Ashton lives at home with his parents, Ken and Deanna. He has three sisters, two of which live at home. Little sister Emma is 7 and in 2nd grade. Big sister Sydney is 14 and in 9th grade. Oldest sister Courtney and her husband Joey live about three hours away. Ashton was so excited when they got married because then he had a brother-in-law!

Our family has two dogs. Pepper is a little 12+ year old female Rat Terrier and Chihuahua mix that we adopted December 2010 while Ashton was stuck at home in a spica or body cast laying in a hospital bed for seven weeks. Just prior to Ashton’s spiral femur fracture we had taken him to visit the local animal shelter to look at the dogs and start an adoption application. Emma was only 18 months old when Pepper became available and had to come in to meet her to complete the adoption process. Courtney babysat Ashton while the rest of us went to pick up Pepper and stop to buy the things she needed. As you can imagine it was a big surprise for Ashton when we came home with a dog for him! Ashton was very happy to have Pepper to keep him company while he was immobile and stuck laying down in bed.

We adopted our second dog April 2015. Cooper is a big 4 year old Australian Cattle Dog and Mountain Cur mix. Well he seems huge compared to Pepper who is only 10 pounds but Cooper is an average size 70 pound dog. He is just a bit shorter than dogs around his weight at the dog park but his breed is more stocky. Kind of funny how we happened to end up with two similarly colored dogs. I was thinking we should change Pepper’s name to Mini Cooper lol. Cooper has been a fun and playful addition to our family. He is a very smart and protective dog, from the start he knew that he could not play as rough with Ashton as the rest of us. After we adopted Cooper Ashton said “I don’t have a brother but I have a brother-in-law and now I have a dog brother too.” LOL!

Wisconsin has always been home for our family. The past several years we have been enjoying living out in the country, on a red dirt road surrounded by farms and hills in the beautiful Marathon area. Ashton especially enjoys watching all the tractors drive by. [updated-09/10/2016]