Here’s the story.  My sister and I decided to become foster parents because we had a huge house and a huge love of kids.

Wait – here’s the “real” story (in a very shortened version!).  I returned from a month in Kenya while I was a physician resident and my sister said “Hi. Welcome Home. While you were gone, I was contemplating the Biblical principle of taking care of widows and children…and since we don’t care about old ladies, I signed up for foster parenting classes.”

A year later (and several foster kids later), Super Tall Guy joined the household fresh from the hospital dressed in mismatched striped blue shirt and polka-dot blue pants.  By the time he was 18 months old and no biological parent was available, I gladly agreed to begin the adoption process.

The morning after we celebrated the first anniversary of his adoption, my sister called and said “are you sitting down?”  I worried what happened to the older boys (I say “boys” because we had her son too – another long story!) and she said “They want us to be there in 15 minutes to pick up Super Tall Guy’s brother.”  And so arrived Mr. Ornery.

“How busy are you feeling?  They want to know if you want to adopt another boy.”  And then there was The Little Guy.

So…my boys are now 16, 13 and 11 (in 2022).  We lived with my sister and her son The Flipper (a gymnast and two months younger than Super Tall Guy – that long story!) and her son Mr. Trouble until we finally decided to have separate households and decrease a little chaos. Since we’re just minutes away from each other and Grandma provides every-time-she’s-needed care, we are together most of the time still!

You can read a post about each of their arrivals in the category on the right column titled “Boys’ Arrival.”  (And check out the “Favorites” category if you want to know where my brain goes…).  And early posts had the boys going by different “blog” names but that got too confusing for me, hence the Name Change post 🙂

It’s one crazy, loud, manic, chaotic household with Legos underfoot, endless heaps of laundry, and smashed Ritz crackers ground into the carpet.  It’s loud – did I mention that? Oh and now there’s a dog – who pees on the carpet! – did I mention that? But she ran off in July 2015.  So now we have a lovely Cavadoodle (mix of King Charles Cavalier and Poodle – but you can’t call her a Cavapoo….because, you know… “poo” + 3 boys == you know, Madness!!) and a black lab mix (Pandemic Puppy of 2020) and a new kitty (December 2022).

It’s fun, it’s exhausting, it’s madness.

And I happily live in the middle of it.