Hi Michelle, I will try to answer some of your questions. We have adopted 13 children. Ages: 27, 24, 21, 19, 17, 15, 13, 10, 9, 9, 9, 7, 4. We also have 2 foster chiildren ages 3 and 2. We too wanted to adopt siblings and that is why we ended up with so many. We adopted a total of 4 sibling groups. In Florida after you adopt you do recieve a adoption subsity until the kids are 18. It is not much but it does help with braces and extras. How other children feel is very different with each kid. Our 4 older kids were fine when we began fostering. They at the time were 17 and up. They consider the younger ones their little brothers and sisters. Our younger kids love having brothers and sisters to be with. They are homeschooled so they mostly have each other. I too am a stay at home Mom. We have 5 kids in one room, they are VERY large rooms. We live in a very old colonial home and the rooms are huge. And we found even when we put 1 or 2 kids in rooms they ended up all together in the living room or dining room or family room never in their own rooms. They just sleep in their rooms! We do make sure each kids has his own "space" for his private stuff. Some even have locked boxes to keep little hands off stuff. They also have under the bed boxes for keeping important stuff seperate. Because our kids are together alot they bonded easily. The best day was when I told one child (who only had one brother) to go get his brother and he said "which one?" We have explained to our kids that adoption is permenant and makes us a real family. And they have all gotten the point. As to getting around. We have a 15 passenager GMC van. We can not go anywhere with out it. It takes some getting used to but is easy to drive. It only gets tricky when we are pulling a trailer! There are some great web sites for large families. One is:
www.lafter.org It caters to large adoptive families. If you have any other questions respond back and I will try to help! Life with a large family is very busy but WELL WORTH the effort.
Jenny