Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome

Monday, September 9, 2019

Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome: Shane and Wyatt visit holy Cross Football

Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome: Shane and Wyatt visit holy Cross Football: We are with Chris Riley What a great visit to Worcester MA this weekend. As you may know, we are traveling to each Patriot League fo...

Shane and Wyatt visit Holy Cross Football

We are with Chris Riley

What a great visit to Worcester MA this weekend. As you may know, we are traveling to each Patriot League football stadium this season to promote Down syndrome Awareness, Acceptance, Inclusion and Respect for all individuals with Down syndrome. This weekend, the first stop of the season took us on the road to Holy Cross ✝️.

When we left home on Friday evening, all we knew, we were going to Massachusetts to see a football game. We knew we were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn in Worcester. We knew nothing else. Well, we did know that Holy Cross was paying New Hampshire and UNH Assistant Football Coach John Bowes knew we were coming and we knew he would look for us to say Hi 👋.

John Bowes, Assistant Football Coach

University of New Hampshire

Thanks Coach for spending a few moments with us. We know you were busy and appreciate all your support. ❤️ ❤️

Except for Coach Bowes, we knew no one and didn’t even have tickets for the game. Actually, except for Google Maps, didn’t even know where the stadium was. 😊 😊

On our way up, we stopped in Connecticut at Cracker Barrel to eat and arrived in town at 11pm. The hotel team at the Hilton Garden Inn were fantastic, allowed us to park in front of the hotel as all the handicap parking slots were filled , quickly checked us in and we went right to our rooms and to bed. We had a big day on Saturday, just didn’t know yet what exactly that what was in store.

Good Night 💤😴

GAME DAY!! Well, like all days, we start with a good breakfast. We also noticed at there was a lot of purple around eating as well. This lead to Wyatt wanting to give away some of the Awareness Bracelets and in true Wyatt fashion, he picked the table with the most people. This table just happened to be parents and family of a couple of the Holy Cross football 🏈 players. What a great group, before you knew it, we had an invite to their tailgate party and a promise to meet some players. We were all in.

The Breakfast Club

Once we arrived on campus at the College of the Holy Cross, we fell in love. What a beautiful campus. BUT, as we all know, its about the people. The parking garage attendant spent a few minutes, not seconds but minutes speaking to us. What a super lady who also was a mother with a child who had autism. When we finally drove off, Shane and Wyatt blew her kisses and she had one of our Awareness Bracelets. I wish I took a photo, 😠 but she definitely set the tone for what we were about to experience. Next was a Holy Cross Police Officer who helped us get from the parking garage down to the baseball field and to where the tailgate party had already started. Again, another bracelet was given away. If you notice in the first photo with Chris Riley, Wyatt has a handful of the bracelets. In all, we handed out hundreds of them. We hope people wear them or at least keep them, think of us occasionally and remember always the 400,000+ individuals with Down syndrome in the USA 🇺🇸.

Shane and Wyatt Down Syndrome

Awareness Bracelets

At the tailgate party we met so many awesome people. EVERYONE welcomed us as though we were family and they were all so nice to us. We met parents and family of the current players, past players, fans who were tailgating, the Holy Cross Band and so many others. We handed out our bracelets and spoke to many on why we drove almost 5 hours to attend this game. Why we will be driving and attending all the Patriot League Teams this season. We stand for and promote Down syndrome #Awareness #Acceptance #Inclusion and #Respect for all individuals. Yes, there was also a football 🏈 game and we believe we brought them some good luck as Holy Crossed scored late in the game to win. OK, maybe we didn’t have anything to do with the final score or ..... maybe we did??

Thank you so much to Head Coach Bob Chesney. You are one cool 😎 guy in our book and you have outstanding men on your team. All that we came in contact with took a few moments with us, said Hi and posed for photos. We will never forget this and thank you.

Coach Bob Chesney

Shane giving Coach a kiss

Our experience this weekend exceeded all our expectations. When we left on Friday we didn’t know what to expect and when we left only 24 hours later - we felt like family. We are Holy Cross Fans now and we hope we succeeded on our mission of raising awareness. Shane and Wyatt will never play college football but we are all on the same team - The Team of Life. Each person we met, each person that reads this blog and each person that is following this story will someday have a choice to make. A choice of helping someone less fortunate, someone down on their luck, someone with Down syndrome or special needs. We hope when that happens, you do what’s in your heart. Doing nothing is doing something - NOTHING. We all have the opportunity to do or say something and we hope you do.

This weekend, we will be in Lafayette and although Holy Cross set the bar high, we are looking forward to another great weekend and game. We hope to continue to spread our message and hope you all continue to follow us and support us. We love ❤️ ❤️ you all!! 🤗 🤗

To Follow Shane on Wyatt on Twitter at @shaneandwyatt1 or me at @ericwaxy

Donations to help with our mission of attending every Patriot League Stadium to promote Down syndrome awareness at

https://www.gofundme.com/f/shane-and-wyatts-road-trip?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome: Put your helmets on, we are heading out on a footb...

Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome: Put your helmets on, we are heading out on a footb...: Put your helmets on, we are heading out on a football season Down Syndrome Awareness Tour. We will be visiting each team in the Patriot Le...

Put your helmets on, we are heading out on a football season Down Syndrome Awareness Tour. We will be visiting each team in the Patriot League to spread the message of #Acceptance #Inclusion and #Respect.

We start our journey on Saturday September 7th at Holy Cross. We will be in Worcester MA as they host the University of New Hampshire. We will be arriving sometime on Friday evening and can’t wait to be on campus and to make new friends.

We have started a Go Fund Me page to help with this awareness campaign. We want to spread the message that individuals with Down syndrome are cool folks. We like to have fun, we love to make new friends and of course, WE LOVE FOOTBALL 🏈. Donations received already have been used to pay for our hotel while at Holy Cross and we THANK YOU 😊 😊 ❤️ ❤️. The link below is to our page for donations. If you believe in the cause and what we are doing, please consider helping us.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/shane-and-wyatts-road-trip?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

We also want to thank the Patriot League for their support on this awareness campaign. They sent us some Patriot League swag for our trips and we will be sure to show it off. We also know they will be following us and have reached out to each team to let them know what we are doing and when we will be in attendance. Please say HI 👋 👋 to us if you are at any of the games. We would love to see you!!

Here is our schedule.

Sept 7 at Holy Cross

Sept 14 at Lafayette

Sept 21 at Colgate

Sept 28 at Bucknell

Oct 12 at Georgetown

Nov 2 at Lehigh

Nov 16 at Fordham

If any officials or Referee’s are reading this, please know that we are Ref friendly. 😂
Here is proof -

While on the road, we will always have our awareness bracelets with us. We give them out to anyone who would like one. We have one for you so make sure you get one. Just ask!!

To the players and coaches, look for us. We will do our best to get past security and be at the tunnel when you take the field prior to the game. We love giving HIGH-5’s. Look for us!!

We are so excited about this Down syndrome Awareness Campaign. We hope to make new friends and to continue to advocate for all individuals with Down syndrome. We hope that you find this worthwhile and support us. We aren’t sure if anyone has ever been to every Patriot League Football Stadium in the SAME season and we suspect it’s NEVER been done by twins with Down syndrome.

Thank you and we love you all ❤️ ❤️ 🤗 🤗

Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome: Shane and Wyatt .. The beginning

Shane and Wyatt - Life’s Journey with Down Syndrome: Shane and Wyatt .. The beginning: Hi all, This blog will be about Shane and Wyatt and their / our mission to promote Down syndrome #Awareness, #Acceptance, #Inclusion and #R...

Shane and Wyatt .. The beginning

Hi all,
This blog will be about Shane and Wyatt and their / our mission to promote Down syndrome #Awareness, #Acceptance, #Inclusion and #Respect.

I know many have started to follow us in recent years, many after seeing us at an event, in town or just out and about. The journey to where we are today started over 9 years ago and was well documented by the Times New in Lehighton. We owe this store to Karen Cimms, Bob Ford and Amy Miller who spoke to us, researched each medical procedure and followed us for the first many days and months. It was not easy and at time was really hard and trying. We made it and the link below is our beginning, Shane and Wyatt and how they almost never made it. This is a store of love with a few miracles. Please let us know what you think and here you go..... Shane and Wyatt

https://tnlife.wordpress.com/about/

As always, feel free to comment. I love hearing your thoughts and feedback. I can be found on twitter at @ericwaxy and the twins are at @shaneandwyatt1. Give us a follow and follow the blog. More is coming.

Thanks