Steve and Rob Anderson-McLean have become the dads of six brothers and sisters who spent five years of their childhood in the foster care system.

“There are not many dull moments,” Rob said of their full house.

The couple has been together for over 20 years and married in Maryland in 2013. After raising two now-grown children (Parker, 25, and Noah, 21) from Steve’s previous marriage, they knew they were not finished growing their family.

After looking into adoption, the pair learned that many siblings get split up, with families often only wanting to adopt younger children.

With this in mind, they prepared themselves to adopt two or three siblings, but their fate was sealed when they saw the photograph of their soon-to-be children.

They fell in love with the six smiling faces who had been in the foster care system for almost five years. The Anderson-McLeans matched with their kids in June 2018 and in less than a year, the adoption was official.

“I think they felt at home pretty early on,” said Rob. From as early as a week into their stay with the soon-to-be dads, the kids were asking if they could stay forever. “I think we felt like a family pretty quickly.”

In May 2019, Carlos, Guadalupe, Maria, Selena, Nasa and Max (ranging in age from seven to 14 years-old) officially became part of Steve and Rob’s family.

In the early days of the children’s stay, the pair of dads would get to know their future kids through their Life Books.

“Kids in foster care create a scrapbook and they call them ‘Life Books’, and [the kids] were very eager and very excited to show us their life books,” said Steve. “You realise that they had a lot of life happen before we came into their lives.”

“We wanna protect them,” Steve goes on to say. “Everything that’s happened in the past, we can’t change, unfortunately, but we can make sure that their future is brighter and a happier one for them.”