When we arrived at the airport in Beijing, everybody tried to tell me the information I already knew. Our flight was delayed 5 hours. But what can you do? You can’t drive back to the hotel that is 1 hour away and wait there. You can’t drive to a friend’s house and hang out with […]
The adoption process is done. Sean is our son. And the immigration process is practically done. We have Sean’s visa. All we have to do is come home. But we decided to spend a few nights in Beijing. He has never been outside of his city, much less his province. He has never seen some […]
It wasn’t on my bucket list, but it should have been. On Thursday we visited our first Chinese amusement park. The park featured exotic animals, like Disney’s Animal Kingdom, but better. It was actually one of the best amusement park experiences I’ve ever had. You can see a few pictures below. As far as the […]
The building is beautiful, but you can’t touch it. You can’t get near it. The only way to walk inside is to have an appointment. And then go through security. And They will check every part of you to make certain you don’t take in something dangerous, like a gun or a cell phone. We […]
Our first adoption took us 16 months from start to finish. We had barely started the process before we chose to adopt Sean. But only barely. From the time we were given permission to pursue him to his adoption was only 3 1/2 months. I don’t know how quick the quickest adoption is. I’m convinced […]
Part I For most of us, the goal of our lives is to limit our own suffering. We avoid going to the places we know it to be. When it crosses our line of sight, we close our eyes until it passes. We live in self-fabricated protection from the harsh realities others are face on […]
Being adopted is somewhat like being born in the sense that you show up empty handed. At least with adoption they let you keep the clothes on your back. So we took Sean out to get him some new clothes. And we bumped into Lebron James while we were out. He already had his Christmas […]
Today we met our son. This is Sean Xinmin Statton. We arrived to the civil affairs office before him. The office was small and we could easily hear every time the elevator doors opened and sometime walked down the hallway. While we finished paperwork, we listened for foot steps to approach the door. We had […]
Today was a day to adjust to a different time zone and to fill out paperwork to get ready for tomorrow. Here are a few pictures from a walk in a nearby park.
I want you to meet Sean. His Chinese name is Xin Min (pronounced “Shen Men”). We will name him Sean XinMin Statton. And tomorrow we leave to meet him and make him our son. The story has been a short, but stressful one. It almost didn’t happen. We first learned about Sean in August. My wife […]
