eSpecially Ben

After 45 minutes of a work session, Ben's new and highly competent speech therapist, Jayne, gave Ben his first opportunity to use the key board on her iPad. This is what he typed: TVEE WATTCE I am, ironically, speechless.

Love INC's mission Last night, we had the wonderful opportunity to attend  Love INC 's Celebration Dinner. Love INC coordinated the building of Ben's ramp this summer. Unbeknownst to the lead carpenter for the project, Steve; he was receiving a special volunteer award at the banquet. We were invited to sit with Steve and his family and also introduce Ben to the guests before they sprung the award on Steve.  Steve with his wife, Ann and mom, June. In the end, Steve was surprised, but with Ramp It Up! staff coordinator Keri, Steve's wife and even his own mother in on it, he had no chance. When he sat down, they quickly hid the event program from him which had his name listed as an award recipient. After Steve received the award and sat down, I think his first words were, "I am going to get you back." Of course Steve was joking, but he is not the type of person to want his efforts flaunted in front of 300 people. He does what he d

Last weekend we found out about a local wheelchair basketball tournament in an interesting way. My mom and I were having dinner out, and we noticed a table of people who were mostly in wheelchairs. We were leaving at the same time as this group and because I was curious (and nosy), I asked one of the people if they were part of a team. Lo and behold, they were the Atlanta Wolfpack Wheelchair Basketball Team and were here for a tournament. The group was open to answering my questions about when and where they were playing. They whipped out the schedule and said there were games the next day. We knew the kids would love going so we made it to a couple of games the next day. We saw the Carolina Tarwheels beat the Atlanta Wolfpack, and then Atlanta played the Fayetteville Flyers . We missed our home team,  Charlotte Rollin' Bobcats  play. One of the Tarwheels players thanked us for coming and explained the rules of the game. We learned that there is a classification syste