Thanks for choosing to ready my story. This story is basically Cheaper by the Dozen meets The Fosters, with some dramatic twists and turns. In this story, many characters have a different story than the TV show, and Stef and Lena have adopted different children from the show. This story also features two original characters, Caleb and Sam. I hope you enjoy this first chapter.

Chapter One

Breath sawing in and out of her lungs, the middle aged, blonde haired woman stops to rest at the edge of the dirt driveway that leads up to the large, white farmhouse style home. Slowly, she ambles up to the house, letting the muscles in her legs rest from her five mile run through the Sonoma County country roads. Despite running these same roads every morning, she would never get over watching the sunrise streak through the country vineyards. Running was how Detective Stefanie Marie Adams Foster stayed fit ever since leaving the beat in the city of San Diego five years ago.

"How was your run, honey?" Stef's wife, Lena, asks as the blonde woman enters the house through the front door. Stef and Lena had met twelve years ago, when Stef was still married to her ex-husband. It had been love at first sight - and there had been no going back. Although, the blonde woman never expected that they would end up living on a country vineyard with a small clan of children.

"Great." Stef says, going in to kiss her wife's long, slender neck. Stef's lips were magnetically attracted to her wife's mocha colored skin.

"Ah, ah, ah." Lena tsks, side stepping to avoid her sweat-covered wife. "Not until you take a shower." Lena begins cracking eggs into a large bowl, a playful light dancing in her chocolate brown eyes.

"Yes, ma'am." Stef smirks, ogling her wife of seven years' ass as she heads into their bedroom that is just off of the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later, Stef exits their bedroom, blonde hair up in a bun and dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket - her uniform as a detective for the Sonoma County Police Department. In the kitchen, Lena is cooking a pan of scrambled eggs while their oldest children help prepare the rest of the food for their breakfast.

"Morning, B." Stef says, pressing a kiss to her oldest son, Brandon's, cheek as he butters slices of toast.

Brandon was her son from her previous marriage to another cop, Mike Foster. Unfortunately, Mike had been killed four years ago after being shot in the line of duty. Brandon, now seventeen, seemed to have adjusted well. Lena had formally adopted him following his father's death. Looking at her son now, Stef was surprised to see more of Mike in him than herself - Brandon sported her ex's dark hair and charming smile. He had Stef's pale complexion and her rescuer mentality. Where the boy got his prodigy pianist skills, Stef had no clue.

"Good morning, loves." Stef greets her next oldest children, who are cutting up fruit to go with breakfast. Callie and Caleb are sixteen year old twins - adopted by Stef and Lena, along with their other two siblings Sophia and Jude, three years ago. Their parents, Robert and Colleen Quinn, had died following an accident with a drunk driver and, after fostering the four children for two years, Stef and Lena knew that they would always be part of their family.

"Mom, don't forget I need you to pick me up after basketball practice tonight." Caleb reminds Stef, running a hand through his messy brown hair.

"I promise I won't forget." Stef says, stealing an apple from the cutting board in front of her son.

"And we have our driver's tests tomorrow." Callie pipes in.

"Yes. I took tomorrow morning off so I can take you both to the DMV." Stef tells her daughter.

"I can't wait to have more drivers in this family." Lena chuckles as she places the large pan of scrambled eggs onto the dining room table. "It'll make carting around the lot of you a bit easier."

"Does that mean Callie and I can go to the mall every weekend?" Marianna, Stef and Lena's adopted fifteen year old daughter, asks excitedly as she bounds down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Don't you go to the mall enough?" Jesus, Marianna's twin brother, snarks as he sits down and begins piling his plate with his mama's scrambled eggs.

"Shut up." Marianna rolls her eyes at her brother.

"Hey, be nice to each other, please!" Stef tries to calm the younger twins down. Jesus and Marianna had been with Stef and Lena the longest, other than Brandon. At the age of five, Stef had brought them home after they had been dumped at the police station by foster parents that claimed they were "too much to handle." Their birth mother was a drug addict that had gotten pregnant at fifteen - and she had chosen drugs over her babies time and time again. She had been a thorn in Stef and Lena's side, always wanting to see the twins or extort them for money - until she overdosed on cocaine and died.. Stef and Lena had decided to formally adopt Jesus and Marianna shortly after their eighth birthday.

"Oh Callie, would you take us shopping?!" Sophia, Callie and Caleb's fourteen year old birth sister, asks with her typical bubbly attitude.

"We'll see, Soph." Callie tells her sister, sitting beside her and giving her a side hug. Looking at the two birth sisters, Stef was glad that she and Lena had been able to keep the four siblings together after their parents' death. Not many families would have been willing to foster - let alone adopt - four siblings together.

"Morning, Sam." Stef says to the girl with short black hair trailing silently behind Marianna down the stairs. Samantha Bell was the newest addition to the Adams Foster clan. Stef and Lena had only been fostering the shy thirteen year old girl for a little over a month. Her mother had died of cancer in late November and the young girl had no other living family.

"Morning." The girl mumbles, pushing her short, black hair out of her crystal blue eyes.

"Stef, will you go wake up the others?" Lena requests, referring to the five of their brood that were most likely still asleep upstairs.

"Of course, dear." Stef replies with a smile, placing her coffee mug on the table before heading up to their home's second floor. Upstairs, she walks past Caleb and Jesus' shared room - trying hard to ignore the mess inside - and heads to the largest room inhabited by their three youngest boys.

"Boys! It's time to get up!" Stef calls, knocking on the door. After a few moments of no response, Stef twists the door handle and lets herself in.

"Jude, time to get up, bubba." Stef says, gently shaking the twelve year old boy. He was the youngest of the four Quinn siblings, having only been seven when his parents died.

"Okay, I'm up." He grumbles, turning onto his back and rubbing his eyes. Satisfied that her son is actually awake, Stef moves on to the next.

"Jaaa-aack." Stef says in a sweet, sing-song voice to the ten year old boy sleeping on the bottom bed of the bunk bed. "Time to get up. Breakfast is ready downstairs." The slumbering boy mumbles something intelligible, his face buried in his pillow and covered by his chin length brown hair. "Come on, bud." Stef says again, placing a gentle hand on his back. Suddenly, the boy jerks awake, recoiling from Stef's touch. "I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry." Stef apologizes. Occasionally she forgot that, before coming to their home two years ago, Jack had been physically abused in each of the foster or group homes that he had been placed in.

"I'm sorry." The young boy apologizes, averting his gaze from his adoptive mother's, as he puts his black rimmed glasses onto his face.

"It's okay, bud. Why don't you go on downstairs for breakfast?" Stef gently urges the boy. He nods and then follows Jude down the stairs to join the rest of the family.

"Corey." Stef says, popping her head up to the upper bunk of the bunk bed.

"I'm up." The eight year old boy tells her, flashing his adoptive mother a bright, toothy grin.

"Good boy." Stef grins back to their most energetic child. "Now go downstairs."

With the youngest boys finally downstairs, Stef heads to the room that her two youngest daughters share. Flipping on the light, Stef's eyeballs are assaulted with lasers of pinkness - pink walls, pink bedspreads, pink stuffed animals. I never should have let Lena pick the color scheme for this room, Stef thinks to herself with a chuckle as she kneels beside her five year old daughter's bed.

"Good morning, baby." Stef smiles as she strokes her daughter's wild, black curls. Just like her mama. Francesa Adams Foster, better known as Frankie, was Lena's only biological child - conceived via at home insemination using donor sperm.

"Mommy!" The little girl squeals, wrapping her arms around Stef's neck. Stef would never get sick of hugs from her babies - even if the older ones had decided it was "uncool" to hug their mother.

"Let's wake your sister up." Stef says, walking over to her youngest daughter's bed with Frankie's arms still around her neck. The two begin tickling the little three year old's belly and soon they're all giggling, the sound bouncing off the Pepto Bismol pink walls.

"Good morning, my beautiful Bella." Stef says, kissing her little cheek. Bella, or Isabella, was Marianna and Jesus's half-sister by blood - sharing the same drug addicted mother. Thankfully, Stef and Lena were able to adopt Isabella directly following her birth - it was her birth mother's dying wish that she be raised with her half-siblings.

Stef deposits the five and three year olds in the chairs beside Lena and begins filling their little plates with eggs and fruit. It wasn't easy, but Stef and Lena tried to get a healthy breakfast into all twelve of their children each morning. Between that and getting all twelve of them ready for and to school before eight a.m. each day - mornings were exhausting for the two parents. Thankfully, the older kids were good at getting themselves ready independently. The biggest hurdle with the older kids was usually the arguing over the bathrooms.

"Alright kids, cars are leaving in fifteen minutes!" Stef calls up the stairs forty-five minutes later, after cleaning up from breakfast. Lena was finishing getting ready for her day filled with vice-principal duties at the Sonoma County Charter school. Lena was a founding member of the charter and it was almost like another one of her babies.

Like every morning, Stef would drive herself to the Sonoma County Police Station in her government issued, undercover 2012 Ford Taurus. Brandon would take their 2001 Minivan and drive Caleb, Callie, Marianna, Jesus, Sophia, and Sam to school. Lena would take Frankie, Bella, Corey, Jack, and Jude in the Ford Explorer that the family had bought last year. It was a crazy system, but somehow Stef and Lena made it work.

"Have a good day." Stef tells her wife, kissing her plump lips and running a hand through her wild, curly hair.

"Call me if you have time?" Lena asks. Even though Stef had been off the beat since the family moved from San Diego five years ago, Lena still worried every time her wife strapped on her gun and went to work.

"Of course, my love." Stef smiles, stealing another kiss before heading out to her car. At the end of the long driveway, through her rearview mirror, Stef watches as each of her family members climb into the SUV and the Minivan, off to another day in their crazy lives.

Thank you again for reading the first chapter of my new story. I look forward to reading your reviews! If you're looking for something else to read and haven't yet, check out my first Fosters FanFiction Right Where You Belong.