{Warning: Action-packed post ahead. Also very long.}

You guys. I just can’t quit you! 😀 ❤

I told you I would be off the blog from Christmas Eve until Jan. 4, excepting my normal Monday consultation, but then this week’s family offered the fun opportunity to guess the name they’ve chosen, and then there was a birth announcement, and then I realized that, of course, I can’t not do a year in review post! And I won’t even tell you how many times I thought Oh! I need to blog about this! and had to remind myself that I’m taking a short sabbatical. So all in all, I’m delighted to have lots of reasons to post today!

First off: no one guessed the name Tara and her husband have chosen! It’s often hard to predict what a couple will choose — no matter how much of a certain style or taste in names is revealed by the names on their list and parameters that they say they’d like to follow, many times a name just pops up in an unexpected way and it’s clearly the name. It’s happened with so many of the families I’ve done consultations for, and it’s happened for my husband and I, and it happened for Tara and her husband.

Tara wrote,

“We LOVED your name choices…and then decided to go with something different. We couldn’t agree on Stella Maris as a first or Stella as a first and Maris as a middle so we started talking other Marian names and landed on Rosemary “Rory” Valentine. We like Rosemary because the rosary has become a prayer devotion for us more recently and there was no arguing over whether it should be one or two names. Valentine is a family name on both sides of our family.”

How wonderful is that name?!! It’s clearly Marian, and while it’s not as “a little on the unusual side” as Tara said they’d like, the nickname Rory pulls it back into the “little unusual” category. I just love it.

I have no prize for the winner, since there wasn’t a winner, but you all had such wonderful suggestions! So I’m delighted to share a little gift for you all from one of you wonderful readers:

Natalie from At the Post Paperie & Gifts (that’s the link to her Etsy shop, and you can also find her on Instagram) has enjoyed the blog for a while and said she’s “found much comfort & grace in blogs like yours as I’ve grown in my faith, so I wanted to give a little something in return.” She’s offering to all of you a free download of some nursery prints for little girls featuring quotes from St. Catherine of Siena, St. Therese of Lisieux, and Blessed Mother Teresa on a ballet slipper pink background accented with nature watercolors. Here’s the three of them displayed together:

And here’s the link to download the high-quality 8 x 10 jpegs to print at home, your local print shop or an online retailer. Natalie says best results are achieved if they’re printed on thick, matte paper. Aren’t they lovely? If we ever have a little girl, I will be hanging these on her wall. 🙂

As for the year in review: I took some time yesterday going through my inbox and old posts and writing down notable things I remember from this year in regards to our fun little community here and it’s all just so fun, so amazing, so a-twinkle with blessings from heaven. What a joy to be a part of something so wonderful!

I thought you’d enjoy seeing this, from my blog stats — it’s my page views and visitors for this time last year:

I started the blog in June, and by the end of the year I’d had 160 page views by 38 people. I suspect those 38 people were my mom and one of my dearest friends from college logging on and off.

Then I posted the consultation for Simcha on January 8, and thanks to her kindness in sharing the link on her blog, you all started to find me! I’ve told my mom on more than one occasion, regarding all of you, “I knew there were others like me out there!” 😀 This is how 2015 ended up looking (next to 2014, for comparison):

It makes me laugh every time I look at it! What fun!

Some other fun facts, statistics, and notable happenings include:

• St. Anne became the patroness of this blog, and I do believe she’s taking special care of us
• As of today, I’ve done 124 consultations (53 of which I posted to the blog) — that’s a lot of babies, a lot of families! It never stops being a privilege, and I thank you all. It’s also really cool that the last one of the year was a search for the right Marian name
• Those consultations encompassed six countries besides the United States: Australia, Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and South Africa — the universal Church in action y’all! So cool!
• Some of our favorite bloggers were included in the consultation posts (Simcha, Grace, Sylvia, Marci, Jenny Uebbing, Irish Jenny, Mandi, Amy, Tanya, Emily, Molly, Dwija — if I’ve missed any, please let me know and I’ll add your blog link here!), and even an NFL family
• The births of 54 amazingly named babies were shared
• Two of our favorite bloggers shared how they named their babies (Danielle and Rachel), and The Catholic Hipster offered some name ideas
• I did 29 name spotlights
• Sancta Nomina hopped on the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram trains
• I became an Amazon affiliate and a Catholic Company affiliate
• Lots of prayers were offered for the Sancta Nomina readers! I specifically had you all in mind when my family and I made our pilgrimage to the St. Anne’s Shrine, and our reader Shelby sent me this lovely note: “Hello Kate, We visited Santa Maria Novella recently in Florence. It is the principal Dominican church of Florence. Here we are in front of the main altar and a side chapel. Lit a candle for you and the SN readers” and these gorgeous pictures:

How amazing is this church?? And that a candle was lit for us??

• Sancta Nomina was even represented when Pope Francis visited — Grace was in New York City, and Jenny’s baby was kissed by the papa himself in Philadelphia!
• I brought our name conversations to the CatholicMom.com community with my monthly column, and have had several posts on Nameberry (thanks to Abby from Appellation Mountain, who’s been a great cheerleader!)
• I was interviewed for a podcast, invited to contribute to a book, and asked to provide a quote as a “name expert” (I know! I’ll tell you more about that next week!)

Whew! What a year! I can’t imagine any year could be as fabulous as this past one has been, but I’m excited to see what God has in store for 2016. Cheers to you all, prayers and blessings for the New Year, and happy tomorrow’s Feast of Mary, the Mother of God!