updated photos on The Zoo inhabitants

one of my favorite pics taken on our dock down by the lake

Bekah Sue my 5th grader!! When did she get so big?!

Bobby my 3rd grader and his latest passion, skateboarding!

Zach my 1st grader and his new skill, riding without training wheels!

Miss Madison in her Ariel shades talking on her Ariel phone! Can you guess which princess she is in to?

I'm back with an update on The Zoo!

Hello! I hadn't realized how long it had been since I posted until I started reading through my last few posts! So much has happened and changed since I was last here! Like everything we have done so far it has been fast and drastic change! Since the last time I posted was when Madie was 7 months I guess I should start there....

I last left you with a finally healthy family after Jay and Madison's boughts with MRSA and thankfully they both made a full recovery! They both still are prone to infections and we take any weird looking bumps very serious and they both have been put on meds since but thankfully no more hospital stays or pic lines! We enjoyed a pretty mild fall and early winter with a wonderful time with family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2008. We started off 2009 like every other year, getting back into the routine after a nice long break from work and school. We were finally getting there when on January 15 our world came to a screeching stop! I was just finishing up my shift at PromiseTowne when Jay's boss came to get me saying I had to leave with him right away that our house was on fire! I froze. I felt like I couldn't think or breathe! After franticly making sure the kids (who were all at work with me that day) were all taken care of and going home with co workers I left to meet up with Jay at a scene I will never forget! Jay and I sat in the back of a police car and watched as our house and everything in it burned. Jay's brother who lived with us and was home at the time the fire started was taken to the hospital and treated for 2nd degree burns on his back and arms and frostbite on his feet. We lost almost everything we owned and our 11 year old cat. We stayed with Jay's boss for just over a week until we found another house to rent and were blessed beyond our wildest thoughts by friends and our church family as bags of clothes and toys and all the furniture we needed began showing up! We truly could not have made it without our friends and church family there to love and support us! We then began a season of life that I felt like was a blur! We dealt with insurance companies and moving and going through the mounds of items given to us, returning to work and school. Kids did amazing and Jay and I were in survival mode! I ended up taking a leave from my job for the summer to regroup and finishing setting up house and ended up making the leave permanent. Life strated to settle back down and the fog began to slowly lift! Jay started back to school to get his masters degree in the fall of 2009, Bekah started 4th grade, Bobby 2nd grade, Zach started Kindergarten and Madie was busy getting into everything! In early 2010 Jay had decided to leave ministry to pursue a career in the business world. He began studying and taking IL state test for a position with a company he was going to work for. After a few months and some hard lessons God made it very clear to Jay that he was not done with him in ministry! Jay began applying and we began praying for the right position for him and our family to open up, where ever that may be! The kids and I were scheduled to come to MI for 2 weeks for my nieces 1st birthday party and a cousins baby shower with lots of visiting with family in between! Jay ended up coming with us and interviewing at 3 different churches in MI and before we left MI (after an extended almost 3 week trip) we had accepted a position in Mt Pleasant, MI and went back to IL to pack! We had less than 3 weeks to find a house (from IL) and pack our house in IL and say good bye to some really good friends who had become more like family in the 4 years we lived there! Jay and Bobby ended up making a long weekend trip to find a house and I stayed behind to finish packing! They found us a great house on a wonderful lake 20 minutes from church. We have now been here almost 3 months and are loving our new church and church family and loving being closer to both of our families! The kids are adjusting to their new school and have made some great friends who live right behind us! Bekah is in 5th grade, Bobby is in 3rd, and Zach is now a 1st grader and loving staying at school all day! Madie who is now 2 1/2 and I are loving our days together. We got to church for Mom's group once a week where I get to hang out with Mom's and talk and grow and learn and Madie gets to go to her class to in her words "play with all my friends"!

So there you have it the short version of what has been happening at The Zoo since the summer of 2008! Crazy busy as always with ups and downs, but we have each other and we found through the events of January 2009 that thats all that matters!