Americanuck

During the last couple of weeks of December we kept on pestering poor Iris to see if Tom’s passport had arrived back. Iris said that she had checked the mailbox every few days but nothing had arrived. We were completely paranoid by then, we figured something HAD to have happened to it. Tom left a message for Iris on her cell phone to ask her to walk up to the Condo and see if by chance the mailman had left it on the porch or something awful like that.

She called back later to say that yes indeed it was on his porch AND it had been opened. Turns out that Tom’s old neighbour had thought the package was for them (they claimed anyway) and had opened it but then saw it was for their ex-neighbour. They knew that Iris was coming by on occasion so they left it half under the mat so it could be seen but not blow away.

We were ecstatic and asked Iris to Fedex it up to us (Tom had left her money and envelopes for this and to forward any other mail that would show up)and she promised she would do it in the morning.

We went out for dinner to celebrate. We tried to get into the Olive Garden but the line up was HUGE so we settled for Red Robins. We couldn’t stop grinning the whole time and when we got back home we toasted with some wine.

When the Fedex package arrived we planned the day we would land. We took a look at what we had spent all this time waiting for and it was basically a counterfoil with a single entry immigration visa sticker on the passport and landing documents with his personal info on it along with one of the many photos he had to submit.

We had to complete some forms with Tom’s goods and goods to follow (which basically was his car as it would take 72 hours to export/import) but we had to go back down to the storage place to get all of the serial numbers for the electronics to complete the forms before we could import them as settlers goods. We had to re-cross the border to officially land anyway.

We decided once we got there that we may as well bring his stuff with him instead of having them as goods to follow and just leave the car for last. We packed up the car and drove back up to the border.

We explained to the border guard that Tom was landing and he wrote a note on a piece of paper for us to take in with us and told us to go to the Immigration counter. The fellow there was quite stern at first but warmed up significantly towards the end. I was dancing around I was so excited. They asked Tom to read of the paper that had his picture and his information on it to confirm everything was correct. Asked him if he had goods that he was bringing and we indicated that yes indeed we did. He told us to go to the Customs counter after we were done with him, stamped a few things, said there wasn’t any balloons or parades or anything but welcome to Canada and shook his hand.

We walked over to Customs, handed over the forms for this goods that had been pre-completed by me (which impressed the lady there, I guess a lot of people aren’t that prepared) she told me I had done even more than they expected… ah well better to be over than under prepared I say!

She stamped a few things, they didn’t even ask to inspect the goods and sent us on our way. Tom was now a Landed Immigrant of Canada!!

We had another first this year, the first Christmas we knew we would never have to say goodbye again. This was the best present that either of us could ever get. We had to keep pinching ourselves!

We had our traditional Christmas Dinner with Mom and the Boys on Christmas Eve and opened our Mom Gifts that night as usual.

Mom opening her presents

We had another blast thinking of our Christmas prank to play on the Boys. They look forward to it too so we wanted it to be original. This year we planned to put up Christmas wrap to block anyone from entering the livingroom before Tom or I got up. We taped together tons of wrap and basically blocked off the hallway so you could only go as far as the bathroom and taped signs all over it with dire warnings for those that pass!

We also put up signs on our bedroom door warning against waking us! haha! We video taped the whole process as well for our own amusement and to show the Kids later on after they had been pranked.

Us in our PJ’s

Sean surrounded by present shrapnel

We also loved the fact that we would be able to START a New Year together, not on the phone, not chatting but be able to give each other that first Kiss and Hug of the year. We should never ever take that for granted, nobody should… ever!

Chris with his spoils

Bee with her necklace

Tom opening his gifts

The drive up was lots of fun and a good laugh. We took turns driving that first day and made it all the way up past Sacramento before we reached our designated cut off time of around 6:00pm . We figured we weren’t in a giant hurry to get to Canada as this was a little mini-holiday we wouldn’t over tire ourselves.

Signature Long Arm Tom portrait

Taking Turns driving!

We found a nice clean Holiday Inn and then set off to drive to the near by Denny’s. Tom took what he thought was the street that would lead us into the restaurant parking lot but it turned out to be a Southbound entrance to Interstate 5! Oh my gosh we were laughing so hard. We had to drive a ways down before we found an exit and then an entrance to go back North again. The funniest part was once we got back to the town we had stopped in he almost did it again!! I had fun ribbing him about that one! Of course HE had fun bugging me about the fact I wasn’t paying attention to the fact we were almost out of gas until thing dingy thing went off on his car. He pointed out that the DRIVER should be paying attention to that.. haha!

We TRIED to get up early but you know what they say about the best laid plans…We weren’t too far behind schedule though and really we made excellent time. We made it all the way to Weed before we stopped for lunch at a Subway. We had hit snow going through the pass and I let Tom take over driving. Number one I wasn’t used to his car and number two if it got into any dodgy areas I didn’t want to be the one to damage it in any way!!

We made it through the pass without any problems though. The highway crews had done a good job clearing it and there really wasn’t a HUGE amount of snow anyway. Seeing Mount Shasta again was cool. I had seen it from the air a number of times but hadn’t seen it from the ground level in 15 years and it’s a beautiful sight.

The second day we got up to Salem Oregon and decided to stop again for the night. We found what looked like a decent place from the outside. Inside however … eehhhh! It was supposed to be a non smoking room and it reeked of smoke, the carpets were pretty gross and the fridge smelled of things long dead but it would do for the night. We had passed by a Ross store so I HAD to stop there for a bit and I found some GREAT deals on clothes and then we had dinner at Marie Callender’s.. YUM!

Tom did the calculations and figured out that we would be able to make home that night IF we could make it to Bellingham before the storage places closed for the day. We got going as soon as possible and made it in plenty of time to find a reasonable storage place and empty out the car but for our clothes.

We then headed straight for the border, me driving as Tom hated the thought of being the one doing the talking. We got there and the line up was non-existent which was great! We drove up to the booth (Tom cringing cos he says I should have SLOWLY coasted up and to quote him “Geesh you’re killing me here” hahaha!!) and I (knowing full well that the speed I approached was more than acceptable to my people) greeting the border dude with a bright smile.

We told him that Tom was coming up to visit for Christmas, and that we were waiting for his passport to come back so he could land permanently and he was very pleasant and friendly. He asked what he was bringing and Tom said just his clothes. He jokingly asked if there were any Armani Suits or anything to which we both burst out laughing and said No and he wished us a good night and waved us on.

We were in Canada! Yayyyyyy we did it!!

Poor Tom had a lot of work to do. Luckily he had already found a buyer for his Condo as Iris one of his co-workers hearing that he was going to be moving eventually expressed interest in buying it. At that point the timeframe was unknown so when the time came to actually do it Tom checked to see if she was still interested and she was!

They got started on the process of the sale and Tom also go to working on getting rid of a LOT of his posessions. He would be moving into my place which was already pretty jammed up with stuff and really I had all that we would need. It was more his personal stuff that he would need to bring. This meant that he had a lot of bigger ticket items to unload.

We planned the big move for mid December hoping that the weather would hold out as was taking time off and we were going to drive up from California together. The plan was to put his stuff in storage somewhere close to the border so when the passport request came to send it in to Buffalo to get the immigration visa attached it would be just a matter of driving across the line and ‘Land’ along with his stuff. He had decided that he would only take what would fit in his car and no more.

One night in early December I logged onto E-Client as normal expecting to see the same ole same ole and to my shock I saw the words ‘Decision Made’ and that a letter had been sent to Tom regarding the decision!! I started shaking I was so excited!! I tried to call Tom on his cell but he didn’t answer. I left him a rambling excited message and waited for him to call me back. It didn’t say what the decision was, for that matter if it was a good one but in my bones I felt that it was over and we were approved. When we called me back we had an excited conversation and he said that the MINUTE he got the letter he would call me and let me know what it said.

Decision Made on E-Client!!

It finally arrived and it was still a week shy of when of the planned move. He considered flying to Buffalo and getting the visa but there was no guarantee that it would be done the same day so we decided to courier his passport there and then ask Iris to stop by and check the mailbox (as the passport had to be sent to the address on record and chances are we would be on our way to Canada by the time it arrived)

It scared us to do this as she wouldn’t be living there right away and we were afraid it would get lost or something but we had to take the chance.

By the time I was ready to fly down poor Tom was still struggling to get rid of his things. He had posted a sign in his complex and was letting the stuff go for a song. Towards the end he was giving away the remainders. By the time I arrive he had managed to unload all but a few things and even the Bed which he had sold to his neighbour. He agreed to let us keep it until the morning we were going to leave.

The place was still in huge disaray. Tom always like to say he works best under pressure (not true btw haha)so I took over and organized everything. Put all the junk or donations in one section of the livingroom and then helped him consolidate everything he WAS considering taking with him, boxing it up and keeping a list of the contents, numbering each box and cross-referencing the box to a master list (see I told you I was anal)

Bee the packing Nazi

We made several runs to the Charity places and mutiple walks to the dumpster to get rid of the junk it was pretty late by then but we were all done and fell into bed exhausted!

The inspection done etc Tom had already given Iris the keys and told her he would send the other one down to her after we were gone.

In the morning we packed up the car to the rafters locked up for the final time and then set out on the drive up to Canada!

Locking up for the last time

I think there is one more square inch on the top left…

Anyone who has ever gone through the process of immigration can totally feel our pain. This is a huge ordeal to get through and causes a lot of stress and anxiety. We decided that I would tackle filling out the forms (as I’m good at that kind of thing) and Tom would worry about getting a medical done (the results of which are provided to immigration) fingerprints for an FBI background check etc as well provide every address he had lived at as well as account for every minute of his time from the day he turned 18.

Thank goodness he was Mr. Anal and had kept practically every paystub since the day he started working as well as records of all addresses. Really how many times is this type of thing necessary? I mean one doesn’t go through life thinking that they may need this stuff some day.

Me on the other hand, being Mrs. Sentimental, had kept all of our emails from before we became a couple up until the present date as well as every ticket stub from every venue we had attended, every airline stub, every birthday card etc so proof of relationship was easily a slam dunk.

I traveled down to visited Tom and took along with me all the forms that needed his signature and gathered what proof he had to provide from his end (his travel dates, copies of tickets etc. We not only enjoyed our visit as always but it also had another purpose to ensure that we were 100% ready to submit the forms.

We had to wait until the criminal check came back from the FBI as well as the medical exam being done before we could send the application for sponsorship and application for immigration. Finding one of the approved CIC doctors in the LA area who had a clue what to do was a pain for Tom. CIC had just changed the process and were allowing medicals to be done up front instead of waiting for them to be requested along the way. This was supposed to speed up the process and in theory cut it in half which we figured meant six months as previously they said the average was a year.

We put it all together after agonizing over the forms for the fiftieth time, paid the fees and bit the bullet and mailed it in late March 2003. It took THAT long to get everything back! I asked our Department assistant at work to help me courier it out and tried not to stress out anymore. I found some great groups online of people who were going through the process or already had. One of them was a Yahoo immigration club that I joined and still stop by from time to time to help those who are now going through the process. The advise from this group was invaluable to me.

About a month after we had mailed out the application I received a letter saying I had been approved as a sponsor and that Tom’s application had been forwarded to Buffalo for processing. Yipppeeeeeee we were on our way!

We continued our visits back and forth as if nothing had really changed. I never had any problems with the Customs people but Tom was always grilled as to how he knew someone waaaaaaaay up here when he came to visit me before we got married. We weren’t sure if we would get more hassle or less saying we were coming to visit our spouse. We were nervous to say anything in case they questioned whether we would actually leave the country when the time was due. I took to traveling with the sponsorship letter and then eventually when Tom got his acknowledgment of receipt letter saying they had all they needed and that no interview would be required he kept that to show in case anyone questioned us. We didn’t have any troubles though crossing back and forth. I think it helped that we were flying instead of being close enough to drive.

The months after Tom received the AOR letter n May seemed to drag on forever. We both got into a habit of running to our mailboxes or obsessively signing into the online E-client to see if there was any change to the status of our application, every day we were disappointed.

To add to the stress, Cinnamon had severely smashed her back leg after my landlords had a loud argument that ended with a HUGE bang which scared the crap out of all of us. Cinnamon had run blindly through the house and I had no idea that she had hurt herself so badly. I saw her sitting behind the chair in the livingroom and I went to bed. She had at that point broken the big bone in her leg but was walking round on the small one (shiver). She then jumped up on the boys bunk bed and shatter what remained of the bone. I am still oblivious to it and was getting ready for work as normal. The Boys were at their Fathers so I was alone. It was strange that I hadn’t seen Cinny as she always came to watch me get ready and I almost left for the day but something made me look for her. I found her in shock with her foot basically dangling free.

I rushed her to the vet and so began what turned out to be over a YEAR of vet visits and surgery before she was healed. The landlords help to pay for the surgery as they felt bad but it still ended up being a pretty penny. The Vets ended up redoing it a few times and re-casting her leg many MANY times for free. They were all great! They also boarded her when I went on my trips to see Tom. She spent a year in a dog kennel until she was healed (with breaks that were monitored to keep her activity down)

Her Scar after Surgery

Her home for a year

In October on one of my hopefully soon to be last visits to see Tom in L.A. we decided to pay one last visit to the Magic Kingdom. Gosh we had a riot. The park was all but empty and we did the whole thing in half a day. Every freaking ride there was NO lineup!! We got to go on some rides twice right away (Indy!!!) Winnie the Pooh got fresh with me! He patted my bottom when Tom had finally convinced me to push aside all the little kids waiting in line and get a picture with my favourite character. It surprised me I can tell ya!

In front of our Fave ride!!

We have our reasons!

Pawsy Pooh Bear

Tom didn’t know why I asked him to smile BIG until after the picture he didn’t look up before he posed haha!

In November of 2003 we figured we HAD to be getting close to being approved. At the airport after one of my visits down I proposed to Tom that we just say the hell with it, he quits his job and moves up to live with us until it was all over. I could manage to support us through it all and it just seemed silly at this point to be apart any longer. He agreed enthusiastically and we started making the plans for the big move. It was finally time for us to live together for GOOD.