Sunday night, inside a white house with green shutters on C Street, is proof you can go home again.

Congregated in the cozy kitchen are six people and two small dogs — one of which is wearing a sweater. That would be Lucy. She belongs to Kathy Benes.

Kathy owns this house, but she’s not here. She’s 49, divorced, living in Azerbaijan. Her kids grew up and she joined the Peace Corps, that’s why.

She was going to sell this house. But the five Benes children thought that was a poor idea. They loved this house. It’s the house they lived in longest. The house they helped their mom transform into a home.

So they offered to move back. Pay the mortgage. Mow the yard. Take good care of Lucy and their mom’s house plants.

The oldest Benes child was in the military, so she didn’t come home. And the youngest Benes kid had just graduated from high school, so he moved out. (Well, duh.)

But the middle three — Jim, Doug and Katie — set up housekeeping in the five-bedroom home. They came with dogs and cats of their own, as well as one husband and one girlfriend. And because there were still two empty bedrooms, a couple of friends — Isaac and Christine — moved in, too.

Sunday night is family dinner night. All the housemates are here, along with significant others and a couple of extra friends, a dozen or so in all. The more the merrier. Are the Journal Star people hungry? Pull up a chair.

The chart on the wall says it’s Kimmy’s night to cook the main course. Kimmy is shorthand for Katie and her husband, Timmy. Right now Katie is leaning over a tray of enchiladas. The enchilada with one toothpick is for Christine (the roommate who doesn’t eat meat). The one with two toothpicks is for Tricia (who doesn’t like pepper jack cheese).

Katie is 22. She’s expecting a baby boy in May. So is Tricia — the pepper jack-hater, all-around picky eater and Katie’s older brother Doug’s girlfriend. (It’s confusing, I know.)

Before Kathy left she had two rules: No one get married or have a baby while I’m gone.

No sooner had she landed in the former Soviet Union than two women under her roof were expecting.

She’s cool with it now. They send weekly Polaroid belly-growth updates. And they all contribute to a letter letting her know what’s going on in the household and the lives of the people living on C Street.

Jim, at 27 the oldest member of the house, mails off care packages on a regular basis.

Tonight he leads the family prayer (the Catholic Beneses make the sign of the cross), and dinner is served.

Jim sits at the head of the table, the de facto man of the house (in a nice, big brotherly way). He makes sure they have family meetings. The two biggest issues? Noise and privacy.

The group has turned a basement room into a laundry area. They transformed another space into an extra pantry.

Everyone has a laundry day. Everyone color codes his or her groceries. Everyone lets the dogs out.

There are plenty of bathrooms and three separate living rooms. (The house was once a triplex.)

Timmy is good with money, so he collects rent and utilities. He also eats all the leftovers. Three plates of unfinished enchiladas come his way during dinner Sunday.

Rent is cheap because it’s split so many ways. Several housemates hoping to become homeowners are saving for down payments.

All in all, it works great. Christine (one-toothpick enchilada) has known the family for years. She’s joining the Peace Corps, too. For now she’s working and getting ready to move to her third bedroom in the house (one of the pregnant couples needs more room).

“I love listening to all the beating hearts under our roof,” she wrote in an e-mail last week, “because it seems insane that that many people and animals, with more on the way, could function as successfully as we do.”

But they do.

Even though the youngest Benes, Tom, 20, is happy to head to his own apartment when Sunday’s dinner and traditional after-dinner board game is over.

“It’s nice to visit,” he says, “kind of like Florida.”

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.