of you played The Game of Life growing up, but my sisters and I did.

We quite enjoyed it, but our house rules were a little interesting. They were many and myriad, but they all centered on one thing: getting as many children as you could. Note that this was not because we wanted to have lots of kids when we grew up (though I think maybe my little sister did want that). No, we played to get lots of children because we'd play with the families after the game itself ended. They had little houses right on the board, and cars, and places they could visit, etc.

Of course, before we could play with our Life families we had to determine the names and ages of the parents and all the children (there were usually about 12 each). I think this was actually our favorite part of the game (including the real game and the after game activities). It's certainly the activity we spent the longest on. We all loved getting to come up with names for all those kids! (This was the biggest reason we all tried to gather a lot of kids during the regular game play -- more people to name at the end!)

So I've been loving that recently the awesome lady who adds kids' listings on one of my favorite websites (http://www.reecesrainbow.org) has decided to play the Name Game. I think it started because she was bemoaning trying to come up with more unique names (that haven't already been used on the site) one day (though I could be mis-remembering that). Then someone suggested a particular name that she loved be used for the next girl to be listed. Sure enough, a newly-listed girl was shortly named that.

Then someone suggested that we all pay for the privilege of naming the new little cuties who were listed. Reece's Rainbow collects lots of grants for families who are adopting and for children who are waiting to be adopted, but they also have a specific fund for administration costs (called the Voice of Hope -- it's used for server fees, printing costs, and to cover paypal fees for the donations given to the adopting families, among other things). That fund gets overlooked a lot of the time, so someone suggested that whoever wanted to name a child listed on Reece's Rainbow donate $10 to the Voice of Hope fund for the privilege.

And thus the Name Game was born. Now when Michelle posts that she has new little ones to list people scramble over each other to make a donation so they can be the lucky one to pick their name! (Apparently my sisters and I are far from alone in our fascination with names.) I've been wanting to do it, but I always seem to miss the times when she posts. Until yesterday. Finally, finally, I got to name one of the cute kids listed on RR!

Meet Cecily:

Isn't she precious? I love her little pigtails. I think she's adorable. Of course, I might be a little biased because I got to name her! :)