ND vs. Penn State Bowl Game!

A few days after Aunt Mary’s surprise party, John & I had one more surprise up our sleeve! 🙂 As some of you know, my dad plays in the Notre Dame fantasy football camp every Summer in Notre Dame stadium through the Global Football program. He has trained long and hard for the final game of his football career which ended on 9/9, which was also my birthday! His final game was a bowl game against the Penn State fantasy football guys and we surprised him by making the long trek out to Penn State to shoot his final game. What an adventure that trip was!! We had booked a hotel room at the Crowne Plaza in Hershey, PA down by the river and the day that we made it to PA, it was raining but it didn’t look too bad outside. We had planned to spend the next day in Hershey to take the tours and celebrate my birthday but by the next morning, it had rained so much that Hershey Park was flooded and it was under 5 feet of water! There was a state of emergency in place, we had to pack up and evacuate the hotel and we drove 2 hours north in the mountains to get closer to Penn State, but we weren’t sure where we were going to stay! We almost had to give up the surprise but with the help of the Marriott app on my iPhone, we found a place nearby to stay, which is nearly impossible on a big game weekend like that! We surprised dad at his first practice when he came off the bus with the guys, it was awesome! The next day, he showed up to the field wearing a #99 jersey and right then, I knew his team was going to win. My lucky number is 9 (birthday is 9/9) and he was wearing #99 on 9/9 so it was meant to be! 🙂