Happy Feast Day Pope Saint Leo the Great!!

Today is the Feast Day of Pope Saint Leo the Great - Leo's namesake.

(Raphael's The Meeting between Leo the Great and Attila depicts Leo, escorted by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, meeting with the Hun king outside Rome)

Mere minutes after Jason and I found out we were expecting our first baby, Jason ran into his office (a thing of the past - all rooms are bedrooms now) and started rattling off names of past Popes for our baby.  This was before he even knew Leo was a boy.  Jason thought he was funny always insisting he had some sort of divine knowledge that the baby was a boy.  I was shocked when he was right :)

He threw names out like Sixtus, Hyginus, Dionysius, Simplicius, Hilarius, Cletus, Linus, etc.  Oh no you don't.  While these names may have been all the rage in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, I don't want my kid getting beat up by the other newborns in the nursery.

Well, when we found out Leo was a boy, we got serious about names.  I even considered "Mnason" and other classic names of the bible.  (Not really, but we had fun researching some of those old names.)

One night at dinner with my entire family, my mom announced, "Jason and Lisa are going to tell us the baby's name tonight!" with a big smile on her face.  Well, that sent the room into an uproar!  Everyone started shouting their own name in the hopes that we would name our child after them.  Jason and I were no where NEAR narrowing down names yet!  We were having a lot of trouble actually.

Then, my mom suggested the name of her brother, Leo, who passed away in his early 20s in a car accident.  Jason and I looked at each other and just knew that was it!  Not only was this a family name, but it also was the name of a great Saint.  SOLD!

Leo and I actually made a german chocolate cake this morning.  It was to celebrate his cousin's birthday, but we're going to celebrate his feast day with it as well!

(He's trying to be cool about how proud he is of himself. 

The raised eyebrows is a picture I've been trying to capture for MONTHS!)

Happy Feast Day Leo!!