Vanessa and Jay want their three children to have what every parent wants: health, happiness, and a roof over their head.

Luckily, Lester (16), Christina (14), and Jay (12) are excelling in school and keeping busy with extracurricular activities. But once they leave school it's a different story.

Every day Lester, Christina and Jay come home to a FEMA trailer in the front yard of what use to be their home before Hurricane Katrina destroyed it.

“We have no space," Jay says. “You can't even pass each other without running into each other or a wall."

After Katrina, the Vanessa and Jay started rebuilding their home from scratch, and raised their house to a tremendous twelve feet in order to avoid a similar fate in the future.

Jay, who works as a contractor, did most of the work himself with help from friends and family. Unfortunately, the house now sits halfway complete and Jay is no longer able to work as a contractor.

Vanessa got an alarming call one day saying Jay had fallen off a ladder and had hurt his back. In his fall, Jay injured two disks, and his doctors told him he would have to change careers. Since then, Jay has been able to find intermittent work as a truck driver, but it is not the steady work he hopes to acquire. Vanessa works full-time at Home Depot.

In addition to caring for their own family, Vanessa and Jay may be taking in their young niece and nephew while their father continues to look for work. Vanessa admits it will be a challenge to keep up a full-time job and take care of five children, but “They're family."

The family is looking forward to moving home. “They [his children] ask me at least three times a week when is our housing going to be done," Jay says.