November 26th

Did Ashley enjoy the weekend at Notre Dame and St. Mary’s?

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This photo says it all. This is Ashley with Mom inside the Notre Dame football locker room. It was a wonderful day full of enjoyment.

We were in the locker room around 9:00am on game day. All the lockers had been outfitted with the game day uniforms. Given the temperature was in the teens we thought we might see garments with more insulating properties, but that wasn’t the case. The items that were in the ‘lockers’ (they were better described as shelved personal closets) were all placed exactly the same locker after locker. Each player’s name was displayed above. The home locker room is at the north end of the stadium immediately to the west of the tunnel. It is not your typical locker room given the carpet and the cabinetry. On the west wall is the ‘trophy’ case which contains, among other items, all 11 championship rings dating back to 1924.

Following our locker room tour we walked over to the bookstore. From there we went to LaFortune Hall, the student center.
Kelly had a room reserved and got word out to Ashley’s classmates to visit with us there. Several of Ashley’s class and dorm mates stopped by. This was certainly the highlight for Ashley.

We then bundled up for game time. Our tickets were right on the 50 yard line. We had a great time at the game; we wish we could say the same for the Fighting Irish.

Following the game we headed over to the Saint Mary's campus. We visited with Ashley's roommate Andrea before heading back to Fort Wayne.

It was a wonderful day that none of us will ever forget. Needless to say this all did not just happen. There were two wonderful people that made this dream day a reality. Kelly Hogan was a Notre Dame student sports manager with Ashley their freshman year. She teamed up with Mike Fletcher who is currently a sports manager. They both jumped through a lot of hoops and invested a lot of their time to put this agenda together and cover all the logistics and planning. We knew how wonderful Kelly was, but until we arrived on campus Saturday morning we had never met Mike before. He did not know Ashley, but was willing to take on this task for us. Mike you are our hero!

On the therapy front we reached a significant milestone last night. We have been patterning Ashley while she walks for several months. Often times we will have Ashley walk from the family room to her temporary room at the other side of the house; probably a good 50 feet. Well last night Ashley not only initiated every step she moved both feet forward EVERY time! It was unbelievable to watch. We were helping her with her balance, but we did not assist her for a single step. Exciting!