Shipwreck!

I wanted to take him to the driving range, but he thinks he will not be good at it and will think about it if we do more short range golf. So we did the outside course at shipwreck golf. He did improve a lot from the last time we went to the indoor course. However, once he gets really close to the hole, he tends to cheat a little bit, but all kids do that in mini-golf! One thing i did like about the outdoor course was that at some of the holes they had a wheel that you spun then you had to do what that wheel said, for example, "hit with the opposite end of the club at this hole" or "your first shot must be between the legs." So that was fun to watch each other trying to complete goofy maneuvers.

Golf!

Friday we took my two 9 irons I had laying around and some golf balls and went down to the back of the park and hit some golf balls. We are going to need a lot of work. I don't think he is use to hitting a golf ball. He did play baseball and he is using some of the mechanics he learned in hitting a baseball. He really enjoyed trying to see who could hit it the farthest! He beat me a lot. His parents are out of town for two weeks and he is staying with one of his parents friends. He showed me their dog who is a pure breed huskey! Beautiful! So we also played with the dog for awhile.

Guitar!

Willie is ALWAYS talking about his favorite country artist and how he is moving down to Tennessee to work for Blake Shelton and write his songs for him. When ever we are doing something he is always singing some song and asking me "who sings that?!" Luckily, I am a country fan myself. I took guitar lessons for a long time when I was little, but quit in high school when my sports were getting more consuming. I haven't touched my guitar since 8th grade and was hoping all my guitar knowledge would come flooding back to me! So I went home and got my guitar and brought it up for Willie, because I thought it would be cool for him to learn the songs of his favorite country artist! I learned a few songs, luckily guitar playing came back to me pretty quickly, and now I'm showing Willie to play some chords. Last Tuesday he learned the E-minor, E-major and C-major chords! He really enjoyed playing with my pedal and making the guitar make weird and crazy sounds out of the amp.

Football!

Since Friday had very nice weather, I decided to take Willie to the park on Owego Street to play football. Once of my friends, Josh, was nice enough to come to the park and play football with us. Willie thought it was cool to have a guy play football with him and show him a few things about football. We practiced throwing, catching and punting. Then we ran some plays and Willie enjoyed being quarter back. Then the high school softball team came for practice so we left so they could have their field.

Hoxie Gorge

This day did not go as planned. With a set of paper directions and a GPS I managed to get very very lost and could not find Hoxie gorge to save my life because it kept bringing me to his dirt road that was not Hoxie Gorge. After an hour of driving around in circles and down muddy dirt roads in the middle of no where, I finally found it. By the time I got there we only had 30 minutes to go hiking before he had to leave. So today was not good, but I will make it up to him with some football next meeting!

Bowling!

At our last meeting Willie and I went bowling at the 281 lanes and bowled 3 games. At first he was throwing the ball across his body and pointing his thumb incorrectly. I gave him some pointers to improve his form and after rolling two frames of gutter balls, he rolled two strikes!! All three games were very close!

He talked ALOT about country stars and how he is going to move down to Tennessee and work with all the country stars by writing songs for them :) So I told him about how I brought up my guitar and we could start learning songs by his favorite artist as long as it's O.K. with his mom.

His mom was running late and I really needed to sign up for graduation. So he came with my roommates and I to the graduation finale at Corey. He signed the "graduation class of 2012" banner, which I thought was pretty funny and so did he. He always makes sure he wears his SUNY-Cortland t-shirt on Tuesdays and Fridays so he looks just like all the college students, I think that's pretty cool so I make sure to bring him around where there are a lot of students for social interaction and he loves just being at the campus!

Hiking at Lime Hallow!

On Friday before I left for break Willie and I took advantage of the warmer weather and went to Lime Hallow to go hiking. I have never been there before so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. I thought it was awesome! The trails are all very nice and well marked. Willie liked it and lead the way on the trails. It was a little muddy due to the melted snow, but it was pretty warm. There was a lot of different projects that looked like different groups made or donated on all the trails. After we were done hiking we went to Neubig for some hot chocolate so we could warm up. He also had some cookies of course.