With 39 kids I have some inflated bills, such as car insurance. I am often asked if our bill is astronomical.

I don’t let my kids get a driver’s license at 16. I don’t believe that they are emotionally mature enough. Even at 18 some of them still express themselves like pre-schoolers with rage and anger issues, but at least they are not behind the wheel of a car at the moment.

We did have a car accident yesterday, with a 20 year old who is a good, steady driver. He’d moved out of our house, was not getting as much sleep as he should and he momentarily... more

Theresa wrote about her difficult Mother’s Day experiences, reminding me that my second most dreaded holiday is approaching.

Christmas is usually the most difficult for us, besides the blatant commercialism and the unbelievable media derived expectations, we have the adopted children syndrome in which the kids go bonkers reliving past Christmases in their minds, usually not pleasant memories as their birth parents were drunk or doing drugs, neglecting and simply... more

I am often asked, “How do you feed such a large family?” Because I am a vegetarian, I get even more dietary questions. More so than being a vegetarian is my desire for whole foods, not processed junk, plus I grow huge gardens, I used to can or freeze a good bit of produce, but somewhere along the road to gaining such a large family, food preservation got ignored.

Now that most of my children are older, or at least not babies, now they are 4-33 years old, I am... more

This article dismayed me. I have a mentally challenged grown child in jail, he tests out on a third grade level and he’s headed toward his nineteenth birthday. What does the justice system need to do with the mentally incompetent when they commit crimes?

What do we do when our children seem to not learn obvious consequences? I have children in special education, children whose reasoning abilities won’t get them elected to... more

Enabling allows a person to avoid the consequences of their actions. I would venture to say that in the world of adult adopted children, this one is a minefield, as we parents struggle to walk the line between helping and enabling.

We want to help our grown kids become mature, responsible adults but we know that our adult children did not always have a decent childhood. If a child does not get adopted until age 13, they may have to relearn every developmental milestone properly within the context... more

"Nothing is too small to know, and nothing is too big to attempt. The biggest things are always the easiest to do because there is no competition." (William Van Horne)

I’ve received several emails lately from adoptive parents who are frustrated with their social workers, mainly because these young, childless professionals do not understand the desire to have a large family.

First off I’d like to say that my large family grew over a very long period of time. I’ve been parenting for almost 34 years.... more

I’ve had the same caseworker for nearly 20 years, although in the last few adoptions she assigned our family to a different caseworker, she owns the adoption agency, and has kept tabs on us for a very long time. She’s become a friend, someone whose opinion I trust more than just about anyone else’s on earth, and now that she is an adoptive mother of challenging children, she really understands.

I was telling her today about how we have four soccer teams and two different church league softball teams underway, I am spending all my time bopping between... more

Several people expressed interest in the boring logistics of feeding and caring for a large family, something I don’t blog about much for a couple of reasons. It bores me for one, and it is so chore-like that my eyes glaze over at the thought of recounting the repetitive, mundane details of life as the mama of 39 children.

Truly the hard physical work is easy as pie compared to the emotional demands, the acting out and all the issues I face each day; the lack of logic sends me reeling at times and the ingratitude is appalling.

I try and stay caught... more