The FIVE J's: Catching up on ... May 2007

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? After my last update, things went a little nuts in our lives ... Jamie renovated a home in another part of town, Homewood. We lived there four years ago but moved to the Oak Mountain area to be closer to our church. I had spent the last year and a half traveling to the Bell Center in Homewood and had fallen in love with Homewood again. Jamie put the Homewood house on the market in February and it did not sell right away. We had grown attached to the home and were hankering to see if our Oak Mountain house would sell. So, we put the Oak Mountain house on the market in the middle of May. While we were at the beach in June, Jamie ran back and forth to an Office Max fax machine, countering the potential buyers' offer. We finally settled. They wanted us out in two weeks, including completing a laundry list of things to fix. So, the Oak Mountain house sold in one month! I was grateful but hacked at the buyers' demands. We were relieved the waiting was over. It was overwhelming and exciting. We loved the Homewood house and there were four other families in that neighborhood that had kids with Down syndrome within a year of Jonathan and typical kids within a year of Jackson. We knew several other families there as well. While Homewood's system didn't have the recommendation for special needs' children like Oak Mountain's, we felt good about it. There are other families with our same dynamic so our kids are not alone. The director of Special Needs in Homewood was the director of Special Needs at Oak Mountain for 15 years. We love how much smaller and more quaint it is here. We feel confident that this is the best place for our family right now. After months of prayer, we had our answer!