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.