When Dale and Julie Osterberg met at a bowling alley 21 years ago through the help of a mutual friend, little did they know their lives would intertwine and grow into a beautiful yet very large family.Julie, 38, originally from the Racine area, was the youngest of five children, her closest sibling being her twin sister. Dale, 39, also from the Racine area, had quite the opposite childhood in terms of siblings: he has none.
Dale and Julie met young, married young (at 21 and 20, respectively), and began their new young lives happily together with great expectation. They talked of having children—maybe two or three, they thought, would be nice. But after babysitting for family members with four small children, Dale wasn’t so sure.
“This is never going to happen to me!” Dale laughs as he recalls the babysitting story.
Julie follows jokingly, “Those ‘nevers’ are the most dangerous thing to say!”
Well, Dale’s ‘never’ has become seven: Kate, 13; Aaron, 12; Tyler, 12; Garet, 9; Jonah, 7; Bryan, 4; and Caleb, 2.
Their parenting opus began fours years into their marriage with the arrival of Kate, their only girl. Approximately 17 months later, Dale and Julie got some more surprising news when they found out they were expecting twins.
“I told my mom, ‘It can’t be twins!’—even though I was having dreams about having twins,” Julie says.
“How many did you want?” Dale recalls the doctor asking during the twins’ ultrasound. Dale says what the doctor was asking really didn’t register in his mind. “Did you take any fertility drugs? I think I see three,” the doctor added, for a heart-stopping second. “Nope, there’s only two,”
After the twins Dale and Julie felt they had all the children they wanted. But, after two failed attempts to go through with the “procedure” many guys dread, Dale and Julie felt God was trying to tell them something. The medical office cancelled the first appointment because Julie wasn’t there. The doctor cancelled the second appointment.
“We were like, “This isn’t going very smoothly,’” Julie remembers thinking. “That’s when we decided to see what God said to us about it. And, He really put it on our hearts that He would take care of it.”
The birth of their first two sons, Aaron and Tyler, proved to be a turning point in their lives according to Dale and Julie. After the twins came, Dale and Julie felt they really began to enjoy parenting from a whole new perspective.
“I would never have gotten to experience the relaxed end of parenting,” says Julie. “It would have been, ‘I did that, phew! We made it through that.’ Instead of, this is just a really awesome thing.”
The Osterbergs keep a positive attitude about kids and parenting.
“Kids are the best natural disaster you’ll ever encounter because they teach you. You learn from them,” Julie states. “You’re lying if you say they’re not hard sometimes, but at the end of the day they kiss you. And, that’s the part that’s so awesome.”
While the parenting part is awesome, the Osterbergs support their family on Dale’s income as a project manager for a company in Greenville.
“God is just so gracious,” Dale says confidently. “When you aren’t constantly thinking about it and you’re focusing on it, it’s all His and you give first things first. It’s not like we really struggle at all.”
“Every year it just comes out. I’ve never had to go to work. It blows me away,” Julie says.
Both Dale and Julie are active in their church, St. Mark Lutheran of De Pere and Green Bay. Dale is on the Stewardship Committee. Julie is part of the M.O.M.S. Group (Mothers Offering Mutual Support), Rooted to the Rock (6-8th grade youth group) and the Prayer Committee.
“They are passionate about their faith. They are passionate about their family. They are passionate about building friendships,” says the family’s pastor, The Rev. John Parlow of St. Mark Lutheran Church. “She has a great concern for the hurting and the spiritually searching in our community, and that’s passed down to their kids.”
With Mother’s and Father’s Day coming up, the Osterbergs have a few parting words to share with other parents.
“Cherish the moment with your kids,” Dale says.
“Sometimes we get so caught up in the burden, and that is a reality; the responsibility of kids. But, they give more than they take from you. As tired as you get, they give back so much more,” Julie adds.
