It's 11-year-old Andrew's turn to set the table for dinner, and he deals out 14 paper plates as if they were playing cards.

Marcus, 5, climbs onto a bench and announces, "It smells like pancakes."

His brother, 3-year-old Cooper, counters, "I think it smells like chicken."

"It smells like Ambrose," says Logan, 7, climbing in between Cooper and their sister Ambrose, who's 4. She glares at the laughing boys.

Actually, it smells like spaghetti. A big pot of homemade sauce is bubbling on the stove.

Gay dads raise 12 adopted kids

The six littlest children fit on the 9-foot-long bench along one side of the table. Andrew and the four other big kids sit in chairs on the other side. Olivia, the baby of the family, is in a high chair. Daddy sits at one end, Papa at the other.

Steven and Roger Ham are raising 12 children, all adopted from foster care, in Arizona, one of the most unlikely places for two gay men to piece together a family.

In Arizona, two men can't be married, nor adopt children together.

In his 2008 run for U.S. president, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who with wife Cindy has an adopted daughter, said he opposed allowing gay people to adopt.

"I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family, so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption," McCain said during an appearance in Wisconsin.

That same year, Arizonans approved a ban on gay marriage by 56 percent of the vote.

Since 1997, conservative Arizona lawmakers have introduced a half-dozen bills that would keep single people, including gays and lesbians, from becoming foster parents or adopting children in the state's care, or would move married couples to the top of the waiting list for adoptions. Those attempts - one as recent as last year - failed to muster enough votes. But this year was different. On April 18, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill that gives preference to married couples in state and private adoptions, all other criteria being equal. Yet, in 2009, the governor gave Steven and Roger Ham an award for their efforts at keeping siblings in foster care together through adoption.

"As someone who was raised from the age of 10 by a widowed mother, I am well aware that single or unmarried individuals can make wonderful parents," Brewer says. "This legislation merely establishes marital status of adoptive parents among a host of factors to be considered when placing a child."

Opponents, however, contend that marriage doesn't guarantee a stable and loving family.

The Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest advocacy group for gay, bisexual and transgender equality, condemned the Arizona bill as discriminatory.

Originally, the bill listed marital status as the primary consideration in adoptions, both private and from state foster care. But officials at the Children's Action Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group in Phoenix, were worried that would scare off potential single foster and adoptive parents, who are more likely to take in minority and special-needs children. They worked with the 2011 bill's sponsor, Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, and others to amend the wording, making marital status just one of multiple considerations.

"It's the well-being of the child that matters most," says Dana Naimark, director of Children's Action Alliance.

Of the 2,100 children, on average, in state foster care who have a case plan for adoption, typically a third would be adopted by single parents, according to state records, a big factor in Arizona's high rate - one of the best in the country - of moving kids out of foster care and into permanent homes.

Federal adoption incentives added $584,582 to Arizona's coffers last year. From Oct. 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, 2010, adoptions of 2,025 foster children were finalized, says Mark Schwartz, an administrator with the state Department of Economic Security.

Arizona ranks first in the country for timeliness of adoptions from foster care, with 47 percent of children who have been severed from their parents because of abuse or neglect getting permanent homes within two years of their removal, Schwartz says. This compares with the national average of 36 percent.

While legislators debate and vote on what constitutes the best kind of family, however, conversation at the Hams' dinner table revolves around 13-year-old Michael's basketball game on Thursday, 16-year-old Vanessa's math homework and whether Cooper has to eat all his meatballs.

"I'll eat them," Andrew offers, and Cooper slides his plate across the table.

It took a decade, some heartache, a lot of love and never taking no for an answer to gather this unlikely group around this huge table for spaghetti.

Steven and Roger Ham wanted a family. And each of their sons and daughters was desperate for one. But bringing together this family wasn't easy.

"We had to fight to get them," Roger says.

"We had to fight to get them all," Steven says.

Planned only 1

The irony of the situation is this: They had planned to adopt just one child.

Roger, 47, sometimes tries to suggest he never really wanted any, though Steven, 42, rolls his eyes whenever Roger says it.

Both men grew up in large families, Steven as the youngest of 14 children and Roger as the youngest of 12. They met at a bar in Reno, where Roger was bartending and Steven was a frequent customer - a lot more frequent once he met Roger.

They fell in love on their first date, in 1993 to see Cirque du Soleil, and had been together eight years when they decided they wanted a child. Their 3,000-square-foot house seemed too big for just the two of them.

Steven and Roger first considered adopting a baby through a private agency. But as Steven did more research on adoption in late 2001, they changed their minds and decided to adopt from state foster care.

"With so many kids in the system, we would get the child that we wanted and help a child that no one wanted," Steven says. He could even picture her: a girl, maybe 3 or 4, perhaps with dark skin and curly hair.

"We were told there were thousands of biracial children that nobody wanted," he says. "We were like, 'Sweet! - because that is exactly what we want.' "

Steven called a number of Valley adoption agencies to find out whether they considered same-sex couples for placement.

"Honestly, if I needed to lie and say I was a single parent, I would have," Steven says. But he didn't have to. Of the half-dozen agencies he contacted, only two showed any hesitation.

That is because although the Legislature has produced bills that would have kept single people from becoming foster or adoptive parents, prohibited same-sex marriage and given preference to married couples in adoptions, those who work with children who need homes - social workers, agencies, the courts - do not take issue with those same conditions. They are more concerned about the thousands of children taken from homes each year, who then bounce among foster homes and group homes in alarming numbers.

The Arizona Department of Economic Security, which licenses foster and adoptive parents, cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation.

"I immediately fell in love with them," says Heather Shew-Plummer, the caseworker at Aid to the Adoption of Special Kids in Phoenix who handled the Hams' first nine adoptions. Up to that point, she had worked with 10 or so same-sex couples.

Shew-Plummer felt Steven and Roger were ideal prospective parents - patient, loving, fun and ceaseless advocates for the kids who would come into their care. But she worried they might face extra obstacles in adopting because they were gay.

"They never tried to hide it, but they never made a big deal out of it, either," Shew-Plummer says. "They didn't want to change the world. They just wanted to raise their kids."

After months of classes, filling out piles of paperwork and passing background checks and home inspections, Steven was licensed in 2002 as a foster-adoptive parent, meaning he could take in foster kids with the intent of adoption. Roger, too, attended the classes and went through the same checks, although he was not officially licensed. Had they been married, the two would have been licensed as a couple, but Department of Economic Security policy requires that single people be licensed individually.

"Being two gay men, we knew we would be up against obstacles," Steven says.

At the time, the debate over same-sex marriage was heating up all over the country. Just two years earlier, Mississippi had banned gay couples - and Utah had prohibited unmarried couples - from adopting.

But there was good news, too. In 2002, the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed second-parent adoption, in which children born to or adopted by one member of a same-sex couple is adopted by the parent's partner. Some states, including California and Oregon, would follow its recommendation.

By 2003, when Roger and Steven were meeting their first child, the nation was taking sides.

The California Supreme Court affirmed that a same-sex partner could petition to adopt his or her partner's child, and 60 percent of adoption agencies nationwide reported accepting applications from gays and lesbians.

But North Dakota's legislature passed a law that allows adoption agencies to refuse to participate in child placements that violate the agency's "religious or moral convictions or policies," including denying placement of a child with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals or same-sex couples.

And along the way, there were the various attempts by the Arizona Legislature to put parameters on who makes the best foster and adoptive parent(s).

None of it could deter Steven and Roger from starting their family.

"The more someone tells me I can't do something, the more determined I am to do it," Steven says, watching his children play from under a big blue umbrella in a park on a Sunday afternoon. "People can think whatever they want to think. We know what makes a family a family."

Roger, next to Steven, says, "We were determined not to let anyone stand in our way to do what we thought was best."

It seems ridiculous to the pair that, when there are 10,514 children in the state's care - including group homes, foster care and residential treatment - the priority isn't simply finding the best home for each child regardless of parents' marital status or sexual orientation.

"A loving home is a loving home," Roger says.

"Our kids have two parents who love them," Steven says. "Not all of their friends do."

State child-welfare officials learned to trust and rely on the Hams, bringing them 42 foster children over 10 years. Some needed shelter for a few days; others stayed for months. Child caseworkers knew the men would take in any child, day or night, no questions asked, and treat them as their own. And in the Hams' home, children were never sent back for doing something wrong, and it didn't matter that they were not all the same color, or had special needs.

Ten of the Hams' children are adopted from Arizona, two from Washington state. Both dads' names appear on the birth certificates of the two from Washington. But legally, the 10 children adopted in Arizona belong only to Steven. Arizona does not allow same-sex couples to adopt, or for a same-sex partner to adopt a partner's children.

Roger jokes that if he ever leaves, he'll take his two kids with him. Very funny, Steven counters: "If you ever leave me, we split the kids down the middle - and I get to pick." They grin at each other.

Because they can't co-adopt, a rather complicated series of legal actions had to be put together to cover all circumstances. Roger legally changed his last name to Ham in 2007, so everyone has the same name and there was less explaining to do when he picked up the kids from school or took them to the doctor.

An attorney drew up papers that, in case something happened to either dad, guardianship of the children goes to the other. Medical releases ensure that either dad can take the kids to urgent care, and paperwork filed at school means either can pick the kids up.

Married couples who adopt children don't have to take such precautions. With only one legal parent, children in gay households are not entitled to health and Social Security benefits, inheritance rights or child support from the other parent. If a gay couple splits up, only the legal parent has custody rights.

A lawyer in Washington suggested the men re-adopt the rest of the children in that state. Legally, it would put their minds at ease. But at $1,500 for each child, they can't afford it. Besides, the men say, names on paper don't mean as much as what the kids experience every day.

"Honestly, my thought is, they know that biologically we're not their parents, but they know who cares for them and who loves them unconditionally," Steven says.

"Papa, I need some love," Cooper says, and Roger accommodates, scooping the little boy into his arms and holding him close for a few minutes before setting him back on his feet and ruffling his hair.

"I didn't want that much love," Cooper says as he chases after Marcus.

Assembling a family

How the Hams started out wanting one child and ending up with 12 begins with Michael in 2003.

Michael was living in a group home, one of 20 children in a five-bedroom house. When their caseworker sent Steven and Roger to meet the boy to decide whether to adopt him, Michael sat on the end of his bed and told them in a whisper that he got beat up by the other kids because he was the smallest.

"We didn't know anything about him, but we knew he deserved more," Steven says.

He and Roger explained that they were two dads instead of a mom and dad. Michael didn't care. He stood up, and said, "I'll go get my stuff." Michael moved in a week later.

Nothing ever was the same again.

The couple's lives now revolved around a small child who didn't take kindly to anyone telling him what to do - yet then would offer to wipe down the kitchen counters and clean the baseboards. But when Michael called either of the men "Dad," or curled up next to them for a bedtime story, or bounced a basketball on the driveway, the men knew they were meant to be fathers.

They were happy, the three of them. But in the months after Michael moved in, he worried endlessly about his four younger brothers and sisters, who still were in foster care.

When the boy and his siblings were taken from a neglectful mother, they were placed together in a shelter but soon were split up, with Michael going to one foster home, Elizabeth and Andrew to another and the twins to a third.

In the year that followed, Michael would be bounced from that foster home to the group home, and the twins to a second foster home. Constantly worried about his brothers and sisters, Michael would sit for hours, rocking. When Steven and Roger tucked him in at night, he would say wistfully, "I wonder what they are doing right now."

"It was very heart-wrenching to see this little 5-year-old with these big adult concerns. He should have been playing with his Legos," Steven says.

Roger frowns. "It broke our hearts."

With the help of a caseworker, the men arranged for Michael to see his older two siblings, Elizabeth, 4, and Andrew, 3, at a park. As soon as Andrew and Elizabeth got out of their foster mother's car, they ran to Michael and clung to him.

"Brother. Brother. Brother," Andrew said again and again, patting Michael.

In a system in which siblings are split up because someone wants a little girl but not a preteen boy, or a baby but not a third-grader, Steven and Roger knew they had to at least try to bring these children together.

"These were kids who obviously loved one another," Steven says. "When we saw them together, I knew they had to be together, and I was going to do anything I could do to make that happen."

The state does prefer to keep siblings together - if there is a family willing to take them all. So once the Hams had the three siblings, they turned their attention to the 2-year-old twins, Jackson and Madison, who already were scheduled to be adopted - separately.

According to the state's file, the twins had been deemed "retarded." Their foster mother claimed the girl had an eating disorder, and that the boy would eat only Cheetos. Plus, Jackson reportedly was afraid of men.

But when Steven, Roger and the three older kids visited the twins in January 2004, Jackson wrapped himself around Steven's leg - and pitched a fit when he left. Steven and Roger requested that the children be placed with them and their siblings. But getting the twins took months longer than for the other children, because of their special needs.

Steven and Roger were called to face a panel at the state's division of developmental disabilities, where an administrator questioned them in detail about how they would care for the boy and girl, including - in a stinging insult - how they would change Madison's diapers.

Spotting a framed picture of two little girls on the man's desk, Roger told him that they would change Madison's diapers the same way he changed his own daughters' diapers.

"It was the only time in my life I felt discriminated against," Steven says.

Even so, the in-process adoptions of the twins were halted, and the children instead moved in with the Hams in August 2004, reuniting the siblings.

And as far as the dads could tell, the twins were normal, although their speech was a little delayed. So Steven ignored the dire diagnoses in the twins' files and worked with them daily, teaching them to count, the alphabet and colors, and asking, "Where are your ears?" and "Where is your nose?"

"They told me (the youngsters) would never be functioning adults," Steven says. "I saw something different in them."

The twins started kindergarten at 4 - a year early. They now are 8 and still a year ahead in school. Jackson plays basketball and likes to ride skateboards. Madison is queen of the monkey bars.

Big changes

Going from no children to five in less than a year meant big changes for Steven and Roger, like diapers, day care and a Ford Expedition that could seat nine.

Jackson still clung to Steven's leg. But together the children were happy. And Michael stopped rocking.

"Once they were secure, knowing that they weren't going anywhere, they calmed down," Steven says. He and Roger reassured them that, "This is forever."

As difficult as it sometimes was to take on five children in such short order, Steven says not having them together would have been harder on Michael than it ever was for him and Roger. It would have been hard on all five kids.

"They had lost their parents, their home. All they had was each other," Steven says. And now, they had two dads.

Life for the Hams took on the controlled chaotic pace of most families, with two working parents and the kids in school and preschool. Steven worked at a travel business and, at the same time as the twins arrived, was promoted to regional manager. Roger worked at a medical-waste company.

In January 2006, Steven decided he wanted the experience of raising a child from the start: first words, first steps and middle-of-the-night feedings. The caseworker expressed doubt that the men would get a baby through the agency's birth-parent program - in which mothers choose adoptive parents for their babies - because they were a same-sex couple.

Steven grins as he recalls telling her, "Oh, don't you tell me no."

He added his name to the list of foster parents willing to take in infants. And the next day the first baby, a boy, arrived, and then a few weeks later, a girl.

Roger was the first one out of bed when the babies cried at night. But the girl returned home after a few months, and the boy left in April. Steven and Roger were heartbroken.

Two days later, Marcus arrived. The 15-month-old had been in a shelter until being taken in by a relative, who then gave him back to the state. Steven texted Roger: "It's a boy!"

Whenever a new foster child arrived, Steven would text a picture to Roger. To the men, every child was a potential new addition to their home.

Roger's parents had taken in a baby as a foster child when he was growing up, only to watch the little boy return to his home at age 5. Roger, 13 at the time, was devastated, along with the rest of his family.

"With every child, we hoped it was one we would adopt," Steven says.

"Every single one of them touches your heart," Roger says.

As Marcus settled in, Roger took a call from a court-appointed special advocate, or CASA, a volunteer assigned to look out for the best interests of kids in foster care. She told him that Michael's 11-year-old cousin Vanessa was back in foster care in Arizona. She had been living with a relative in Chicago who had planned to adopt the girl, but had changed her mind. Vanessa had moved in with a foster family for a year, but when she acted up, they decided not to keep her.

"Enough is enough," Roger told Steven.

The two dads would take Vanessa.

"They never stopped fighting to keep the family together," caseworker Shew-Plummer says. "Even when they were told 'No' and 'You can't handle it,' they never gave up."

And they never turned down any children, no matter the baggage they carried.

"I was sometimes like, 'Oh, man, are you sure you can handle this one?' And Steven would say, 'Heather, a child on paper is different than in real life.' "

The kids had been bounced around through so many placements that Steven and Roger were impatient to get them placed permanently, so they would never again have to wonder where home was, says Paula Monbleau, an adoption caseworker for Child Protective Services, who met Steven and Roger in 2008 and handled three of their adoptions.

Vanessa's arrival, coupled with Marcus', meant another bigger vehicle - this time, a 15-passenger van. Also, more beds, the huge dining table, another refrigerator. And although Steven altered his work schedule, it was difficult.

"It was a lot for me. I was torn between my family and my job," Steven says. "I wanted to be a parent."

So in April 2006, he quit his job.

Six months later, Steven and the kids were in the front yard, hanging fake cobwebs and setting out pumpkins for Halloween, when a white car pulled up and a CPS caseworker got out with a baby in her arms.

"Are you Steven Ham?" the caseworker called across the yard.

He nodded.

"I have a delivery for you," she said.

No one had called to ask whether he would take another child. But he did. Of course, he did. He texted Roger: "It's a girl!"

Ambrose was 10 months old and stayed angry for a month. She had a lot to be angry about. She ended up in foster care when her mother was arrested. She and her mom had often been homeless, sleeping in parks.

But in the next few months, she smiled, and then laughed, and said her first word - "Georgia," the puppy's name - and walked on her first birthday.

Enough - or not?

All the while, the Hams continued to take in foster children who came at all hours of the day and night, usually with just the clothes they wore. But with eight children of their own in the house, the dads began to consider not taking in any more. It is hard on foster parents to fall in love with kids, over and over, only to have to let them go.

"You do grow numb to the kids' leaving. You put up a wall," Steven says. "I was happy with my family. I was ready to stop."

But they struggled with the idea. Even with the children they had adopted, and the foster kids they had cared for, they felt as if they could do more.

Steven could not refuse the call in February 2008 from a caseworker asking whether they would take a 6-month-old boy found abandoned behind a Phoenix discount store. No one even knew the name of the big-eared baby clutching a blanket. Steven named him Cooper. When police found the boy's mother, her parental rights were severed and Cooper was adopted by the Hams.

All their children were happy and healthy, and Steven and Roger were grateful. Then they met the teenage foster child of a friend and, hearing him talk about finding a home after years in foster care, they felt compelled to reach out for yet another child. One who might be harder to place maybe, who might otherwise grow up in foster care. Maybe a teenager or a child with a disability.

Steven listed himself on a national adoption registry. In just weeks, the Hams were matched with Logan, a hearing-impaired 4-year-old who was in foster care in Steven's hometown in Washington. Then Steven learned that the boy had a sister, Isabel, 11, who was blind in one eye and learning disabled.

"Well, send me the information about both of them," Steven told the caseworker. "If I'm going to take him, I'm going to take his sister, because I don't separate families."

Steven flew to Washington to meet the kids in March 2009, and sent Roger a text message: "This little kid just called me 'Dad.' "

At home, Roger says, "I knew then they were going to be ours."

While Steven was gone, Roger got a call from a caseworker here. Cooper's mother had given birth again, this time to a girl, and abandoned her at the hospital. Did they want her?

On his way home with Logan and Isabel, Steven texted Roger: "It's a girl and a boy, and we're getting on a plane."

Roger sent a text back: "It's a girl."

Olivia was 3 pounds, 7 ounces, so tiny Roger could hold her in his hand.

And finally, with 12 children in the house, Steven and Roger closed their foster-care license. Their family was complete.

Cool to have 2 dads

After dinner, Andrew has KP duty, according to the chore chart inked on a whiteboard on the refrigerator. He pulls open the dishwasher.

"I'll help you," offers Elizabeth, who's 12.

"That's so nice," Steven says to her. "There will be a little extra in your allowance when you're 20."

(Vanessa gets $10 a week. Michael, Elizabeth, Isabel and Andrew each gets $7, and each twin gets $2.)

Elizabeth smiles up at Steven. She says it's cool to have two dads, and no one has ever made fun of her because of it.

"Most of my friends think that having two dads is different, and I like to be different," Elizabeth says. And, really, she says, having two dads isn't all that different from other families. Some kids at school live with only their moms or grandparents or two families in one house.

Andrew says his dads encourage him in whatever he wants to do. He's a cheerleader at school, one of only two boys on the squad. He drops into the splits on the kitchen floor.

"I'm very flexible," he says.

"And loud," Michael adds.

Sometimes other kids ask, "Why do you have two dads?"

And Michael tells them, "I just do." He likes having two dads - "I can talk to them about more things."

And not having a woman in the house hasn't presented any problems, the girls say. They have plenty of women in their lives - relatives, family friends, Big Sisters through the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Arizona program. And they turn to experts when they need them, like the saleslady in the lingerie section at the department store to fit the girls for bras.

"Your daughters should be able to come to you about anything," Steven says.

"There are some days you don't want to hear about it," Roger adds, "but they should be able to come to you about anything."

Steven picks up feminine-hygiene products without blinking an eye, and has been known to chase after the school bus yelling, "Vanessa! Do you have enough pads?" (Vanessa, like any self-respecting teenager, ducks down and pretends she doesn't know him.) The dads laugh about the time Steven bought the wrong-size underwear for Vanessa.

"It was like a pup tent," Roger says.

Vanessa refused to wear them, pointing out, "You could fit all of us in there!"

Cooper and Marcus rush into the kitchen, each to tell on the other. Marcus pushed Cooper. Cooper pushed him back.

"What's the rule?" Steven asks, prompting, "Keep your hands . . .

" . . . to yourself," the boys finish together, and run out again.

Steven follows them to the backyard, where the little kids are climbing on a wooden play set with a yellow slide. Of the 8 tons of sand beneath it, Steven suspects 3 tons is in the house. He sits on top of the picnic table, and Cooper climbs up his legs to his lap.

The little ones are too young to understand what it means to be gay, other than that they have two dads instead of a mom and dad.

"You have two parents who love you more than anything. They just happen to be two men," Steven tells them.

He once heard Jackson tell Marcus that it was "gay" for boys to wear Silly Bandz, the colorful rubber bracelets shaped like animals, the alphabet and other objects.

"Do you know what that means?" Steven asked Jackson, who shook his head. He had heard other kids at school say it.

When Steven explained why the kids would say that, Jackson, puzzled, said, "That's so stupid."

Steven and Roger tell the children to be proud of who they are. In turn, they are proud of their dads, too.

Jackson's twin, Madison, says she tells her friends, "I'm lucky. I have two dads who love me."

She hugs Steven, mashing Cooper on his lap.

"I farted on you, Dad," Cooper says.

"I know," his dad says. "Excuse you."

"Excuse you," Cooper repeats.

"No. Excuse you, Cooper," Steven says.

"Oh, excuse me!" he says.

Logan darts over to Steven, pushes his hearing aids into his dad's hand and announces to the other kids, "I took my hearing off!" He dashes back to the slide. Cooper slides down Steven's legs and runs after Logan. In a blink, Olivia is there, her hands in the air, to be picked up.

Inside, Michael, Andrew, Elizabeth and Isabel have their homework spread across the table. Roger hands Vanessa's math homework to Steven, trading it for Olivia.

"Steven, explain this to your daughter. She thinks I'm doing it wrong."

Not wrong, Vanessa protests. Just not like the teacher explained it.

As Steven and Vanessa examine the math, their heads close together, Elizabeth hands Roger her colored-pencil drawings of a cat and a parrot.

"Did you do these?" he asks her. "These are really good." She did, and they are. It turns out Roger is right about Vanessa's homework. He hands her an eraser.

"Thank you, Papa," she says, hugging him. He wraps his arms around her.

Now that Vanessa is 16, she's allowed to date - sort of. A boy took her to a movie while Roger and some of the kids saw a different show in the same theater complex.

Steven told the young man, "I'm entrusting you with my daughter's values and virtues. I wouldn't want to be the one who corrupts either one of them. Have fun!"

He also reminded the boy, "It's bad enough to get beat up by your girlfriend's dad, let alone your girlfriend's dad in heels."

Vanessa thinks her dads are funny - most of the time. And her friends do, too.

Steven encouraged her to join ROTC at school, and she discovered there that she's a good leader. Being the oldest of 12 kids probably helps, too.

"They are really supportive of anything I do," she says of her dads. "They encourage me."

The kids say the best part of having so many siblings is that there's always someone to play with. It's never boring, Isabel says.

"Something is always going on. And our dads are always around for us."

Steven looks at Isabel and in mock horror asks, "You like us?"

"Yeah, I do," she says, grinning.

Neighborhood hub

In the late afternoon before dinner, the family is out front, with Steven and Roger sitting on slatted rocking chairs on the porch. Cooper is on Roger's lap. Steven is holding Ambrose. The rest of the brood are riding bikes and skateboards, shooting hoops or taking turns on the tree swing.

Logan has lost his first tooth, which means $5 from the tooth fairy. (Each tooth after that is worth $1.) Elizabeth is telling Steven how much cookie dough her class sold. And Vanessa is helping Olivia feed a carrot stick to Bella the guinea pig, which is running around in the front yard under supervision.

"I want to feed Bella," Ambrose announces.

"Then get a carrot," says Cooper, who has one in each hand.

"Cooper, share with Ambrose," Elizabeth chides him. "Let her have a turn." And Cooper does.

Behind them, Michael slam-dunks a ball into the hoop in the driveway. He's a seventh-grader, but on the eighth-grade basketball team at school. Of his dads' athletic abilities, Michael says Roger is good at hoops; Steven, well, he's better at cheering.

"Hey!" Steven protests.

This is the house in the neighborhood where all the kids come to play. Madison's best friend lives across the street.

"Steven has a knack with kids," Roger says. "He's like a pied piper."

Once, a little boy, apparently enamored of the large Ham family, followed them home from a nearby park. But even with a dozen children, they have never left one of their own behind anywhere. Roger constantly counts heads, while Steven seems to know instinctively where everyone is at any given moment.

"He has a sixth sense," Roger says.

"I'm like a Yoda master," Steven says.

Some of the kids were old enough when they came here that they remember what their lives were like before. As they mature, they ask more questions. With help from their dads, the children have grieved and worked out their issues and become stronger. It's an ongoing process.

"If we could wave a magic wand and make it all disappear, we would," Steven says.

And though Steven and Roger are truthful, they never speak ill of the children's biological parents. They know some of the parents and grandparents, and give them updates on how the kids are faring. One grandmother visits.

"I tell all of the kids, 'Your mom did the most remarkable thing, because she let us adopt you, so we could give you a better life,' " Steven says.

At 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, a school bus drops off Isabel, the last one to get home. The Ham kids attend six schools. Isabel hugs Steven, then Roger.

The logistics of getting the kids to school and home, and then to basketball, karate and cheerleading, are carefully logged into Steven's BlackBerry. The kids know that if they want something - Vanessa's ROTC uniform picked up from the dry cleaners, the family cheering at Michael's basketball game - they'd better get Dad to tap it into his calendar.

Steven also keeps the family budget, with spreadsheets, savings projections for a planned addition to the house and college savings accounts for each child.

"The joke in our house if someone is not doing well in school is, 'He's not going to college. Let's get a new TV!' " Steven says.

Roger was laid off from his job last year and now works as a school-bus driver. The family gets by on his full-time salary, and Steven works part-time with autistic children, teaching them daily living skills, such as grooming habits and money management. He also works for a temp agency, taking jobs that he can do from home or while the kids are at school. Steven may go back to work full-time in the fall, when Olivia is old enough for full-time preschool.

The couple also receive state adoption subsidies to help cover expenses for the children with special needs.

"Our kids don't get everything they want, but they have everything they need - and then some," Steven says.

Because they grew up in big families, both men know how to stretch a big pot of spaghetti sauce and turn a picnic in the park into inexpensive fun. Steven shops sales and cuts coupons. When turkeys go on sale at Thanksgiving, he buys four. The school-age kids eat breakfast and lunch at school for free.

None of the kids wears the same size, so they pass clothes to the next smaller one and trade clothes back and forth with friends. Except for Jackson, who won't wear hand-me-downs.

"We don't know why," Steven says.

"Because you spoil him," Roger says. Even he and Steven share clothes.

Roger puts Olivia on the tree swing as Steven watches warily: "That's too high. She's too little."

Olivia screams with delight. Steven gives up trying to look stern and laughs. And then Ambrose is tugging at the leg of his shorts, asking, "What are we having for dinner?"

He scoops her up and takes her inside to check on the spaghetti sauce.

Harmful legislation

In Roger and Steven's living room is a framed award from the Arizona Association for Foster and Adoptive Parents, signed by Gov. Brewer and given to the Hams in 2009 for not only providing a secure, loving and stable home for their children but for working so hard to keep siblings together in a system that often forces them apart.

So the two dads can only shake their heads at new legislation that would require an adoption agency to give primary consideration to adoptive placement with a married man and woman, all else being equal.

"Truly, what does it matter as long as the child is in a loving home?" Steven asks, the day after Brewer signed the bill. As usual, he was doing two things at once - three, if you include talking on the phone - cleaning up vomit (Cooper had the flu) and getting Logan ready to go to speech therapy.

Roger worries that children will spend even more time in foster care, waiting for permanent placement, under the new law. No married couples had stepped forward to take in the children he and Steven eventually adopted. "All they are doing is hurting the kids in the long run," Roger says.

Sen. Gray, who sponsored the bill, says her intent was not to discourage single people, straight or gay, from adopting. She has single family members who have adopted. What prompted the bill was the case of a married couple whose foster children were returned to their mother, but who then were passed over for placement when the children came back into foster care in favor of a single woman.

"Most children want to be in a family with a mom and a dad, and research shows that children do better when they are with a loving family and with a mom and a dad," Gray says.

As amended, the bill now states that the first consideration be that the adoptive home meets the best safety, social, physical and mental-health needs of the child. Other criteria, in no particular order, include whether the adoptive parent or parents have an established relationship with the child, siblings already in the home, relatives, birth-parent preferences and even what the children want, if they're old enough to have a say. Only then, if all the criteria are equal, should the child go to a married couple, Gray says.

She does not think the law will have a chilling effect on adoptions - it's not as if people are lining up to adopt now, she says, and hundreds of children are available.

Brewer agrees. "We have so many children in Arizona waiting to be adopted. I strongly encourage Arizonans who would like to become foster or adoptive parents, whether single or not, to consider taking that step for these children in need."

Smooth going, with hiccups

The Hams' hallway is lined with portraits of the kids, Roger and Steven, and other family members, so many that they go from baseboards to ceiling with just millimeters between frames.

Michael, Andrew and Jackson share one bedroom, and Olivia, Ambrose and Madison another. Vanessa, Elizabeth and Isabel share the room with the poster of Taylor Lautner from "Twilight" on the wall.

"It gives them someone to complain to when we're mean," Steven says.

Most of the kids sleep in bunk beds - originally used in dorms at Arizona State University - that the dads picked up at a surplus sale. The littlest boys, Logan, Marcus and Cooper, sleep in beds shaped like race cars, lined up against one wall as if at the starting line.

Steven gets up when the first child is out of bed, usually Marcus, at about 5 a.m. Roger has to be at work at 6.

Steven lays out four outfits on the table for the littlest kids the night before. The older kids get themselves ready.

"It's pretty smooth," Steven says. "There are little hiccups. Every family has that."

At work, Roger says he can tell how the mornings are going by Steven's texts: " 'I quit,' or anything that starts with 'Your kids . . . ' and I know things aren't going well."

After dinner, Steven is officially off duty. He checks his e-mail or watches the news. This is Roger's time.

He has three kids in the bathtub and two lined up on the floor, like a car wash. In 15 minutes, all five are clean and wrapped in towels.

Marcus' fingernails are painted pink.

"We don't judge," Steven says, with a shrug.

Jackson is in search of Steven for something, but Roger tells him, "You ask me. Dad's off." No, Jackson can't have another cookie. He can have an apple.

But then Roger calls, "Steven, come and get the baby."

Steven puts Olivia in a diaper and purple pajamas. She goes to bed at 7 p.m., followed at 7:30 by Ambrose, Marcus, Logan and Cooper. Jackson and Madison go to bed at 8:30, and everyone else by 9.

"Can I shower now?" Vanessa asks. She has to wait until everyone else is done or she'll use all the hot water. (They have a 105-gallon water heater.)

Madison is curled up on the couch, reading to Ambrose. Jackson is sprawled next to them, reading his own book. Marcus and Cooper are flipping through flash cards. Michael and Andrew are on the floor, talking. And giggles float down the hallway from the older girls' room.

Steven and Roger smile at each other.

"It's times like these when you know you've formed a family," Steven says.

Neither Roger nor Steven feels the need to march down to the Legislature or become an activist. Instead, they guide other gay couples interested in foster care and adoption by helping them navigate the system, getting their paperwork in order and preparing them for instant parenting, plus offering advice on everything from bedroom furniture and schools to discipline and saving on groceries. They believe they send the strongest message simply by raising their kids, and loving them.

'These are the Hams'

In a scene repeated dozens of times a year, the Hams were leaving a pizza place in north Scottsdale when a woman asked, "What kind of group is this?"

"These are the Hams. This is our family," Steven told her.

Her eyebrows shot up as she counted the children with her eyes.

"These are all your kids? Oh, my gosh. Their poor mother. Where is she? I have to congratulate her."

"I am their mother - and their father," Steven said. Then, reaching out to shake her hand, he introduced himself, and then Roger, and each of the kids as they loaded into two cars and buckled in.

The men watched her face, saw her expression soften.

"That is so commendable of you," she told them. "They are very lucky children."

No, the men shook their heads and smiled. They are the lucky ones.

If it's ever legal for them to marry in Arizona, Steven and Roger say they'll be first in line, with their kids - and probably by then grandkids - in tow. And if it never happens, well, a marriage certificate and birth certificates are not what defines their family.

"Can you see what Christmas is going to be like at that house 20 years from now? There will be 100 people there," says Monbleau, the CPS adoptions caseworker. "I know that they will always be there for those kids."

Neither of the Hams' caseworkers, Monbleau or Shew-Plummer, worried about placing so many children in one home, though both concede they wouldn't do the same with every family. In separate interviews, each said she would entrust Steven and Roger with her own children.

Though Steven and Roger never planned to have such a large family, neither can imagine life any other way. Even when their running joke is that, when all the children are grown, they will buy a one-bedroom condominium in San Diego that doesn't allow pets or kids.

"Sure, there are days when I am ripping my hair out, but I wouldn't change it for anything," Steven says. "We knew the kids deserved a better life, and someone who would love them, no matter what. None of my kids will ever tell you, anytime in their lives, even years from now, that they didn't feel loved."

Reach the reporter at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com.