The Reback family is no ordinary one. Lyette and David Reback of Palm Beach Florida, are parents to 16 children, four of whom are adopted.
The couple met when Lyette, now 45, met her husband David when she was just 19 years old. The couple got engaged just 10 days later, married the following year and had their first daughter when Lyette was 21.
According to the family’s blog, Lyette was a single child who had never babysat or even changed a diaper before she had her first child.
“I could have never imagined or envisioned that we’d have so many children,” she said in an interview with HooplaHa.
So many children demand $650 in wholesale groceries per week including 40 pounds of chicken, 50 pounds of potatoes, 100 eggs, 12 gallons of milk, and more. And there are 42 loads of laundry every week and 88 different sports practices.
According to a special on the Rebacks by Fox News, Lyette has spent roughly 10 years of her life pregnant, has gained and shed 600 Lbs in baby weight and is yet to have a single C-section.
“If I had known then that by the time I was 40 I would have 16 kids I would have thought it was crazy,” she says. “If the number of children we have comes up in conversation or people see us out and they don’t know our family, they are like, ‘holy mackerel.'”
Apart from raising 16 children Lyette also homeschools all of them, runs a charity for Gold Star families called Believe With Me as well as her very own blog. She also makes sure to find time to work out and go out with her friends. Her secret? A strict schedule, with every member of the family doing their part.
“I like to think it’s equivalent to probably running a small to medium-sized business,” she explains. “If you think about just the various industries that are covered in the day, we probably serve as many meals as some small cafes do in a day.”
The family abides by a strict a chore schedule that covers everything from cooking, to cleaning, to laundry. The children also attend community events, arts performances and volunteer at their mother’s charity.