M.I.A. (Missing in Action)

I cannot believe it has been two long months since my last post.  Time seems to fly by us at warp speed, especially as Mia continues to get bigger and bigger each day.  Let me give you a rundown of what has transpired with the Taylor's:

Adoption Dance
First, I never officially posted how our Adoption Dance fundraiser turned out: it was awesome!  We had so many people turn out to spend the evening with us, and everyone had a great time.  I was afraid the whole thing might seem kind of lame, but we had lots of compliments on how fun the evening was.  We had oodles of desserts for our buffet, our great friends and DJ Kenton and Emily Smith rocked the dance floor, and our auction turned into quite the event.  When Jana and I closed bidding at 8:30, people were anxiously standing by "their" item to make sure no one else snaked them!  Together with the Hennessy's, we raised over $3000, which is over $1500 for each of our families!  We were completely blown away and moved by the generosity of all our friends, family, and church family.

The Big 3-0
Yes, I finally turned 30.  Although I was not exactly looking forward to this birthday as I have to those in the past, it turns out 30 isn't so bad.  The actual day started out with 30 free minutes before Bible study to myself, in which I treated myself (and BFF Shari who's bday is the day after mine) to Starbucks.  I also received flowers from no less than 3 different friends, and a subscription to People magazine from my mom.  Is it sad that I am almost most excited about People?  The following weekend my hubby planned a date night for us, which began with coffee while walking along Mass Ave and later turned into a surprise dinner party with some of my closest friends, sister, brother-in-law, and brother.  Overall, it was a great end to this year's birthday celebrations.

Operation Baby Boy Taylor
Is still painfully underway.  After a frustrating run in with Immigration, we have finally been fingerprinted and are anxiously awaiting our I-171H approval letter.  It's been over 2 weeks, so we're hoping it'll arrive in the next week or so.  And with that, our dossier will finally be complete.  I am so ready to have all this out of our hands and just to be waiting.
 
While we wait, we'll be planning a few more fund-raising opportunities, one being a garage sale sometime over the summer.  One other big thing is a matching grant opportunity with Lifesong for Orphans.  This would be a BIG deal if we received it, and they are currently processing our application, so any prayers would be appreciated.

And lastly, we just opened our Just Love Coffee fund-raising store.  I meant to do this sooner, but never really found the right time.  This awesome company was started by a fellow AWAA dad who wanted to help other adoptive families raise money through the sales of fair-trade coffee.  Here's how it works: visit our store front (see the link to the right), and for every bag of coffee purchased, we receive $5 towards our adoption.  Pretty cool, right?  And we'll keep this open through the rest of our adoption process, which could be quite a while yet. 

Working Girl
Yes, it's true.  It was with great fear and trepidation that I returned to work full-time with Xerox (and now you know the real reason why the blog has suffered more than normal).  While I had been quietly looking around for something else that paid a bit more than retail, I wasn't really looking to go back; the whole opportunity just fell into my lap and everything happened so fast I didn't really even have time to tell many people until it was a done deal.  I will admit that the week leading up to my return, I was a wreck.  This was just not what I had planned for our life.  I was grieving the end of my semi-stay at home mommy era and the end of life as we knew it.  I was worried about how Mia would transition to my being gone so much more, spending one day a week at daycare, and how I would learn to juggle new responsibilities with my current ones.  Thankfully I was able to negotiate my return with a bit of flexibility, so I am working from home two days a week.
How are we four weeks in?  Turns out, I actually really enjoy being back.  Everyone at work was happy to see me return, and although I'm dog tired by 9pm, it's working out well for us all.

So that's our life in a nutshell.  Travis continues to work and develop his ministry and is busy finishing up his remaining credits this fall.  Mia continues to grow a little bigger each day and is definitely in her "terrible twos," which is in one sense awful because some days it feels like she spends the entire day in time-out, but in another sense incredible when I think back how much she has changed since last summer.  Life continues on, and we are becoming more and more excited for the day when our son will finally join us.