I opened my esty shop (www.uproar.etsy.com) one week ago today.   What a labor of love!  I've been knitting furiously for about a month now and this past week it's started to pay off.  God is so good.  I sold my first hat from my website on Thursday (thank you Lauren!!!!) and took a custom order from a mom at MOPS.  Friday I was knitting a pair of booties at work to put on the website and ended up selling them to a coworker!  I had two more very exciting things happen on Friday.  First, the woman that coordinates all of MOPS for Northern Colorado called me and said that I could have access to any and all MOPS groups I wanted!  Then, I got an email on Uproar from the friend of a woman who was at the MOPS meeting on Thursday.  Her name is Lyndsey Lewis.  She is a local childrens photographer who writes a blog that is followed locally and natio ...

I just got done reading Jamey's blog entries and they were so wonderful I thought I'd add a little something to my own.  However, I don't really have much to report.  Things are pretty much the same with us.  I'm still working at the Imaging Center and I'm still working out the logistics of the homeschool thing.  I did decide on a name for my Etsy shop.  It's Uproar.  I think it's so cute and clever!  I have three hats and two pairs of booties made so far.  I'm making a hat for Melia right now and I like it so much I'm going to make one for my website.  I'm still having a bit of trouble with pricing.  I don't want to charge too much for my products but I use the best yarn I can get my hands on (and only natural fibers) and the pieces are wonderful (in my own humble and unbiased opinion). 

We started working with the college group this fall instead of high school.  I ...

After the disappointment of The Job Fair (if you haven't read the blog about this please do so) I began to brainstorm.  I have very good friends that homeschool.  I don't know how everyone out there feels about homeschooling.  I don't know how I feel about homeschooling.  However, I was present at a conversation where my friends were talking about a woman who teaches homeschooled children classes and they were encouraging another friend of ours to consider this if she ever quit teaching public school.  If this works for her then why not me?  I'm not a teacher, mind you, but I was a TA in college and enjoyed it very much.  Not only that, but the professor I TA'd for said I should consider teaching because the students responded to me well and learned a lot. 

The whole idea when I went to school was to graduate and be a personal trainer for adolescents.  I wanted to be able to teach kids to use ...

I went to a job fair today.  Has anyone else ever been to a job fair?  Do you know what I went through before I went there?  I had to rewrite my resume to make it generic then had to send Matt to Kinko's to print it because our hand-me-down printer finally died this summer and we have had no money to replace it.  Well, Kinko's has that new Windows bull shit and it took poor Matt almost 20 minutes to change the resume back to the way it is supposed to look because going from the Windows program we have to the new one screwed up the font and all the spacing.  Then Matt had to pay for the 20 minutes on their computer and then had to pay $1 a sheet for my resume.  It was ridiculous.  While he did that I was getting all dressed up in my "Interview Outfit" so I looked professional but not in my suit so I didn't look  too stuffy.  I did my hair (which is at a very difficult and unruly stage right now) ...

I can't say that Labor Day is my favorite holiday but for some reason this year Labor Day was very special.  It wasn't so much about having Monday off (I don't work on Mondays anway) or what we did (camping) even though it was really fun.  This weekend was special because Labor Day seems to be the beginning of the transition from summer to fall and it seemed to parallel the transition Matt and I are experiencing.  First of all, the weather was perfect and in my mind it was exactly as Labor Day weekend should be.  The last two days of August were hot and sunny.  The perfect adios to summer.  Then, bingo!  September 1st was pleasantly cool with a breeze that holds the promise of fall.  It just reminded me of us transitioning from "just" us, through the first of our adoption paperwork, and on to the promise of the family we're going to have.

I'm trying to be positive i ...

We're home from Latvia.  It was an amazing trip.  I'm still trying to process everything we experienced.  I'll blog about that a little later and hopefully pictures will be up soon also.  For now I'm going to bitch about what we came home to because I'm jet-lagged and I can't hold it in.  If you want to read something happy come back later.

I don't think there are words that express what I'm feeling right now.  I didn't get that job I interviewed for.  The perfect job that should have been mine is not mine after all.  The job that I practically tailored my education to do with the great hours and the awesome salary.  Not mine.  And don't try to make me feel better by saying, "There's something better out there for you," because right now there isn't and I don't want to hear it.  My husband has 2 weeks left on his unemployment.  I'm currently working 25 hour ...

Okay...so to be totally honest I'm not entirely sure I'm super excited about going to Latvia.  I want to go.  I do.  But I'm not looking forward to it as much as I thought I would be.  I think the most exciting part about going right now is seeing Kelly and Donna and the extra 5 days that Matt and I are going to spend there.

I think this makes me a bad person.  I should be invested in this trip more emotionally and more spiritually than I am.  Why am I not doing that?  Because I'm about 100% positive we'll be finding another church when we get home.  Because I want to relax and do nothing because I just graduated from school and I feel entitled to a break.  Because I'm incredibly, heartbreakingly homesick and I'd rather spend that time in Wooster with my family (including Jamey, Ben, and Andrew).  I think that's the biggy.  I look at the pictures you guys are posting of your summer s ...

I had an interview today for my perfect job (at least, my perfect job at the moment...not my dream job).  Seriously, though, it doesn't get any better than this for me.  I would be running Poudre Valley Health Systems' Healthy Kids Club in Loveland!  Here's a website in case anyone wants to check it out:

https://vic.pvhs.org/portal/page?_pageid=333,429685&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&pagid=137

This is an AMAZING opportunity for me.  I would be doing something I love and people would be paying me for it!  I just need to get the job.  The interview itself went very, very well.  I know people where praying for me.  I could feel it.  I could tell because of how calm and confident I was and how articulate my answers we ...

I started reading the blogs of families who are in the process of adopting or have adopted from Ethiopia about a year ago.  I feel close to about 4 families in a cyber-relationship sort of way because I've witnessed them go through the paperwork, the financial struggles, and the waiting.  I've cried "with" them over their referrals and rejoiced "with" them when they brought their children home.  It's made me feel close to the process even though Matt and I haven't started our own adoption.  It makes me feel hopeful for the day when we will.  I feel more prepared to face the ups and downs we'll encounter.  It makes me excited and a little scared.  Today, however, I experienced fury and heart break.

The other day I read the blog of one of the families I've felt this parti ...