By ZAHEERA WAHID
The Orange County Register

HUNTINGTON BEACH – The young boys loomed larger than life on the movie screen, twirling empty soup bowls and dancing and singing in their tattered clothes. A young girl watched intently in the darkened theater, taking in the bittersweet lyrics.

A friend tried to whisper in her ear, but the 5-year-old quickly shushed her.

"I'm watching a movie. Don't talk," Ann Belles snapped back, quite out of character.

The singing orphans had sown the first seeds of a lifelong passion.

Leaving the theater that day, Ann confided in her mother that she wanted to adopt orphan boys, just like the ones they'd seen in "Oliver."

"It sounded like kids talking," mom Sue Belles said, reflecting on that 1968 day.

But not this kid.

For more than 20 years, Ann harbored those dreams of a modern-day, cleaned-up Dickensian lifestyle.

Today, 29 adopted boys, all physically or developmentally disabled, fill her Huntington Beach home with love, laughter, tears and life stories that could have been lifted right off the pages of Dickens.

But in the home she shares with husband Jim Silcock, there are no empty bowls or tattered clothes. There is a mom and a dad, plenty of hired help and a garage stacked to the ceiling with boxes of food from Costco.

The couple on Monday will be recognized by the Washington, D.C.-based Caring Institute for their dedication to the family. They, along with 13 others from around the country, will join past honorees Paul Newman and Mother Teresa in the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans on Capitol Hill.

"I was struck by the fact that this couple has just done extraordinary things in adopting these children and making them feel like they're a part of their home," said Caring Institute founder Val Halamandaris, who visited the family in September.

"These kids that had been abandoned by ... everyone else are embraced with love and affection."

Building blocks to a family

Ann chased her childhood dream immediately after high school. Armed with an AA degree from Golden West College, a foster parent license and a job as an instructional aide at a school for the developmentally disabled, she fostered her first child, Lisa, 17. Ann herself was only 19.

Throughout the 1980s, foster children streamed in and out of her home. Then in 1989, she bought a three-bedroom, two- bath home on a quiet Huntington Beach cul-de-sac. She quit her full-time job and began fostering the disabled boys who would shape the rest of her life.

For extra cash, she wrote grant proposals for people starting programs for the disabled and launched a business helping disabled adults live independently.

Over the years she knocked down walls, added bedrooms and bathrooms, and tiled floors to accommodate her growing family. Her house now sports nine bedrooms, five bathrooms - all handicapped- accessible - and an elevator that whisks her sons between floors.

Lining the walls are photos of her boys, family Christmas portraits and the kids' artwork. The pictures have multiplied over the years.

Ann has no trouble finding boys to adopt because she wants something no one else does - boys of all ages with disabilities. They come from group homes, families who can't care for them and other foster homes.

"These are kids that have no other options," said Ann, taking a rare break, which was interrupted by phone calls, shouts from the boys and a repairman.

"I am not taking typical, healthy, functioning babies."

By the time she had eight foster kids, Ann yearned for something a little more permanent.

"I didn't like the idea that at any time social services could come and say, 'We're gong to move this child,' " Ann said. "I was a mom. I felt like a mom. I was doing all the mom things. Except I was licensed and running a facility."

ENTER DAD

In 1997, Ann began the lengthy adoption process to make those first eight foster kids her own. A year later she met Jim during a chance encounter on the Internet.

The couple began chatting on the phone, and "after the third or fourth conversation we had, we knew," said Jim, a quadriplegic.

They'd talk for hours on end, the phone glued to Ann's ear even as she tended to the boys and ran errands. In Florida, the wheelchair- bound man said he rolled "around feeling all giddy, running into walls."

Within four months Jim closed the gap with a move to California. They married in May 1998 at the courthouse, in between errands to Staples and Home Depot.

Jim, who became paralyzed from the neck down after a diving accident in 1987, quickly established his fatherly role in the family.

Together the couple adopted 22 more sons. Today they're parents to sons ages 3 to 26.

On a typical morning, Jim, 42, parks his wheelchair in the kitchen; plays dad, traffic cop and fashion police; and talks the boys through breakfast.

Jim's there when 19-year-old Jonathan Silcock slinks into the expansive kitchen just as the sun's rays come streaming through the windows. He takes a seat, followed by David, 6, who swings his legs around until they're tucked under the wooden kitchen table.

One sleepy brother after another follows. Anthony, Hunter, Jeffrey, Javier ... until 21 of them are in for breakfast.

"Good morning, Mom," they say. Arms fling around Jim in a hug.

It's 7:30 a.m., and the morning lull turns loud and rambunctious.

The boys rattle off breakfast orders - their own variations of the ham-and-egg sandwiches on the menu - to a woman hired to cook.

"Just egg, no bread or ham."

"Egg and ketchup."

"Only half a sandwich."

"Just cereal."

"You know how to do that better," Jim says, watching one of the boys battle to cut eggs with a fork.

Alin, 11, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, doles out chocolate and strawberry milk, iced tea and juice. The boys are learning to cook, do laundry and fix things around the house.

"With Jim being disabled, the boys see it as helping Jim," Ann said.

At one table, the boys banter about Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the family room, a few of the younger boys crowd in front of the television for morning cartoons.

Before long, they're shuffled into yellow buses and carpools or begin their walks to school.

That means a few hours of silence for Ann and Jim, but it's hardly a break.

There's laundry to do, doctor's appointments to attend and all the other tasks that come with raising 29 boys. Not to mention the many days they spend wrapping up new adoptions by flying to Russia - as they did three times this summer - to bring home sons, or traveling to San Bernardino to rescue an abused boy from an orphanage.

Family life doesn't leave Ann and Jim time for romantic dinners. Ann doesn't lunch with girlfriends, and there's no extra money for shoe shopping sprees at the mall.

"I've never been one to have a lot of friends, and ... even my really good friends ... it might be weeks before I ever see them," she said.

"It's sort of like this is what I always wanted. ... I get excited when the kids do something new. I get excited at the prospectof bringing someone new into our family."

Eight of their 29 sons are over 18 and live on their own, with state and federal funding.

All the kids have MediCal. And the family receives about $14,000 per month in federal funding for 12 of the boys who were adopted domestically. Ann and Jim also earn income from their supported-living business.

GROUP DYNAMICS

You might not think there's room for even one more body in this home, but Ann says the running theme is, "Who are we getting next?"

"They show me another kid. How could I say no?" Ann said, although she has turned down new kids when she felt "it was a health or safety issue for another kid."

Large families like the Silcocks' are not the norm, and experts generally recommend against it. But in this case, they say, it seems to work.

Boys are typically more difficult to place than girls. And when you add their disabilities to the mix, the chances of finding them a home are even slimmer, said Michalina Miller, director of International Christian Adoption, an organization that has placed children in the Silcock home.

"Having a staff helps significantly," Miller said, adding that she visits the home often. "You're not in a situation where you have two adults and 30 boys."

Ann and Jim have hired about 12 people to help cook, clean, tutor the kids and drive them to swimming, karate and other lessons. For their part, the couple try to spend quality time with each of the kids.

"Usually when we go out, we'll take a couple of the kids," she said. "It's a good way to give them personal attention."

And they encourage the boys to pursue their own interests. Most of all, the boys are urged to dream big.

"At 7, I really didn't think I'd live to see 17," said Hunter, who graduated in June from Huntington Beach High School. Before living with Ann, he bounced around several foster homes.

Now "I can go home to something healthy," he said. "I have dreams of having my own room one day, or at least my own study."

Even Grant, 9, who is fed by a tube and lives in a wheelchair because Leigh's disease has stripped him of all motor functions, has days like any other kid's.

At school, classmates gather around to read to him. On the playground at recess he joins a game of kickball in his wheelchair.

"I wanted him to be really stimulated and have an interesting life," Ann said. "My joy in life is really seeing these kids progress and knowing I've taken them out of situations that were less than desirable."

When Bob, 23, turns down her offer to hang out with the family in favor of seeing his girlfriend, Ann smiles, knowing she's done her job.

"I feel like we're launching them into adulthood," she said. "I feel really proud."

MUSICAL TRIBUTE

Their music says it all.

Songs titled "Summer of Trouble," "Nothing but Soup" and "Too Many Surgeries Blues" are the memories of 29 boys before the arrival of "St. Ann."

Piled into the living room in wheelchairs and crowded on the wall-to-wall couches, the family shared its music at an end-of-spring-break concert at home. Ann, in her signature shorts and T-shirt, sat in the back, 8-year-old Jarrod on her lap.

Jim rolled his wheelchair in and stationed himself on the other side of the room.

Bob kneeled next to his wheelchair-bound girlfriend, Kelly, and serenaded her with "Cowboy Bob Meets a Gal."

Their fans hollered and cheered in the room.

"We're like a fun family," Ann says proudly. "It's the place everyone wants to come hang out."

In one corner Mark and Christine Hoadley snapped pictures of their son, Grant, who smiled and wriggled in his chair, responding to the excitement around him.

The Silcocks' close-knit family wooed the Hoadleys years earlier when the Hoadleys realized they could no longer care for Grant.

"We probably looked for dozens of different homes and options," Mark Hoadley said. "There was a whole gamut of situations, and there were a lot of situations where it was obvious people were in it for the money.

"Ann (was) just like a regular mom with regular kids, and she was really interested in the kids having as much of a normal life as they could. I instantly had a pretty good feeling about her."

That's precisely how the boys feel.

"It's a lot of fun, more than I can ask for ... having more than one brother and really having a mom and dad," said Anthony.

"The Things that Make Me Me" told of Anthony's loneliness and anger at being shipped among five group homes before Ann found him. Anthony, who has spina bifida, choked back tears and wheeled away when he could no longer hold back.

Alin detailed life in a Romanian orphanage, where beatings were a daily routine and his hopes of being rescued were dim.

The songs revealed deep emotional scars that surface every now and then. But they don't dwell on them, Ann said.

"Yeah, they've come from terrible backgrounds ... and they have really awful stories," said Ann. "And I listen to them and encourage them to talk about it.

"But we don't stay there. We move on."

One of those awful moments came recently when one of her sons, Barry, 19, died, after being sick and hospitalized for a few months with complications from a stomach ulcer.

In addition to a public memorial service, "we did our own private thing at home with the kids ... talking about Barry and people's memories." Ann said.

"We're also saying that Barry would want us to keep going and live."

The grand finale of the musical performance was a surprise the boys planned for Ann in celebration of her 41st birthday. "St. Ann," written by the boys, was an expression of their appreciation.

"She's the one who keeps us going. Whenever the going gets tough," they sang in chorus.

"She bursts into song when she hears certain words. The prettiest thing you've ever heard. It's enough just to have her love."