June 14th, At the aiport, boo hoo

Wally at the aiport showing off his good kicking style and his camo outfit. The blue tag hanging from his neck identifies him as an unaccompanied minor. He decided he was a big boy now and could fly by himself.

Here's a close up of that intense face. He looks like a serious opponent.

Wally and Grandmom waiting for time to go to the plane. He's looking like a tough army guy.

Think he's going to miss his Grampa? I do.

And we'll miss him. He added a lot to our summer but now we have to concentrate on our big remodeling project. Bye bye Wally. We love you.

June 13th, His Last Tae Kwon Do lesson

The day before Wally's last Tae Kwon do lesson, he received his brand new uniform with the white belt to indicate he is a beginner. He wore it to his last lesson, even though it needed hemming up. I told him to let his Colorado Granny fix it for him as she is a better seamstress than I am.

This is his instructor, Miss Jessica. She's a high degree black belt and has her own teaching studio even though she is only 20 years old. He respected her a lot and really enjoyed his classes. He was good at it too and received several compliments.

This is a posed picture. They were not really sparring. If he continues to take lessons, he can probably spar with some students next year.

June 10th, Cooling off in Blue John creek

Wally found this cute little turtle early on in his visit and kept it in an aquarium in the house or in the doggie swimming pool. Then as his visit was coming to a close, he agreed to let it go, back to the creek where he found it. Sure was a cute little thing.



Here he is wading in the creek with Annie, looking for things of interest. The water looks murky but it's not. It's crystal clear.

Annie and Nigel just love it when we go to the creek.

Success! Wally found a baby crawdad, but he didn't keep it.

Jun 9th, Making beary cute cookies

Early in Wally's visit I suggested making cookies, thinking that was such a typical grandmotherly thing to do. He promptly informed me that he was not into baking, but I could bake anything I wanted for him. Finally at the end of the visit, I showed him a picture of some cookies I wanted us to make and he agreed it looked like fun. Here is a sample of one of them.



And here's a whole plateful of them. It was my idea to make a sad faced one. He didn't go for that idea.



He was happy to sample one and pronounced them a great success. We ate a few, but he took most of them home to his family.

June 8th, Army guy and swimming

Here's Wally, demonstrating one of his Tae Kwon Do kicks. He's really good at doing the kicks and has good balance. If he stays with this form of martial arts, I think he could be very good.

Here he is showing off his new camo, army guy outfit. Notice that even his "crocs" are camo. It's all he's worn since we bought them three days ago.

He got so tickled with his posing and modeling that he collapsed in a fit of giggles.

Actually, I guess he did change clothes, at least for a while. He put on his swimming trunks and shirt for a trip to the Buffalo River. He and Grampa were having fun skipping rocks until a really cute little 11 year old girl showed up, then we were history. He tried to arrange a play date with her but I don't think the girl's mom was for it.

June 7th, Family pics

Grandmom (as Wally calls me) got a new pocket size digital camera so she can carry it anywhere and take grand son pictures. Here we were trying out the self timer feature.




In spite of how it looks, I am NOT trying to choke him in this picture.




He is trying not to look happy, but he must be or he wouldn't still be here.

June 7th, Summer is really here

Wally's friend Cindy sent him a great toy to enjoy. It's a remote control amphibious vehicle. In the house it goes really fast (and loud). Outside is better for grandparents, but the ground is so rough that it doesn't go that well. For a real test we took it down to the creek below our house and it was awesome. It just splashed thru the sand and water and even floated with no problem. I'm sure we scared a few fish, crawdads and tadpoles with the motorized monster.

On these hot summer days the horses like to drink from the water hose. Luke is better at drinking from that Joe is. He just likes to flap his lips at the water and cool off.

Another of Wally's famous self portraits. He is NOT camera shy at all!!!

June 2nd, NOT a pet turtle

Yesterday Wally and I went down to the creek below our house to play and look what we found -- a big ol' snapping turtle. I think it was about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. Wally wanted to pick it up but I assured him that was NOT a good idea.

I had him take a stick and put it in front of the turtle. He found out very soon how quick that turtle could bite and how it would hold on.

What the turtle wanted to do more than anything was to leave and once we got the pictures we let him go on his way. Wally didn't even ask to bring him home once he saw those jaws at work.


As we were leaving a butterfly became enamored with my swim suit and sat still long enough for Wally to take a picture. We thought that was so funny that the black and white butterfly thought my suit was one of his kind.

May 31st, First fishing trip

Our neighbor has a pond on his property that adjoins ours and he has given us permission to fish there any time. It was pretty hot this day that we went so there were several cows cooling off in the pond. This black one was the last one to leave. We didn't mind sharing.



This was the first fish Wally caught. Several of the ones after this one were bigger, but none eating size. He doesn't eat fish anyway so all the fishing was catch and release.


He's trying to get the fish off the hook, which is not an easy deal. Those fins can stick you and make you bleed.

May 30th, Wally gets clean

These two pictures are here just to show Wally's parents that he is getting clean, at least occasionally. I think he's had two or three baths since he's been here. But he's also been in the river, in the creek, and under the water hose, so we aren't worried about his personal hygiene.

May 29th, New pets

Today Wally received two baby chicks from our neighbors to enjoy while he is here. When he leaves we will give them back so they can do their job of laying eggs, assuming they are hens. We aren't sure if they are male or female at this point. They are only two days old today but very lively, eating and drinking and scratching bugs like good chicks should.

Can you tell he is excited?

Their cage is in his room. It used to be the crate we used for Nigel but he doesn't need it anymore.

Blackie and Goldie outside enjoying some sunshine.

May 27th, Wally the cowboy

We were scheduled to go to a cookout put on by the Walleye Anglers club that we belong to. It also included a tour of the Ranger boat factory in Flippin. As we were getting ready, putting on our "dress up" clothes (clean jeans and shorts) Wally decided he didn't have the right clothes for such an outing. He wanted a cowboy shirt with snaps, like he saw one of our neighbors wearing. So, we stopped at a farm store on the way to the cookout and he selected this white cowboy shirt. He already had the hat, jeans, and new cowboy boots we bought his first day with us.


I didn't get a picture of him at the cookout, but took a few when we got home. He wanted to pose as if shooting the air rifle. I wanted him to tuck his shirt in again, but he said I should just take the picture from the waist up, so I did. He was very very careful at the cookout and didn't get any mustard or dirt on it. He was really cute, swaggering around with his hands in his pockets, just like a real cowboy, in his opinion.

This is the picture he took of himself. It's 10:00 at night and he is so wired from being the center of so much attention at the cookout. There were about 80 people there and we don't really know any of them, but all are friendly. Wally and I both won door prizes and that tickled him to death.

Visiting the neighbor's goat herd, May 25th

Wally went to visit Marsha and Keith Sullivan, our neighbors who raise goats. This year their herd went from 13 to 40 because 9 of their goats had triplets!

He looks like a good shepherd, leading his flock.

Wally is petting Billy, a goat who was bottle fed from birth and is still very friendly. None of the others wanted to be petted.

The Cats are Coming Around

Today Wally made great progress in getting to pet the cats. Both of the cats are afraid of him and hide when they hear him coming. While we were watching a movie today Zeke got in my lap and Wally was able to pet him. Then we transferred Zeke to Wally's lap and he accepted the transfer and enjoyed the petting session that followed.



Later Wally was able to feed Heidi some treats that she likes and give her some good loving also. He was just ecstatic. He really loves cats more than dogs, so has been very frustrated that the cats won't accept him. I hope they will remember him fondly tomorrow and we don't have to go thru this being scared phase all over again.


The other big thing that happened today was Wally got to take his first Tae Kwan Do lesson in Yellville. I wanted to take a picture of him in action, but there were too many other kids around and it was just too confusing. He'll go back for another lesson on Wednesday and I'll see if I can get some photos of him then. He did really well in his lesson and said afterward that it was AWESOME!

Wally's first days in Arkansas 2008

This is Wally at rest, recuperating after the plane flight and a night of TV at Aunt Carol's house in St. Louis. This may become my favorite picture of him before the summer is over.

On Saturday we were invited to a cookout at our friends', the Shipmans. Wally raved about the food and ate until he could hardly move. Grampa and I had to finish that piece of Hershey bar cake he has on his plate. I might get the recipe and make that for one of our family gatherings.

This is just a picture to show how generally excited he is to be here, or is it that the drink had too much sugar and caffeine in it?

This is a picture Wally took of himself.

The happy Grampa and Gramma, ready for a fun filled summer! Wally took this picture of us. I think he is a good photographer.
Wally loves googleing.

this was helped by wally i did most

of it

love, wally and grandma