Inside Julia Roberts’ Blissful Family World as a Mom of 3 Teenagers

Not that Hazel, Finn (as Mom and Dad call him) and their brother Henry, born June 18, 2007, didn’t have a variety of clues starting from a young age that their parents didn’t have typical 9-to-5s, whether it was all the travel or playing on film sets and in Broadway theater dressing rooms, or having the occasional Oscar winner (other than their mom) stop by their house in Malibu, where they’ve lived since they became a family of five.

“We’re just grateful for the sense we have of being like any other family down the street,” Roberts told the WSJ. “I don’t question it, frankly.”

Unlike their neighbors, though (or, maybe just like them, Malibu providing a celebrity-friendly enclave), they have a few other homes as well, including the 30-acre ranch near Taos, N.M, where Roberts and Moder tied the knot on July 4, 2002, and where the actress historically loved spending as much time as possible. But since the kids go to school in Southern California, that is where the majority of the magic—the family meals, the holiday baking, the mah-jongg with friends, knitting and needlepoint, birthday parties, soccer games, surfing and skateboarding—takes place.

“There are some days when as soon as you’ve finished cooking breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen it’s time to start lunch and by the time you’ve done that you’re doing dinner and thinking there has to be a menu we can order from,” Roberts told the U.K.’s Telegraph in 2009. “But then there are some days when it’s just so creative and so much fun and my kids will help me and, as with anybody who’s a mom or a wife, it just become a part of your day. Some days it’s super-fun and some days it’s a chore.”

And while the kids got steadily bigger, certain things didn’t change, other than to become even more important.