Eddie and Bill Grose’s sprawling home in rural Edgewood is constantly abuzz, with grandchildren and foster children playing side by side.

“Kids keep you young,” Eddie Grose, 58, said. “I was feeling my age, and now I don’t .”

Santa Fe County needs more families like the Groses.

In the last year, 183 children were taken from their parents and placed in foster care, while the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department sorted out reports of abuse or neglect. But there are fewer than 50 foster homes in the county and some of the children had to be sent to other parts of the state.

In the last year, 25 percent of Santa Fe County children in foster care lived in homes outside the county, not including those who stayed with relatives, according to Linda McNall, manager of the department’s northeast region.

“It would be nice to have another 20 to 25 foster homes here,” she said in a recent interview .

Foster families provide care for children until they can return home or until they are adopted. The calling appeals to empty-nesters as well as to childless adults, who wonder what it is like to have a youngster around the house. But McNall is the first to admit, “It’s a huge decision for people to make.”

For Eddie Grose, the decision to foster came with no regrets. The mother of six has cared for 32 foster children over three years. Her home is licensed for six children at a time.

“The kids usually are mellowed out within a couple of days, and they just go with the flow,” she said. “They’re wonderful . And they get attached quickly.”

After fostering a child, it’s not uncommon for Grose to meet the child’s biological parents. Many are trapped in drug and alcohol dependence, she said.

“It’s a whole new world to me,” she said. “Most of them are just hurting people who are scared for their kids and wish they hadn’t made the choices they did.”

Children drift in and out of her life. The shortest stay has been four days; the longest has been 18 months.

Some children have been adopted in the community where she lives. Both those who stay in Edgewood, and those who go, tend to remain in touch. At Christmastime, Grose invites all the kids and parents she has met through foster parenting to a party to make gingerbread houses.

Grose, her retired military husband and two grown children live on 20 acres. The spacious house is set up with 13 beds and cribs. “It just wasn’t the kind of home to stay in and have no kids,” Grose said.

Earlier this summer, Grose accepted three new foster kids — two sisters and a baby boy. She spent the next day buying clothes, picking up medicine and visiting a park in Santa Fe.

With a camera strung around her neck and a row of teddy bears on her USA All-Star Club T-shirt , Grose slowly rocked the whimpering baby and kissed his forehead. Meanwhile, the sisters got acquainted with Grose’s two other foster children, who call her Grandma, on the playground .

“Imagine waking up in the morning and your mother isn’t there,” Grose said as she comforted the baby boy. “I don’t know if it’s the teething or the separation thing, but he’s having a hard time.”

The infant took a bottle and quieted down.

The couple is fostering children of very different ages — 1, 5, 9, 11 and 12. That would intimidate some, but there seems to be no stopping Grose. The endless loads of laundry and the hours of cooking and cleaning don’t faze her.

She speaks with enthusiasm about taking 10 foster and grandchildren to the Rio Grande Zoo and bringing foster children along on vacation to California.

Grose doesn’t think she’s extraordinary . Her six children and nine grandchildren broke her in for the job and her extended family also gets involved. “I had the background,” she said.

As mothers of large families know, the trick is to get all hands working together. The children are up by 8:30 a.m. They clean their rooms, do chores, eat breakfast.

For entertainment the couple provides classic Disney movies and books, along with pool, shuffleboard and other games in the recreation room. “We don’t do television and things like that,” Grose said. As a former teacher and home-school mom, Grose takes note of how her foster kids are doing academically and helps where she can. Some have short attention spans because “there’s just too much heartache,” she said.

When they ask, she teaches them whatever they want to know, such as how to cook, iron, sew and embroider.

Discipline is important, too. Time out is her first line of defense. “Once in a while, if they’ve been really horrible, they might miss out on an outing to the park or the zoo or something,” she said.

Money is a universal motivator. “They all have chances to earn money, and if they’re destructive with things, their money is taken to pay for what they destroyed,” she said.

Grose is quick to point out that foster parents don’t need a giant house in the country or a long history of motherhood to fit the part.

“I think you just have to care about kids,” she said.

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