Who
to view all the images on a page and controls 
to start and stop a slideshow.Jay Family Stories
from the Jay Project (Fifth 2012)
Sponsored by The Columbus Foundation
No more WalMart bag
"You know, Dave," Jay told me one day near the end of the project, "Two bathrooms will make a huge difference." He explained that with seven people sharing the single bathroom in their old house, frequently someone would knock and ask if he was behind the shower curtain so they could come in for a hairbrush or other necessary item. "Now that there is a separate bathroom upstairs for the children, I won't have to keep my razor, deodorant, tooth brushes & toothpaste and other things in a WalMart bag. I can keep it in my own bathroom!" As usual, Jay was grinning.
When Jay recounted this story at the Dedication, Ida jumped in and said, "Having only one bathroom is why we were running late for the ceremony this morning."
Clean homework
Jay told us how excited he is for his children to have room to do their work. "Before, the only place for them to do homework was on the kitchen table. In this new house, homework will be done in the bedrooms and basement. Now we won't have to worry about food stains on it!"
Sneaking up
At the Dedication, when I was in the basement, the youngest daughter (10) came up to me giggling and excited and squealed, "The stairs are quiet!" She went on to explain that the stairs in their old apartment squeak loud enough to be heard throughout the house whenever anyone walks on them. "I would try to sneak up and listen in on my sisters, but they always heard me. Now, in my new house, the stairs are quiet so I can sneak up on them!
Better sleep patterns
On Saturday, after we finished working on the roof trusses and all the other volunteers left, Jay asked me, "Dave, do you know what it will be like to sleep better?"
I listened intently as he told me about his family's sleep patterns. His two oldest daughters need to wake at 5:30 a.m. for their hour bus ride to middle school, but the five-year-old twin boys and his youngest daughter, who is in elementary school, can sleep until an hour and a half later. Jay himself needs to sleep still later, because he works from noon to 8:30 p.m. and it's quite late by the time he gets home.
"The problem," he continued, "is that we are crammed into a small, two-bedroom apartment. Ida [Jay's wife] sleeps in one bedroom with the twin boys. The three girls share the other bedroom, which means the youngest always gets woken up too early. I sleep on the couch in the living room, and when I hear the morning activity, I go the basement to finish my sleep on the floor there."
Looking me in the eye, Jay said, "As we worked together on the roof trusses today, I was thinking ahead to this fall. We will have four bedrooms. The twins will share one. Two girls will share another, and the oldest girl, who will be entering high school, will have her own. And, finally, Ida and I will be able to share a bedroom together."
Jay smiled brightly and repeated once again how grateful he is to Habitat for Humanity and all of the volunteer who are making it possible for his family to have much better sleep patterns soon.