And we're home

We're just home from our little holiday to Jervis Bay and a night in Sydney. It was so lovely and relaxing and despite a forecast before we left of a week of rain the weather was really good!

We did lots of beach walks and snorkelling, book reading and tennis watching, the Picasso and Harry Potter exhibitions and by pure good luck in our timing the Chinese New Year parade and fireworks too! Oh, and my first ever trip to an Ikea store!

Back to work tomorrow, but only 10 weeks until I finish up! Hopefully I'll find time between the unpacking to catch up on your blogs in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll find the other camera cord so I can share some beach and snorkelling photos too! For now though, here's a couple of pics I love!

Axel getting in the way of A's packing!  "Please take me with you!"

Illumination in Sydney during the Chinese New Year parade.

Busy week

After being a homebody most of last week, I've been out and about catching up with people this week.

It started on Saturday really, we went to visit friends who have just come back from their honeymoon to see their beautiful wedding pics. I made profiteroles with custard and raspberry for dessert. They were super yummy and much easier than expected - with the added bonus that they used up 8 eggs! Our chickens are such good layers.

I've been to see the Handwritten exhibition at the National Library - if you are in Canberra it's well worth seeing. It's free but you are meant to book a timed entry ticket online.

On Monday I did my first pre-natal yoga class and really enjoyed it. I went in feeling pretty average and came out feeling great!

Yesterday I went into work to get my timetable and class lists - hopefully seeing these will stop the 'back to work' nightmares I've been suffering! Then I met a friend and saw the Japanese movie Arrietty. It was very sweet and I loved that because it was a kids movie I could understand most of the Japanese without needing the subtitles. I also went and bought a set of maternity jeans - so comfy

From Jeans West

Today I caught up with a friend I haven't seen in over a year! We are so incredibly slack and have trouble planning stuff during the school year so it usually takes a spontaneous phone call and a lot of luck for us to get together. It was so good to catch up!

When I've been home, the sewing/house projects have taken a serious back seat to the tennis. I'm afraid I'm a little addicted! We're off to the coast for a couple of days soon so I'm justifying it by thinking I need to get my fix now as I'll miss most of the final rounds!

Finally, a picture of the bump at 20 weeks! And of another maternity purchase - this one was online (and on clearance) and I'm pretty pleased with it! Please excuse the mess - this will be Baby A's room as soon as we sort out the 'office' stuff that it is full of at the moment!

The Name Game

I can't believe we're half way!

I also can't believe that two years ago I spent a good portion of my summer holidays drooling over wedding dresses online, this week my attention has been on cloth nappies! Who would have known there were so many options?

Anyway, that's not what I want to post about. We were talking last night and decided that we should really start thinking about names. But where to start? 

Back at our wedding we had little moleskine notebooks on each table with questions for our guests to answer. There were 'sensible' questions like "What is the secret to a long and loving life?" and ones that we hoped would give us a laugh, like the one below.

What's this got to do with baby names you ask? Another page in the book read...

Good for a chuckle but ultimately not all that helpful. 

A's mum gave us a Baby Name book but with names like Egberta* it pretty much fits into the same category as the wedding comments above.

The best starting point I've come up with is my name, which was my mother's maiden name. She didn't have any brothers to carry the name on so I got it. If we have a boy, I'd like to do the same as my maiden name could also be a first name and of all my 15 or so cousins, none of them will pass the name on! Interestingly, our married name could also be a first name so that could be a nice 'tradition' to start. I'm off to write a list!

Do you have a story for where your name came from? Or advice in picking one for your child? I'd love to hear it!

*Apologies if you are, or know an Egberta!