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A Mother of More than 400 Enjoys Mother's Day - Sarah Bishop
You may have had your kids sitting around the dinner table tonight celebrating Mother's Day, but imagine if you had hundreds of children in your family!
That's just what one LaVergne woman ended up with and she says she wouldn't have it any other way.
From one view the home looks like a parking lot. And on the inside it's clear by the number of photos a big family lives here.
"There was a time in my life when I had 18 kids at one time," says Nancy Woodall-Holmes.
A look around her Woodall-Holmes house and it's almost hard to find a spot, where a child is not.
"I have 3 birth children, 2 adopted children and I have fostered 437 foster children," says Nancy.
That's right, more than 430 kids have all gone through Nancy's home.
After 22 years of fostering, the cards on the table this Mother's Day proves how many lives she's touched.
"She taught me pretty much everything I know. She pushed me through high school, she gave me a home and showed me what a home is supposed to be and what love and unconditional love is supposed to be," says foster daughter Brittney Bobinger.
On Mother's Day many of the kids, now adults have come back 'home' to mom.
"A remarkable person to do what she's done," says Bobinger.
Not all the grown kids have stayed in touch, and Nancy's youngest 'birth child' will admit, it hasn't always been easy.
"It was always, some of them would run away, some of them would steal stuff, or just fight all the time, and yet my mom would always allow them to come back in the house, so anybody in that situation has to have a huge heart," says Adam Woodall.
"Just a very caring, giving, kind, loving person," fiance Gary Grooms says of Nancy.
Nancy says, she just couldn't imagine her family any smaller, "it's a different lifestyle than most people but it's very, very rewarding lifestyle and like I said, I don't see any end in sight."
Nancy is also a foster care advocate.
Nancy and her fiance Gary are getting married in two weeks, and you can count on one thing, it'll be a big wedding.
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