From San Antonio, a wonderful story:

The 13-month-old marriage of Frances and Jeff Spalding and the making of their family of 14 children is a story of faith, family and the Internet.

Frances, 38, and Jeff, 40, are devout Catholics who were widowed just more than a year apart. The couple met via Ave Maria Singles — a Web site "for committed, faith-filled, marriage-minded (their emphasis) Catholic singles" — courted long-distance between Texas and Kentucky, and married 41/2 months later, on June 18, 2004, her late mother’s birthday.

She had seven children; he had six. With the birth of Cecilia, they now have 14, ranging in age from 17 to 4 months and including two 11-year-olds, two 7-year-olds and 8-year-old twin girls. In addition to Cecilia, Isaac, Gabriel, Stephen, Gretchen and the twins, Sarah and Veronica, there is Chasity, 17, Mary, 14, William, 13, Christopher, 11, Elizabeth, 9, Bernadette, 7, and Jacinta, 5. Rounding out the family is a deaf black-and-white mutt named Gus-Gus and an indestructible Japanese fighting fish, Mr. Bubbles.

What some might regard as a leap of faith, the Spaldings and their loved ones believe is God’s will in motion. Not just in the way they met, but in the symmetry of their temperaments, backgrounds and beliefs and in the way their journey as a family continues to unfold. "I just know the good Lord had a hand in this," says Frances’ father, Felix Lange.