I can't believe it has been two weeks since I have written anything down!  The problem with that is that so much happens in our house these days that it is like months or years passing by.....it is like living in dog years. Lol!   So, I will list the items that have happened and you may decide if you actually want to subject yourself to reading all of it. ;-)

1. The gorgeous walnut orchards around our house were leveled (this you should see, we have video of the mature wonderful trees being shoved over like toothpicks.)
2.  Lauren became ill in Hawaii and came close to kidney failure.
3.  Robert gets some leads on police work
4.  Corinna awaits deployment and becomes engaged
5.  We received our official homestudy approval!!!!!
6.  We received our new digital garment printer(the same day....coincidence, I think not!!!)
7.  We are getting ready to kick off our new business and start a giveaway on an ipad 2!!!!
8.  We must fundraise until we drop!!!!
9.  Mary's great adventure-she was selected out of hundreds of children to attend J Camp(Asian American Journalism Association camp) and is travelling by herself to Lansing Michigan!

1.  Trees-Many of you know that our home is nestled amongst several walnut orchards and thus where the name of our business, Walnut Grove Traditions, came from.  Most of the windows of our house face these beautiful orchards.
We LOVED them! Even more than just looking at them, the children enjoyed their quiet adventures through the "forest".

Every spring, the orchard is filled with bright yellow wildflowers and the entire living room is just radiating with yellow light! 

So, when we noticed huge equipment and tractors beginning to invade the outer edge of the orchard we were not entirely pleased.

It seemed somewhat threatening but I held out hope that maybe they were just going to take a few diseased trees out. 

But, onward they came....and we had no Lorax to speak for the trees!

Here is a picture just before the trees were demolished:

Here is the demolition video.  We understand that this is what happens to aging orchards but it is still so sad!

Here is what we used to see out of our window:

Here is what we see now:

It is really sad, but I have to see the silver lining.  We do have more light (enough to blind someone) on that side of our house.  And, we can now see the view of the small mountain range near our house.  We are hoping that they decide to plant walnut trees again.  Maybe we will soon be posting about all of the little green babies we can see from our windows!

2.  Lauren-She became sick a few weeks ago and had told her friends that she felt too sick to make it to the health center.  Her friends told her that if she felt too sick to go....that she definitely needed to go!  One offered to roll her there on her longboard if she had to!  LOL!  Good friends are so valuable!  It turned out that her GFR was 26 (healthy is over 90 and kidney failure is at 15)  So, we opted to fly her home where we could get her access to better medical care.



Lauren and Mary reunited!


  She has had a host of other symptoms and other tests but I will be brief and say that she has an appt with a rheumatologist to rule out an auto-immune disorder.  Prayers would be welcomed.


3.  Robert- He has finally gotten some activity on his applications closer to home.  Both West Sac and county of Sacramento have called him in for further testing.  He placed twelfth on the hiring list for Signal Hill(near Long Beach) and he was requested to go test in Longview, WA.  It should be soon and we really *need* it to be soon!  I knew that the timing would be interesting for all of this to coincide with an adoption and truly that is why I started out against going forward.  But, I know that we are doing what is right and what Heavenly Father wants us to do.  The rest is just small potatoes and hassle and I can deal with it(most of the time, that is!)

4.  Corinna-she told us a couple of weeks ago (about the same time when Lauren got sick!) that she was being deployed the next day!  So, one adult child was heading to the hospital while the other was heading to Pakistan.  I am not kidding when I just have to complain once again that parenting adult children is the HARDEST part of parenting...not terrible twos, or the shuttling around or even the teen years! <sigh>  The deployment has now been put off until January so she has a bit more time to prepare. 
Speaking of having more time to prepare....she also became engaged, and I am proud of her and her fiance that they chose to wait a year so that they could be married in the temple.

Sacramento Temple

 We really like him and find that he has been more respectful and polite than most young men you would ever meet in today's standards.  The planned date, at this point, for their wedding is August 25th, 2012. 

5.Official Homestudy approval-We have the real and official paperwork to submit our I-800 forms now to immigration.  And, I believe we can also send in our dossier ahead of that approval to save a little time (that will be Monday's question to our adoption agency)  What does that mean???  Well, it means that we can get them home soon.....but that also means that we have got to get our fundraising going!!! 

Unfortunately our financial thermometer is accurate. :-( 

We have had great success in having many faithful readers of our blog but no success so far with donations other than one great friend and my parents.  Admittedly, we also haven't put as much energy or effort into raising funds since our focus was on the homestudy.  Hopefully, that is soon to change as we will have many t-shirts and personalized items etc (read next paragraph!) and we will have an incentive giveaway of an ipad 2!

6,7,&8.  Our digital garment printer is here! 

It is truly amazing how fast it is and what it does!  It will produce a custom printed t-shirt(anything on your computer screen will be printed onto the shirt or other clothing in about a minute)  This is an industrial machine and its intended use is for business (rather than hobby) and will produce a nicer shirt than even screen printing because it doesn't leave the heavy plastic type feel on the shirt.  It actually dyes the shirt and then it is heat pressed at 350 degrees to set the ink.  We are so excited about the unlimited possibilities of what it can do! 
Here is Amelia in her swimsuit with her own drawing digitally printed on to the suit:

*Stay posted for the website and our ipad 2 giveaway details!!!!*

9.  Mary-She has made it to Lansing, Michigan as I was writing this blog. 

She traveled on a red eye with two plane changes and had no problems.  This equals a relieved mom and a 16 year old with increased confidence.  Hooray for Mary!  She had already met with some of the other kids at the Detroit airport and sounded like she was having a good time.  This camp has a great reputation and has had reporters such as Ed Bradley from 60 minutes visit in past years!  The AAJA pays for the trip in its entirety for all of the participants(free is always a good thing!)   On the last day, they will have a chance to meet and interview with many of the top representatives from various companies in newspapers, magazines, and even television news broadcasting such as CNN.  Congratulations Mary, on your first big step towards a career in Broadcast Journalism!

Whew!  Thanks for making it this far....I promise to try hard not to let things go this long again!!  I really appreciate everyone's support!  Many of you may not know that there are folks reading our blog from all over the world!  Some of you are from areas that I had never heard of before....

  It is such a wonderful thing to have so many supporting our journey to bring our twins home!  I have to express my gratitude for our Heavenly Father's guidance in bringing us all together and I just pray that our family can hold up our side.  Hopefully very soon, there will be two less orphans in the world and we'll have our precious little ones in our arms.......