What does an adoptee's obituary have to do with anything? Read this Chicago Sun obituary and you will find out.

The two developed a friendship, and over coffee one day, she delivered the most famous line of her life: "Does the date Sept. 20, 1917, mean anything to you?"

Margaret M. Skerrett, discovered when she was 10 years old that she was adopted. While working at a dentist's office when she was in her twenties, she was... more

Continued from here ...

Lest anyone get the idea that Cambodia is much more dangerous than its neighbors, take a look at this, that suggests otherwise.

Cambodia has banned its migrant laborers from working in insurgency-plagued southern Thailand due to safety concerns, an official said Thursday.

Thailand's southernmost... more

Continued from here ... Sticking with the good news for a while longer, the latest HIV-AIDS numbers from Cambodia are following the country's downward trend from the past few years.

Even among sex workers the rate has dropped considerably, with 40% infected in 1997 down to 20% today.

UNAIDS co-coordinator... more

As always, the news of the week from Cambodia is like a Clint Eastwood movie ... it's the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'll move through them in some sort of sequence, but don't expect the good guys to win before riding off into the sunset. Not Spaghetti Western material by any means, this story about the Cambodian National Theatre is great, and announces performances this weekend at the Barbican... more

Last week, I posted about a proposed bill in my state (South Carolina) that would require women seeking an abortion to view ultrasound photos before obtaining the abortion. Currently, abortion providers are required to tell the women the approximate age of her baby, provide her with info on fetal development, and then require her to wait at least one hour before she can obtain an abortion. But this new bill takes all of that a step further, requiring a... more

I wish everyone could see that the vast majority of the time, things at our house are happy and fun and not in the least out of control. The wildness we embrace is the intentional kind, the “let-yourself-loose-and-cut-a-rug” kind. Not the “we-can’t-control-these-infernal-hooligans and now-we’re-miserable-and-what-were-we-thinking” kind. I’m continually amazed that people assume our lives must be drudgery and that we must simply be gluttons for punishment. If adopting children made us miserable, believe me – we’d stop! It baffles me that people can’t see that... more

Last night when we called the kids into our room for prayer, everyone was acting a little wild and crazy. OK, they were acting a LOT wild and crazy. No matter what we said or did, no one seemed to be able to settle down and get ready for the prayer, let alone the rest of our bedtime routine. Curtis, my husband, looked like he was getting a little frustrated with the lack of cooperation, so I whispered in Maizie’s ear, “Go tickle Dad.” Before he knew what hit him, he had nine kids dog-piling on top of him and tickling him from every angle. The kids were giggling... more

One of my two year old foster daughters endured sexual abuse along with her two older sisters from the mother’s boyfriend (possibly the two year old’s father). Sadly, the abuse had been reported to CPS on several different occasions by different people for well over a year. When they investigated, the girls would deny the abuse and for whatever reason CPS decided to let three girls continue to live with the abuse and along with their little brother also suffering neglect. A family member called once again to report the sexual abuse of the girls, and CPS decided to have the two older girls seen at a hospital away from their mother, and mother’s boyfriend. Once the girls were at the hospital... more

part 1

We had a 3 hour layover in Guangzhou before our plane left for the United States. That may sound like a long time to some, but as you can see, my family kept themselves occupied.

We bought a few snacks, and I had to laugh because we bought a few Haagen-Daz ice cream cups and Caleb instantly turned up his nose because they were chocolate. How I managed to find two Chinese boys in a country of over 1 billion people who... more

Photo: Ella and her friend M.

Another beautiful spring day has come and gone, and I sit her reflecting on how nice a day it really turned out to be. Ella and I went to visit her little friend M and her family, who live in a county south of us.

M celebrated her third birthday recently, so is definitely light years ahead of seventeen month old Ella in so many ways. Ella followed her around like a younger sister, trying hard to keep up with a wise and capable sibling. It was the first time I saw Ella acting more like a toddler than a... more