What It's Like to Adopt 7 Siblings When You Already Have 6 Kids: 'I Do Everything I Did, but a Little Bigger'

From making 40 tacos a night to coordinating school drop off to the minute, Michelle Torppey says her life as a mom of 13 is "chaotic ... but happy." Here's her family's story, as told to PEOPLE

All 13 Torppey children running together
Photo: Renee Ash Photography

Michelle Torppey has six biological children, the youngest of whom is just a few years from heading off to college. But with her empty nest in sight, she and her husband decided to add seven more siblings, ranging in age from 18 to 6, to their family.

The Torppeys didn't intend to almost double their brood overnight, but "my whole family just fell in love" with the orphaned family of seven, says the Wantage, New Jersey mother and part-time bookkeeper, who, with her husband Wade, 60, an iron worker, welcomed their new children this summer.

During Christmas 2018, the Torppey family hosted five children from an orphanage in Mokrets, Ukraine, and invited them back for summer break 2019. They felt like family to each other, and the Torppeys invited them and their two youngest siblings to make the arrangement official. They officially came home in July 2021, and "after they were here a couple days, it was like they had been here all along," Michelle says.

The dominant language in their house is "charades," she jokes. But their house and hearts are full.

In celebration of National Adoption Day, Michelle Torppey shared her adoption journey with PEOPLE. These are her words, as told to PEOPLE.

family who adopted 7 siblings from Ukrain
The Torppey family. gofundme

Wade and I are both from large families. He's one of eight, I'm one of six. And we have six kids ourselves.

Our church works with an organization called Open Hearts and Homes for Children, which brings children that live in orphanages from Latvia and from Ukraine to stay with a family for Christmas, just so they can have a family love on them for four or five weeks, and then they go back to the orphanage.

My pastor's wife got word of a family of five kids, and thought they might be split up among two families here so they could be close for Christmas. I showed the picture to my husband, who took one look and he said, "Let's take all five of them." Okay! In my mind, I'm thinking, "It's a month, I can do anything for a month." It's a lot of kids, we already have six, and now we're going to have five more.

My kids were like, "Mom and dad, you guys are nuts." But once they got here, my whole family just fell in love. My husband will tell you that he knew from the minute he saw their picture and invited them to come for Christmas, that they were going to be ours. I wasn't there initially, I didn't see it that way at first. But he knew that it was more than just a month.

Sending them back to the orphanage that winter, my family was heartbroken. I'll never forget us all standing at the airport; everyone's crying their eyes out.

When they left, they said, "We love it here, we love you. Can we come back again?" They do this program again in the summer for nine weeks, so in 2019, they came back and stayed with us for the whole summer. (At this time, it was still just the five, because the little boys were 3 and 4 and the program only brings kids from 7 to 16.)

Torppey family
Courtesy the Torppey family

My husband felt like adopting them was a no-brainer: These kids need a home and we have one, so why wouldn't we share it with them? I was thinking through the logistics: How are we going to pay for this? This is seven more education expenses, and seven more mouths to feed, and seven more everything. We prayed hard for a long time. My husband said, "Yeah, I'm sure of it. There's no doubt in my mind."

We spoke with the kids to make sure that the feeling was mutual, because they do still have family in Ukraine and we didn't want to be ripping anyone away from their families. But obviously, since they were in the orphanage, there was no family that was able to adopt them.

Their first question was, "What about our little brothers?" They also have two older siblings and a younger half-brother (he has a different father who is still alive). There's 10 of them altogether, and we told them, whoever wanted to come, we were happy to keep them together.

The older sisters [we hadn't met] were a little skeptical at first, thinking, who wants to take all these kids? In their mind, they're thinking, "Why would somebody want to take all these kids unless they have bad intentions?"

So at the end of 2019, my whole family went to Ukraine to spend Christmas with them; we met the older sisters and the younger brothers, and we had a really good time. We saw the orphanage and knew they'd been loved and taken care of. Once we all got to know each other, the sisters said, "Thank you so much for taking care of them, and we're happy that they're going with you. We know they're going to have a better life."

November is National Adoption Month, and PEOPLE is celebrating by highlighting the many extraordinary ways families can grow via adoption, featuring real stories from celebrities, everyday parents and adoptees, as well as information on the varied ways to adopt. For more heartwarming, heartbreaking and happy-ending stories, visit our Adoption page.

Torppey family
Courtesy the Torppey family

We started the adoption paperwork in June 2019, and it's a long process with home studies, FBI background checks, all that. At first, all the adoption agencies were like, "Yeah, no. No one will do that." It's just too risky and nobody wants to be responsible. We had a hard time finding an agency to work with us, and the one who did went bankrupt in April 2020 — back to square one.

Things were delayed because of COVID, and then my daughter, Kairos, turned 18 in July 2020, so the home study is no longer any good — it's a whole new set of background checks for an adult. We did everything over, getting all our documents certified again. It was such a project. But we were pretty confident that this was God's plan, for them and for us.

We kept in touch with weekly FaceTimes and Instagram DMs, but COVID travel restrictions meant we couldn't see them for all of 2020. In January 2021, we finally got to return to Ukraine for our first official adoption visit; we signed all the paperwork. Then we went back for our official pickup date June 23rd – that was the day we could officially walk them out of the orphanage. We all flew home on July 2nd.

Torppey family
Courtesy the Torppey family

Life with 13 Kids

When you hear the number 13, it's like, "Whoa, how do you get that many kids out the door?" But my six are incredibly helpful and supportive — they're like the pit crew. They shop for me, they help me get the kids ready for school, they drive the kids back and forth.

My son, John, he's 27, he coaches the girls' soccer team, which has two of my biological daughters, Zoey and Anna, and then two of our adopted girls, Olena and Leeza.

I usually have Kairos home in the morning. She helps me get everybody dressed, breakfast, lunch, everything out the door. Anna and Zoey drive Olena and Leeza to high school every morning, which is half an hour away — that's huge, because otherwise I couldn't get the other kids to school on time. Then I know Anna will drive them to soccer practice, or home from soccer practice, or wherever they need to go.

My daughter Carla is my personal shopper. She and my best friend, Karen, anything I need, any time of day, I can just text them. Whether I need milk, or "Can you stop at Costco?" And they're constantly calling me saying, "I'm stopping here, do you need anything? What can I get you?"

My oldest daughter, Taylor, she's married and she lives in Wisconsin, but she's always a phone call or text message away if I need anything. She and my son, John, taught themselves Ukrainian and Russian when we started this process, so they translate for us when needed. The kids' English is getting better every day, especially since they started school, but the translation is a huge help as well.

Wade and Michelle surrounded by their 13 children and 1 son-in-law (Left to Right: Back: Leeza, Oliver, Taylor, Zoey, Olena, Wade, Michelle, John, Carla, Anna Marie, Slavik, Kairos. Front: Alina, Jenya, Anhelina, Senya)
Courtesy the Torppey family

Everybody has jobs, and we have a rotating schedule of who does what. Everybody chips in. It's chaotic, but they come home happy from school every day.

Dinner is a project but everybody's helpful. I'm usually in charge of cooking the dinner. Everybody comes flying in from soccer and starts taking turns in the shower, and doing homework. Dinner is usually like 40 tacos. I make sliders a lot, so it'll be like 30 sliders or 30 hot dogs. Whatever I used to make, I doubled everything: It's just kind of like everything I did before, but do it a little bigger.

The Torppey Family
Renee Ash Photography

The Transition from Visitor to Family Member

We knew there might be challenges when the rules changed from, visiting for a month for fun to, now you live here. We had to make it clear, when we say to do something, you do it the first time. The rules aren't because we're mad at you, it's because everybody has to follow the rules, and it's because we love you."

We had heard [difficult stories] about adopted kids, and we were prepared for the all the problems we thought we might have. Don't get me wrong, there are challenges every day — but I was pleasantly surprised to see that we really didn't have a lot of issues.

There was some room switching before they arrived, and all the kids loved their new room, everybody was happy. We have four girls sharing a bathroom, and then the three boys share another bathroom. They're just so grateful, and they're so thankful.

At dinner every night, somebody volunteers to pray. The little boys will say, "Thank you, Jesus for ... " and they list everybody in the family: "For Wade, for Michelle, for John, for Taylor, for ... " and they go around the whole list of everybody there. Thank you for America, thank you for my room, thank you for ketchup -- they love ketchup.... It's just so sincere.

If I make their favorite meal, "Thank you for potato chip chicken." If I'm cooking dinner, the little 8-year-old, Senya, he'll be sitting at the kitchen table and he'll say, "Michelle, I love you. You're a good chef, you're a good mom." Just out of nowhere, he'll just say things like that.

We try to teach them that, yes they've had a rough life at their age, and bad things happened. They lost their parents, that's tragic, that's traumatizing. But, if you look at the big picture, God had a plan for these kids. Even though we didn't know them 20 years ago, when the time came, He placed them on our hearts. Our two worlds came together at just the right time, and God had a plan for them all along.

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