I wrote about the Mulligans before in the story entitled "A Family Made Of Miracles". They live across the street from the Sanduskys, and they are all very good friends.

Mike Mulligan is my name, and my wife's name is Jayne. We live in Nashville, Tennessee, with our ten children, seven, of which, are adopted.

We have three boys (Mike, Jr.--19, Adam--12, and three-and-one-half-year-old Alejandro, who is the youngest child in our family) and seven girls (Polly--16 1/2, Lu-Anne--15, Stevie--15 1/2, Melynda--13, Robyn--10 1/2, Kimmy--9, and Britni--8). Out of the ten children, seven (Polly, Lu-Anne, Stevie, Robyn, Kimmy, Britni, and Alejandro) are adopted. Polly and Stevie, cousins in real life, are from Georgia, and real life sisters Lu-Anne and Robyn are both from southern Louisiana, deep in the heart of Cajun Country. Alejandro is from Central America, in Nicaragua, and Kimmy and Britni both came to us from Vietnam.

All of our children are healthy and well, I am glad to say, but Britni DOES have some hearing problems, and she wears hearing aids; but she is able to communicate by reading lips. Other than that, she is very healthy. She is the only one out of our brood who is termed "special-needs", but there is nothing disabled about her can-do attitude and zestful spirit. She is especially competitive with her sister, Kimmy; those two were meant to be together, it seems!

I am a high school football coach, and my wife is a stay-at-home mom. She is busy enough with the kids, and she does a very good job with them. Our kids are all homeschooled, and they are doing quite well in their studies.

We had three kids of our own, but then our neighbors across the street, started adopting kids, and we thought we would give it a try; this was how we ended up with our big brood today. We couldn't have wanted or hoped for a better group of kids, and they have brought us moments of incredible joy. They are our life, and we would do anything to make sure our kids had all they wanted or needed out of life; and we are so glad that God brought them to us!