what's up weekly. (and the baby now has a name!)

Hello, everyone! For once, I can honestly say I think this post will be short and sweet.  It was a short, sweet week without much going on, and without many pictures, with the exception of our weekend and the photos we took at my niece's birthday party.

We had a full Saturday, heading up to the Amish first thing in the morning, then back to town to drop off our milk and eggs, and then back north.  We headed to Iowa for the weekend to celebrate my niece's first birthday!

My sister and brother-in-law have a studio space for photo shoots and styling jobs, and isn't it just so perfect and cute?  Also, aren't my kids so perfect and cute?

A "small party for family" is actually quite the blowout.  SO MANY COUSINS!

At this point in pregnancy, my stomach looks remarkably like this balloon in  girth, color, and belly button presence.  If only the balloon had stretch marks to complete the look.

Baby Cora had quite the rapt audience.

Juni has decided she likes birthday parties.

We got home a little before bedtime Sunday night, so we just called it an evening and hit the hay to get ready for the morning.  This week ended up being full of school and rest and play, but not much out of the ordinary, which is unusual but welcome!  We visited a friend on Wednesday, I sprayed the yard for poison ivy (because it is STILL COMING UP) and watered to hopefully get the baby grass to grow before it gets cooler out, and Walmart changed its online grocery ordering app (for the WORSEWORSETERRIBLEHORRIBLEWORSEWORST), so I spent a lot of the week cussing at my phone.

We also started ordering Christmas gifts this week - between all the shipping delays they're anticipating in the coming months, plus the fact that I'll be spending November filling the freezer and getting our house ready for a home birth and a newborn, I figured it would be good to move our Christmas shopping up a month, but man - the seasons are starting to confuse me.  Temperature forecast in the upper 80's this week, but also lots of talk of Fall coming, but also getting ready for Christmas... it's a bit disorienting.

I can tell I'm in the throes of third trimester, since I cried about not having enough noodles in the house for dinner one night.  I also can barely rouse myself from the couch between the nausea, heartburn, and difficulty breathing.  I'm hanging in there, but I'm doing it with less grace and dignity than I was able to muster before.

In other pregnancy news, I am thirty weeks, and we can now stop calling the new baby The Snicker Bar Baby (her bones will be made of nougat if pregnancy cravings dictate things like that) and start calling her by her new, real name: Ophelia Belle.  Ophelia means "helper," and Belle means "beautiful."

We have your bed ready for you, Baby Ophelia!

And that was our low-key week.  Today I need to take "First Day of School" photos, as I only just remembered yesterday that we're five weeks in and I haven't done that yet.  Whoops.  (At least, I'm pretty sure I haven't? I also need to put it on my list to actually check our photos - maybe I did take them, and just forgot?)  I feel like I didn't really share much this week, but if it indicates that we had a relaxing, restful school week, (oxymoron much?), then I can't complain!