FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE 5 ADOPTED KIDS FILL MAKE BURBANK COUPLE'S HOUSE A HOME.

Byline: Katie Cooper Staff Writer

BURBANK - Child rearing came late to Karen Christoffersen and John Capellero, but when it did, it came fast and furious.

First came Natasha, a Russian orphan who clung to her new mother with all the strength a 3-year-old can muster.

Then six months later, three of Natasha's older brothers - twins Ryan and Eric and 5-year-old Kevin - were plucked from a separate home for unwanted children to join their sister in a suburban American household that overnight was bulging at its seams.

``The thing that was weird was the load came all at once,'' said Capellero, a fire safety technician. ``I like to say we went from zero to four in less than a year.''

But the Burbank couple, who had never planned on having children, were not quite finished expanding their family.

In 1997, five years after officially assuming the titles of mom and dad, the couple became parents of a teen-ager - Yuri, the foursome's older brother, who had been living in yet another orphanage in the children's hometown of Izhevsk, 685 miles east of Moscow.

``Things just took their own course and progressed very naturally,'' said Capellero, who with Christoffersen will be honored during a September banquet in Washington, D.C., with a congressional Angels in Adoption Award.

Still, the couple admit, they got bit by the parenthood bug a little bit later than most.

Christoffersen was 40 when adoptive motherhood called. After years of hosting foreign exchange students in their home, she had grown to love the makeshift families she and her husband - 16 years her senior - had created with the students.

``I missed the exchange kids so much when they left, I thought there must be some kids in this world who need a home,'' said Christoffersen, now 49.

But because of Capellero's age, the couple was ineligible to adopt an American child. So they looked abroad for their future family ties and eventually hooked up with a Russian immigrant who set the wheels in motion.

Capellero, who postponed his retirement plans because of the adoptions, had only one condition: ``Get a kid that's older. I don't want to change diapers,'' he recalled with a chuckle.

Despite the unusual circumstances that brought the household together - and reunited the children - family members said their situation was not really any different than other adoptive families.

``So many people are adopted,'' said Kevin, now 14. ``And you just don't know until you are part of it.''

On a recent summer afternoon at their twice-expanded home near Burbank High School, the middle brothers - who were given Western names after moving to the United States - teased their baby sister. Yuri, the quintessential tanned and blond Southern Californian male, save but for a slight Russian accent, rolled his eyes at the tomfoolery.

While Christoffersen spelled out dinner menus - turkey enchiladas one night, spaghetti the next - she didn't flinch when some of the children referred to their biological mother as ``Mom.''

``It doesn't bother me. I know what they mean,'' she said.

Their birth mother was stripped of her parental rights by Russian authorities in 1991 after their biological father died in a fire. Government social workers there said she had given up some of the children and neglected the remainder, translated court documents show. The children, who have adopted Christoffersen's last name, also have an older halrother and half-sister who remain in Russia.

Only Yuri has any recollection of the birth mother, he said, and he holds no grudges. She worked a graveyard shift and often left the younger children in his care.

``I'm not mad. She did her best,'' said Yuri, 17, who recently graduated with honors from Burbank High School.

In late August, the family plans to travel to the children's hometown to visit with their biological mother and ``tie up some loose ends,'' Christoffersen said.

Most of the kids are looking forward to the trip. Eric, 15, wants ``to see what my biological mother looks like.'' Yuri yearns to retrieve some belongings of his biological father's.

But Ryan, 15, said he is afraid to go in case government officials have changed their minds and now want him to stay in his native country.

``I have bad memories of that place,'' he said.

Under the badgering of her brothers, Natasha, now 12, said she sometimes wished that she was an only child.

But on second thought, she said, ``I probably wouldn't be happy. I would be depressed and sad without a family.''

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Four of the five Christoffersen kids adopted from Russian orphanages - from left, Natasha, Ryan, Kevin and Eric - ponder a move in a chess game.

(2 -- color) Everybody in the family of adoptees has chores to do. Here, Kevin browns ground turkey for tacos for a family dinner while mom Karen chops onions.

(3 -- color) Practicing their music after dinner are, from left, Kevin and Eric on violin, Ryan on cello and Natasha on violin.

(4 -- color) Natasha, the first of the five siblings to be adopted from an orphanage in Russia, horses around with dad John Capellero and a punching bag.

(5 -- color) Natasha Christoffersen, right, and friend Ray Keaton are silhouetted as they bounce on a trampoline during a gymnastics workout.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer