Well it was not an easy decision, but ultimately necessary because 1) I kept running into bugs (I must be a magnet for them) that became too time-consuming for a non-techie mother-of-two little ones like me to troubleshoot under my timeline and 2) I need the certificate module and mistakenly gambled when I started this project that it would be released by the time I needed to complete the course (again, a fish out of water with no sense of how long these things take!) In any case I've been very pleased w/ 1.9 so far and well at least I've already made my way up the learning curve in the event we upgrade to 2.0+ later on down the road!
Many thanks for pointing out the above thread to me. It looks like just the solution I was looking for.
Katie