As dusk fell, the Wheeler children crowded one by one onto the back porch of the family’s home for dinner. The family is so big they need two tables to accommodate everyone.

Parents Sue and Jim Wheeler set the tables with an enormous platter of barbecued chicken, applesauce and corn while Billie Holiday’s “Mack the Knife” plays over their stereo speakers.

The dinner scene resembles that of any traditional American family - but the Wheeler family of 12 is anything but ordinary.

After adopting six children - five from foster care - in the past 10 years, Sue and Jim Wheeler received one of this year’s “Angels of Adoption” awards Sept. 24 from a congressional coalition on adoption for families who show a commitment to family issues.

The Wheelers are parents of 10 sons and daughters, ranging from 3 to 25 years old and including children from Latino, white and African-American backgrounds.

“Not every family could handle that many children,” said Sherri Solomon-Jozwiak, president and CEO of Catholic Social Services of Lansing and St. Vincent Home Inc. “It’s people like Jim and Sue that really make a difference in the life of kids.”

Married in 1984, Jim and Sue Wheeler each had children from previous marriages. Jim has two sons, Ben, 25, and Tom, 23; and Sue has a daughter, Meghan, 22; and the couple had Chelsea, 16, in 1986.

“We had four kids and wanted one more,” Sue Wheeler said.

Then they discovered Catholic Social Services of Lansing and 4-year-old Mike, now 14, who would soon be a part of the family.

“We decided on straight adoption and were matched with Mike. From our perspective, it was as though we had known each other our whole lives,” she said.

Taken from a home of abuse and neglect, Mike had been through the foster system.

“Mike just dove at me and started wrestling,” Jim Wheeler said. “Later during our meeting he had spilled a glass of milk, and we could tell that made him nervous, as if he was on an interview and had ruined it.

“But he had already won our hearts. The rest is history.”

The Wheelers said the joy Mike brought to the family inspired them to expand their family even more.

The next year, the family welcomed 11-month-old Zach, now 8. To adopt him, the Wheelers had to become foster parents first, so they had to attend classes to get their license.

“Besides discipline issues, they’d go over things such as how to give a child space, when it isn’t appropriate to have them still sleeping in the parents’ room and so on,” Sue Wheeler said.

In the years that followed, the Wheelers’ long-standing commitment to foster care and adoption would shine. Not long after the adoption of Zach, 7-year-old Nick joined the family.

“Sue would call me up at work and say, ‘There might be a new face coming to the table,’” Jim Wheeler said.

Such family affairs are not without difficulty, as the couple would attest.

At dinner, 5-year-old Katie pranced around the deck wearing her father’s sunglasses and hot pink sandals - the picture of a healthy, happy child. But that was not exactly the case five years ago when Sue Wheeler’s work led to her to the 8-month-old baby.

Catholic Social Services placed Katie in a foster home after she was treated for abuse at the hospital where Sue Wheeler taught. They assumed Katie would be reunited with immediate relatives.

She wasn’t.

“Parents are lost in our world often with substance abuse and mental illness,” Catholic Social Services President Solomon-Jozwiak said. “And affordable treatments are generally not readily available.”

The Wheelers were assessed by Catholic Social Services to assure their living conditions were stable.

“We give a very extensive home assessment,” Solomon-Jozwiak said. “It takes an exceptional person that has much to give to provide the necessary attention and assistance children need.”

Eight months after first meeting her, the Wheelers officially adopted Katie.

Morgan, now 5, was placed in foster care with the family shortly thereafter. But two months later, Morgan was sent back to her biological parents.

“The night that Morgan left, I decided to take all the kids to A&W for a treat,” Jim Wheeler said. “But Sue didn’t want to go, so Mike, then 10, stayed home with her.

“They spent a lot of time crying, and Mike said, ‘Doesn’t it hurt a lot? We have to try again.’”

Sue Wheeler remembered: “I said, ‘Mike, we just went through all this, I need some time.’

“But Mike said, ‘Look, when you are a foster kid and get lucky enough to have this family, getting taken away from it is the worst thing imaginable.’”

Later that year, Morgan was in need of a home again, but before the Wheelers attempted to adopt her, they called Catholic Social Services and were told another child, Isabelle, also was in need of a home - only two days after her birth. The Wheelers adopted both of them.

Whether they will expand their family again is a question that goes unanswered. Three year-old Isabelle is the last child the family adopted.

“Never say never,” Sue Wheeler said. “There are so many children out there who need help.”

For now, daily activities are like any other, but the family has received criticism on how each child could possibly receive the individual attention they deserve.

“With as much as you plan, you forget about the stuff that you can’t plan,” Jim Wheeler said. “The kids could come home and say, ‘Oh, the ice cream social is tonight,’ or, ‘I need to collect leafs for a project.”

“We don’t sweat the small stuff,” Sue Wheeler said. “Somehow, it works out.”

But they both admit it can be tough to make it to each of the children’s activities all the time.

“How many soccer games can you go to at once?” Jim Wheeler said. “Especially when you’ve also got to make a football practice. We want to be able to be there for everything, and the kids want us there, too.”

As a junior at East Lansing High School, Chelsea mentioned the difficulties of balancing a normal school life with her family responsibilities.

“Sometimes people don’t understand that I can’t always go out and party. But if I were to get in trouble like that, something could happen to them,” she said as she waved a hand toward her younger brothers and sisters.

She stood off to the side and watched as they fought for a place at the orange and yellow picnic table their mother had loaded with food.

The responsibility is worth it, she admitted.

“It can get tiring,” Chelsea said. “But if we weren’t here for them, where would they be?”

Emily Buckler can be reached at buckler4@msu.edu.