I was at a New Year's Eve party this week trying to celebrate.  I'm not sure what I was trying to celebrate but I know I wasn't doing a very good job of it.  I don't remember what time we left but I know I cried on the way home.  It's been a hard year.  I wasn't at all sorry to bid farewell to 2008.  I think it was the intensity of the feelings, the rollercoaster of hope and...well...lack of hope that defined our year. 

Matt lost his job the first of January.  While no one likes losing a job Matt might be the exception.  Everyday for 5 1/2 years he dreaded going to work and he came home exhausted, frustrated, and unfulfilled.  To be honest, I was relieved after Matt lost his job.  He was transformed.  All of the sudden I was married to the man I fell in love with and not the drywall zombie.  We knew we'd be okay.  Our sense of peace and contentment was from God.  We held on to the promise of Isaiah 43:14, "See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."   God had always taken care of us and this was no different.  

Sixty eight applications, 10 first interviews, 5 second interviews, and 1 third interview later and he still doesn't have a youth pastor job.  There are days when it's hard to have hope and days when it's impossible to have hope.  When we realized we had been called to youth ministry we answered the call purposefully.  We knew we would rather live a hard life in God's service than an easy life with no meaning.  Unfortunately, we came upon some hard times a lot faster than I had anticipated!  We are currently waiting to hear from two churches...one in Cortland, NY and one here in Fort Collins, CO.  If neither church works out the plan is for us to stay here with Matt attending Denver Seminary and joining the chaplancy program with the National Guard.  In the spring we'll start the cycle of applications and interviews all over.

There were plenty of sweet and joyful times in 2008.  Two of my sisters added little ones to their families...entrusted to Bonnie was the life of a sweet baby girl and to Jamey the life of a sweet baby boy.  I haven't had the joy of holding either of them in my arms but I hold them in my heart everyday.  I hold the promise of our own children in my heart as well.  This summer Matt and I decided to adopt a sibling group from Asia!  We know there will never be a perfect time to have children and if we continued to wait we'd be waiting forever.  Since we both finally graduated in 2008 (woot!  woot!) we decided it was time to get the ball rolling.  Our application to Holt International will be mailed on my 30th birthday (January 16th)!  

With the gracious financial support of friends and family we were able to do some traveling this year.  We went on a missions trip to Latvia (Eastern Europe) to teach English at summer camps.  This missions trip piggybacked a personal vacation in the same area where we were wined and dined to our hearts content by our dearest friends Kelly and Donna who are missionaries in the area.  Our traveling didn't stop there.  While we were away from family for Christmas (sad) we were able to go to California to spend Thanksgiving with Jamey and the rest of the Hatter clan.  It broke my heart to leave them at the end of our trip.  Ben is the most incredible little boy and Jamey has shown me I have sooooo much to learn before I'm a mother.

This fall I embarked on another kind of journey.  I became an entrepreneur and a "craftivist."  I opened my knitting store, Uproar (www.uproar.etsy.com), on etsy on November 1st.  The goal of my shop is to offer not-so-ordinary knitted wear for babies and children while using the proceeds to help us pay for our adoption costs.  I've been lucky enough to be featured in an amazing blog called Deviantly Domesticated by Stephanie Hillberry(www.stephaniehillberry.blogspot.com/2008/11/marketplace-mavens-laura-of-uproar.html) and have currently sold 7 items off my website!

Through this giant blog entry you've gained a glimpse of what our year was like.  My goal with this first entry of 2009 was to catch everyone up on what 2008 was like (because I did a terrible job of blogging last year!) and to let you know what to expect in our blog in the coming year.  I anticipate this year's blog to be a chronicle of our lives...full of talk about adoption,  the paperchase, how we feel about becoming parents, and waiting.  Entries on books we read, movies we see, fun we have, and fears we face.  Lots of talk about juggling our lives and learning to renegotiate our priorities and how we feel throughout that process.  We invite you to come along if you are brave!  This life is not for the faint of heart!