Michelle Duggar, shown with some of her family, is honored by Gov. Huckabee, right.
For the past two years the family has been building their own home in Tontitown, just seven miles from where they now live in northwest Arkansas.
"Our house is like a giant Cracker Barrel," Michelle Duggar said. "It's got this huge porch it goes on forever. We may get lost in the middle of it all."
The 7,000-square-foot family project will have 10 bathrooms, master and guest bedrooms, a laundry room with four washers and eight dryers and two dormitory-style bedrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. Those rooms will have bunk beds, Jim Bob Duggar said, easily added for any new children.
"We've done the work from the foundation up," he said. "We're building it debt- free. We're doing it as we can afford it."
There will be two closets on either side of the laundry, one with boys clothes and one with things for the girls. The children put on whatever clothing fits.
This weekend, Duggar, a real estate businessman, plans to put up the siding and windows with some of his sons. They hope to move in this summer.
Wednesday, the brood drove down from Springdale in the family bus to watch mom receive her award from Gov. Mike Huckabee. The girls and their mother dressed in matching red and blue plaid jumpers. The boys each wore the same navy blue suit with a red bow tie, their hair neatly combed to the side.
When the family approached Huckabee, the governor bent down to shake each child's hand, repeating the names they shyly whispered to him.
"You guys are amazing. You really are," Huckabee told the family.
The couple married when Jim Bob was 19 and Michelle was 17 and had no children for the first four years they were together.
"We're letting the Lord give us the gifts that he wants to give us and I'm open to more gifts," she said. "I'll take them one at a time or two at a time."