I am Joanna Madeleine Camarena (nee Green). I live in Portland, Oregon. I am 19 years old. I was raised by my single dad. His name is Maxwell Owen Green. He is literally the love of my life. After my mom died, he was all I had. We were always the best of friends. My dad and I had a special relationship because I wasn't a girly girl. I did guy stuff with him - we fished, played baseball, and I helped him fix stuff around the house. I was only 7 when my mom died. It was the saddest day ever. But me and my dad have stayed incredibly strong since then - especially my dad. I have one big brother, Zachary Gabriel Green (he's 31), but he is way older than me; he was in college when my mom died. We are not really close, considering our incredible age difference (I guess you could say my parents were never expecting me; I was a surprise, and my brother was the icing on a birthday cake - spoiled rotten), but he does send me and my dad birthday cards and gifts. But, still, he is the I-buy-love-with-very-nice-gifts-so-you-will-love-me type. Right now, I am a Novelist, living from home - no, not with my dad, with my husband. I know, I'm young. He is 21 years old - only 2 years older, who cares? My hubby is Axel Ezra Camarena. Yeah, his grandfather immigrated from Tuscany, Italy. Axel is a Movie Director. We only knew each other for a year before we got married. We met through my job. Sure, I write books from home, but I needed an Editor. One afternoon, I met my future Editor at a Coffee Shop, and there I saw him - Axel. I fell in love with him right there. He had gorgeous blonde hair and the brightest blue eyes. We dated for only 2 months when he proposed. I said yes, of course! He proposed to me on a date. We took a long walk in the park, late that night. He got down on one knee, and I knew I wanted to be with him forever. Only 10 months later - on our 1st anniversary, we got married. We had a traditional church wedding. My engagement ring is a beautiful white gold ring. My wedding dress looked like this: Long, White, Elegant White Dress With Blue Sash. We end up going to Tuscany for our Honeymoon, since that is where is grandfather was from, and he had never been there. We bought a beautiful big, whitish-cream house in the countryside. We aren't currently ready for children yet, but....Uh oh. I just checked the calendar to see when I was supposed to get my period. It has been 4 days - no period. I am usually on time, and at the most I am two days late, but even then that is once in a blue moon for me. I also usually get heavy cramping, and bad mood swings. But I have had none of that. In fact, I have been overjoyed. It's like my brain is telling me that I am feeding for two, and I have just been overprotective of myself for the past couple days. This can only mean one thing....~1 WEEK LATER~I just took a pregnancy test. Actually, I got paranoid, and took 5. It is definite - I am pregnant. I just told my husband. He was literally jumping up and down. It's a good thing we have a huge house, because....~4 MONTHS LATER~...God, I'm having triplets!! My dad called not too long ago. He was excited that he is going to be a grandfather for the first time (Zach has a girlfriend, but he's not serious yet). I'm not entirely sure how he is this happy when his 19-year-old daughter is pregnant with 3! Actually, he called before I went to the doctors to find out what I was having. So, he thinks I am only having one. Wait until he hears he is having two grandsons, and a granddaughter. He has always been fond of children, especially boys. I guess that is why he and I have a special relationship....what with my, you know, boyish habits *cough cough*.~5 MONTHS LATER~Well, I am in the hospital right now. My husband is laying on my chest, crying tears of joy. I thought it was silly at first, but he was just passed out 20 minutes ago, from watching the birthing process (three kids, and oh my gosh - all the blood, and you know, ughh). It was a nasty experience for me. But, I am holding my twin boys, and my dad is holding his granddaughter - third twin of the boys....well, triplet sister, why not? The boys look exactly like their father - they are actually identical, and my daughter is a spitting image of my father. So none of them look like me. Axel says our sons will look like me when they are older "They will be gracious when they are older - growing their dark brown, silky hair down past their shoulders, and be total momma's boys...".Yeah, sure, Axel. I'm sure that's exactly how it will be. I owe him $500 if he is right. Haha. Well, I have a bet of my own. If my daughter becomes a spitting image of me, and acts like her dad, Axel will owe me $700. Take that! Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that when we found out the sexes of the babies, Axel did some spring cleaning and went to the store and bought gallons of blue, green, purple, and pink paint. I am not kidding. He went nuts! I was suggesting the babies could all sleep together in one nursery, and have them gradually move into their own rooms as they got older. But, no, Axel insisted that they all needed their own rooms. Oh well. Fielder's choice. He is the money maker around the house, so I let it go. We named the babies Ellis Lennon, Jude Micah, and Elizabeth Emma Camarena.~1 YEAR LATER~Not long after the triplets were born, my husband came home begging us to adopt three kids he was working with on one of his movies. I told him he was insane, and then I said no. Well, it turns out, these kids were neglected. And their parents never showed to pick them up. There were several calls made to their landline, and then their cells, which were conveniently shut off, and no one had any way of contacting them. Apparently, one of their neighbors called the police because the children were not being fed - they were hiding the food! I was guilt-stricken and sick to my stomach as to how somebody could do this to their kids. So I caved in, and a week later (that's how fast the process was!), we adopted the poor children. They were 2 boys and a girl. The oldest boy is named Louis Harvey (who is 9). He had a head full of messy, chestnut brown hair. The youngest boy is named Tyson Hogan (who is 6), who also had chestnut brown hair (but his is curly), and their baby sister is Morgan Persephone (who is 3). She has long platinum blonde hair.~2 YEARS LATER~With 6 children in the house, I seriously was having a mental breakdown. I just found out two days ago I was pregnant. I am not as excited as I hoped I would be. My husband was over the moon. He has always loved children more than me. He expands on to the house, going insane, by adding an extra 5 rooms. What is this? A boarding house? It very well could be. 9 months later, I give birth to a baby boy (he looks exactly like me!), that Axel and I name Oscar Roman Camarena. When my little boy came, I knew he was mine (well that's obvious), and I was way happier than I was before. I had talked to a counselor about this and he suggested that it is just very different when you are actually holding your baby son in your arms, versus him kicking you in the stomach for a good 6 months. I agreed.~1 YEAR LATER~I have not been getting much sleep. I've been in bed a lot, but not because of sleep. My husband and I had a passion that ignited inside of us, bigger than it ever was. It has been going on like this since baby Oscar was born. He's a year old now, and we found out he is going to have a baby brother. He is excited. I can tell. I am too, as well as my husband and our 6 other children.I give birth to my son, who we name Hugh Rhys Camarena. He looks like my mother when she was a baby (there are pictures around my dad's house), however, Axel thinks Hugh looks like his granddad. Axel's father agreed with him. I guess I am blind.~1 YEAR LATER~I could tell this year was going to be a serious headache. Well, there are several babies coming into the picture, for one. I do not do good under pressure....especially stress. I do not talk to my brother anymore. My father called, furious at his son for knocking a girl up and getting her pregnant. No, Zach didn't break up with his girlfriend. He cheated on her - multiple times! She finally got her stuff and left him. My father is frazzled that his 36-year-old son is just having a baby, and out of wedlock! My brother isn't happy that much with it either. With his girlfriend gone, he's got that girl he knocked up living at his house (unwillingly), pregnant with their son, and doesn't work. My brother doesn't work either, but hey, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And those two even look alike! I hate to bag on him, but he has seriously become stupid, and detached from all reality. He doesn't realize the mess he has got himself and his unborn son into. I would hate to see his son grow up like him.In other news, Axel and I are adopting twin boys (whose parents were killed in a car accident) from his grandfather's home country. We change their names because their names were too hard to pronounce. The boys are 6 years old. The older twin is named Fletcher Carter, and the younger twin is Aidyn Tidus. The boys have dark skin and black hair. Very cute.I am also pregnant. Yeah. I am keeping the gender a secret. Well, it's not just a secret to everybody else, but me also. We only have one room left available, but Axel already has contractors coming out to expand the house even bigger. Our neighbors think we're nuts! Axel doesn't care, but I know we're insane. Since I want to keep the gender a surprise (much to Axel's dismay), Axel goes to Home Depot and buys a mix of yellows and beiges. At the end of the year, I give birth to a baby boy that we name Theodore Jacob Camarena. He is so cute with his dusty blonde hair and grey eyes (my father's eyes). He actually looks like both me and Axel. ~3 YEARS LATER~Nothing serious has gone on the past couple years. It is obvious we have a brood and they grow up too quickly, but we were just trying to get everybody settled in what with the recent changes. Me and my husband have been using serious protection, because if we keep it up like dogs and cats, well.....we'll be like dogs and cats, with multiple litters of puppies....and kittens. Well that has happened anyway. We already have 11 children. One day, me and my husband got too excited and forgot the protection. Here I am pregnant for the 5th time. Yippy. I've been a little anxious (I guess my uterus is tired), so I want to find out the gender of the baby. I am kind of hoping for a little girl (what with all the dirt and trucks around the house, but hey, I was like that for awhile, haha), but I will be ecstatic no matter what. I find out from the doctor that I am having twin boys. I smile, as there clearly is a man factory roaming around - and yet more to come! I give birth to twin boys that we name Samuel Edward and Felix Luca Camarena. They both have my dark brown hair, but daddy's bright blue eyes. I am excited, as well as Axel. He puts the boys in one room this time, and paints it a mild-mid baby blue.~1 YEAR LATER~I found out that late last year my cousin's children were orphaned when she died suddenly of a massive heart attack. I didn't even know that she had a congenital heart defect. I am sincerely upset, and my husband consoles me when he reads out her will (she obviously knew about it, but didn't tell anyone). Apparently, her children were willed out to me when she would die. I hadn't even known this, but I am glad she did because she was a single mom anyway. I was always worried about where her kids would go if something happened to her. She's the daughter of my dad's brother (who died very young), and she had no one other than her kids. She has three - two boys and a girl. The oldest is her daughter, Melody Cadence Green (who has her mom's last name because she had a dead-beat dad), who is 13 years old. She has long, dark blonde hair and brown eyes. The youngest two are her sons, Declan Liam O'Connell (he and his little brother are actually half-siblings of Melody), who is 10 years old and has the mouth of a sailor, and Byron Ezekiel O'Connell, who is 4 years old, and throws temper tantrums very often. God, I feel sorry for their mom. Declan has his mom's dark blonde hair and blue eyes. Byron strangely has very dark brown hair (almost black) and his mom's blue eyes , and his mom's boyfriend at the time had red hair. I am concerned that Byron is from yet another man, but other than his hair, he looks very much like his brother Declan.So, we got the adoption papers, early this year, and were hooked up with my late cousin's children in no time. Meanwhile, I am pregnant. Surprise, surpise. I am anxious to know the sex of my child, so my husband and children come with me to the doctors'. I am pregnant with another set of boys (much to my girls' dismay, but oh well), whom we (me, my husband and kids) already picked out the names for. Their names will be Tobias Archibald (to honor my late grandfather) and Spencer Josiah. I give birth to Toby and Spence, 6 weeks early. They are gorgeous little tykes, who are a spitting image of their daddy. Thankfully, they are very healthy (and so is my uterus!). ~2 YEARS LATER~Just a couple of years ago, I was blessed with my last children Toby and Spence (well, biological anyway). My adopted cousin, Melody, really wants another little girl in our house to play with. She is 15. Really? I am not having any more children. What with my string of boys, if I did get preggo, more than likely it would be another boy. She would be really disappointed. Even though she loves her family, she is a girly girl at heart. Honestly, I can't blame her because her two little brothers are a pain in the neck.My husband has always been the type of person to want to fulfill people's wishes - especially children. That is one of the million reasons I love him like crazy. He suggests that we adopt twin girls from the local orphanage. With 15 children in the house already, honestly, two more kids wouldn't do any damage (that's an understatement). The girls are named Alabama Haydée and Lorelei Calypso. We decided to keep the names because they are just too precious, and they are perfect on two little blonde princesses.Oops! There was a bit of a mix-up at the orphanage. We found out that the girls are not twins at all! They are from a set of quads! Axel and I were furious, because we were told there were two, not four! And now the girls will be separated from the other two! We were also confused on how they got separated from their other siblings. It turns out that all the girls are put together, and all the boys are put together. Speaking of 'put together,' if you put two and two together, yup, you guessed it! The other two babies were boys! Melody wasn't the least bit impressed because of the boys, but she will just have to get over it, because we are not separating the quads. We have too many multiples. We know we could never do that to them. The boys are named Atlas Orion and Hopper Sawyer.The babies were newborns, and it took a long 2 months for the adoption papers to go through. The four musketeers were all identical! They are so adorable. So, we go home with our last four little ones, Alabama, Lorelei, Atlas, and Hopper. We all agreed that they definitely had weird name combinations, but they were too cute to change them!~5 YEARS LATER~A lot has happened in the past couple years. No, I didn't have any more children. I would think it would be a crime to have more children than the Duggar family. But, we did get pets. Two of my boys wanted snakes (much to my dismay), and I let them get some. I knew their father wouldn't care. Ellis and Jude share a two-month old male Rat snake named Oreo (seriously? I guess it's because theirs is black and white). Jude also has another, a Puget Sound Garter Snake, also a male, named Blackjack. He is 2 years old. All the girls wanted a dog. We adopted a female German Shephard, who is only 6 weeks old. We named her Bella. She is very sweet and mellow, but makes for a great guard dog! Considering the size of our house, I will not lie, people have tried to break in. Pretty scary.Also, four of my adopted kids have left home! Louis got married to a lovely girl, named Ava, and they have a two year old son named Jagger Sebastian. Tyson also has a very pretty girlfriend, named Alyssa, and they have settled into a big home. They plan to marry soon and start a family. Also, my cousin's daughter, Melody, moved out to get a degree in college. She was doing so well, up until she met a jerk of a boyfriend named Caleb, who thinks he's hot stuff. Plus, he got her pregnant about a year ago, and the social worker came to take the boy away because he wasn't being taken care of (Melody was too focused on school, rather than her son). My oldest son Ellis, according to him, there are rumors circulating around that Melody is pregnant again. I hope the poor child is okay, and that the rumors aren't true. Jude, the younger boy of my set of triplets, just impregnated a girl. Man, this family is becoming a mess. Jude tells me he is having twin boys, but I think he is just saying that because he really doesn't want a daughter. Who knows, though? Moving away from the immediate fam, my brother (I don't consider him immediate family anymore; I'm sorry) and his little boy (well he is not little anymore, he is 11) have moved out of the house they were living in and into a bigger home in the city. Considering my brother's age (he's 47), I doubt he's having any more children. So, why the big house? Who knows? I never understood my brother.My dad is doing well. He's 69! One year away from the big 7-0! He's getting up there, but he is very healthy and keeps himself occupied during the day. Considering he is retired, he doesn't work, obviously. He likes to work out, read, watch TV, hang out with his friends to play Bingo, and walk his dog, Sparky. He also loves hanging out with me, my husband and children. Other than talking to Zach every now and then, he doesn't really see him anymore. How sad.Well, I am 35. So I will be 40 in only 5 years. My husband is 37. He's not far, but he hates me reminding him, haha.Well, I appreciate you reading my story! I know that was long, but it was 16 years of my life.
The Green Family
DF: Maxwell Owen {53}
DS: Zachary Gabriel {31}
DD: Joanna Madeleine {19}
Max; Zach & Joanna
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The Camarena Family
DW: Joanna Madeleine (nee Green) {35}
DH: Axel Ezra {37}
DAS: Louis Harvey {24}
DAS: Tyson Hogan {21}
DCD: Melody Cadence Green-Camarena {20}
DAD: Morgan Persephone {18}
DAS/DAS: Fletcher Carter/Aidyn Tidus {17}
DCS: Declan Liam O'Connell-Camarena {17}
DS/DS/DD: Ellis Lennon/Jude Micah/Elizabeth Emma {16}
DS: Oscar Roman {13}
DS: Hugh Rhys {12}
DS: Theodore Jacob {11}
DCS: Byron Ezekiel O'Connell-Camarena {11}
DS/DS: Samuel Edward/Felix Luca {8}
DS/DS: Tobias Archibald/Spencer Josiah {7}
DAD/DAD/DAS/DAS: Alabama Haydée/Lorelei Calypso/Atlas Orion/Hopper Sawyer {5}
DP: Blackjack {snake, male, 2}
DP: Oreo {snake, male, 2 mos.}
DP: Bella {dog, female, 6 weeks}
Joanna & Axel;
Louis, Ty, Melody, Morgan, Fletcher, Aidyn, Declan, Ellis, Jude, Lizzy, Oscar, Hugh, Ted, Byron, Sam, Felix, Toby, Spence, Ali, Lorelei, Atlas, and Hopper + Blackjack, Oreo, & Bella
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The Green Family
DF: Zachary Gabriel Green {47}
DM: Bianca Selene Hughes {35}
DS: Embry Karl Green {11}
Zach; Em
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The Camarena Family
DH: Louis Harvey {24}
DW: Ava June {24}
DS: Jagger Sebastian {2}
Louis & Ava;
Jag
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The Camarena Family
DBF: Tyson Hogan {21}
DGF: Alyssa Jacquelyn {20}
Ty & Aly
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The Green-Camarena Family
DM: Melody Cadence {20}
DF: Caleb Duke {21}
DS: Aidan Ronan {1}
DS: Tanner Fletcher {unborn son}
Mel; Tanner
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The Camarena Family
DF: Jude Micah {16}
DS/DS: Slater Pilot/Ryu Daxter {unborn twin sons}
Jude; Slate & Ry
I hope this was descriptive enough. I tried to give it some rough humor, maybe you noticed. Haha. Sorry it was so long. My imagination can take me to incredible places, and sometimes it is hard to stop. lol.