Weekend in Oatmeal

We had such a fun weekend in Oatmeal. Oatmeal, TX - is a little piece of heaven in the Texan hill country, where my in-laws build their dream home. We love it out there! It is so beautiful and peaceful. It does take a little over 3 hours of driving to get there, however...Ophelia was not too fond of that, as you can see:



She was happy to finally arrive! Check out the pretty house and the new tiles in front of the house. Keep in mind, this house was built by a one-armed man. Sometimes I forget that my father-in-law does not have an arm, because he is so industrious - he is a real "handy man" :) He makes some amazing stuff out of wood. All Ophelia wanted to do outside is to play with the rocks. She loves re-arranging them...good thing there are a lot of rocks there :) Grandpa is trying hard to look away, because he has a place for each rock and now it's all ruined!!!

Aahh, Oatmeal, TX :)

Picking flowers at the side of the road.

Ophelia had so many new things to play with at Grandma's and Grandpa's. Here she is playing with some decorative Russian spoons. Is my child left-handed???

No, whew, she is right-handed after all:

Checking out the view, looking for the deer:

Unkie Mark and Daddy sure sound good!

That evening we went to a "cowboy stew" party. Some country music and a hot soup made for a fun activity. Ophelia was cheking out all the animals there. Here Auntie Camille is checking out a dog with Ophelia:

And then she found a horse. She LOVED it.

Moving her little body to some good tunes!

Chilling with Daddy:

Cheeeese!

Since I showed Ophelia that you can see pictures and videos on the camera, it's gotten increasingly hard to take a good picture of her. As soon as she sees me pull out the camera, she wants to sit on my lap and look at the pictures and videos. So, I get a lot of pictures like this:



Or like this one, with her running to look at the camera:



Say cheeeese, дочка!

Mommy-daughter days

Briefly...in pictures here's how my time as stay-at-home-mom is going:

We visited the Fort Worth Science museum with my friend Ashley and her two sons. Ophelia had fun exploring so many different things!



This is a little "grocery store" with shopping carts, registers, and groceries. It is awesome!



The water playground was so exciting, Ophelia felt like doing "ладушки" (pat-a-cake).



My other friend Ashley and her youngest son, Cade, have been exploring the Hurst park. Now that the weather is so nice and warm, not hot or cold, it is pleasant to be outside :) Here's the two of them taking a snack break.

What else do you do on a playground? How about reading a book?





All dressed up for church...oh, wait...no, no, no... not the cute bow!



Good, happy morning :)



At the playground in the mall. Who cares that there's probably a million germs in that place...the most important thing is having a good time! Besides, it probably keeps her healthier by being exposed to all those things. She loves that place so much! When at the mall, Ophelia gets suuuper excited when we are approaching the playground area, she can hardly keep herself contained.





At the park in our neigborhood: daddy has been joining us more now that it's not as hot outside.

At the Arlington library where we go for "bouncing babies" time every Monday:
She gets to sing (or rather listen to at this point) songs, listen to books being read, play musical instruments, dance to music, and play with other kids.

She likes to snuggle with the big fluffy dog at the library :)

At the park again:

We saw a dog there, and, of course, had to go pet it.

This is a little preview of Ophelia's Halloween outfit:

Soooooo cute!!!

Каждой "твари" по паре

Translated as: by two of every kind. One of the many cute things that Ophelia has been doing lately, is carrying something in each hand whenever possible. Maybe it's for balance, maybe just for fun, but it is CUTE ! I find things out of place all over the house. She picks up fridge magnets in the kitchen and carries it to her room, leaves it there then takes her baby wipes and carries them into the living room, then puts them in a doll stroller and takes her doll and carries it somewhere else. She sure is a busy girl! And I am a busy Mommy to try to keep the house organized and straightened!

Hello there!

I was so excited to finally flip Ophelia around and have her face the front of the car. Apparently I was the only one excited about that. She didn't seem to think much of it. Oh well...I still love turning around and seeing her pretty face!

I can also pass things to her to keep her entertained (like a sippy cup), I also can tickle her feet to keep her awake. With all of that happening in the car, I am becoming "one of those" drivers...this is not good. I probably should concentrate more on driving :)

Our 1-year-old model

My good friend and (also an aspiring photographer) Vipha took Ophelia's 1-year pictures. She did a great job picturing her beautiful eyes! Check them out! Here is a link to Vipha's blog: . You see here these awesome pictures of Ophelia without seeing all the things I had to do to make her smile: barking, sneezing, playing peek-a-boo, claping, and even doing jumping jacks! It was fun :) Thanks, Vipha, for doing such a good job!


Ophelia is wearing a hand-made dress that PJ bought for her in Mexico. I thought it would be nice and colorful to take pictures in.