Huffman Coding

… with a bunch of Family Stuff too

My Family

My wife and I have adopted three wonderful girls.  I love being a dad. We adopted Marissa from Vietnam in April 1998, Katie (Kaitlin) from China the following December, and Claire from China in March 2003. The older two are 12 weeks apart in age.

Marissa, in Vietnam, a month before her adoption

Marissa, in Vietnam, a month before her adoption

Katie, in China, months before her adoption

Katie, in China, months before her adoption

Claire, in China, month before her adoption

Claire, in China, month before her adoption

Katie, Marissa and Claire, at Animal Kingdom December 2008

Katie, Marissa and Claire, at Animal Kingdom December 2008

In 1998, I kept a journal on my PDA during our trips to Vietnam and China to adopt Marissa and Katie and every day or so, I faxed my journal entries back to the states. A good friend of mine converted the fax, via OCR, to e-mail messages. The Journal for Marissa’s trip is here. Katie’s journal is here.

By 2003 web technology had progressed greatly and I was able to update a blog when we adopted Claire.  The archived entries are here.

For a few years after that, I continued to infrequently post blog entries about them.

If you are interested in international adoption, I encourage you to talk to parents from your local chapter of Families with Children from China. Parenthood and adoption are great. If you wish to make the world a better place for an orphan without adopting one yourself, I encourage you to check out Half the Sky foundation.