NOA2 - One Week Later

(I copy and pasted this entry from Chris and I's shared blog, which will explain at least the first paragraph. :) I don't want to share the address to the new blog with the world at large, so if you want a link to it let me know and I'll email it to you. Thanks!)


Chris and I have spent the past week going back and forth about who needed to write this blog update. I said he did because his posts are much more entertaining than mine; he has more of a flair for words, which is, frankly, kind of annoying since I have a degree in creative writing. ;) His opinion was that I needed to write it, mostly because he’s already written more entries on here than I have. I tried to stand my ground for the past week, but it’s finally become apparent that he won’t give in and write it. So here it goes, my attempt to be as entertaining in an entry as Chris!

One week ago today, we received the news that our petition for a fiance visa was approved by the USCIS! I had spent about an hour that night researching information about the visa, and I had a funny feeling that that day could be the day. When I logged into the USCIS website, I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the words “post-decision activity” under our status. As Chris and I often do, we had a video chat still going even though Chris had gone to sleep. I tried yelling at him several times, even tried annoying him with the ringing noise from another messenger service, but nothing shook him from his sleep. I was so excited to share the news!! But after a few attempts of annoying him, I gave up and decided to just spread the news to my family and friends via Facebook, text, and email. I called my mom and was bawling (tears of joy, of course), telling her the news. Chris finally woke up a couple of hours later and I was able to tell him. It almost seemed like a dream. It feels like it’s been AGES since we submitted our petition. In reality, it was almost four months to the day since it had been received. But our long unsure wait is over!

According to Chris’ timeline in his very first post on here, we are now at step 3 (shown here as step 1). As a refresher, this is what we still have to do:

1. Once petition is approved, the actual visa application process is started.
2. Wait.
3. Have medical check.
4. Have interview.
5. Get approved (hopefully!)

We should hopefully be getting a date for the interview in the next week or two, which will give us a much more concrete idea of when the visa will be approved. From what we’ve read, it shouldn’t be more than 2-3 months now.

I think that the excitement of this news is lost on some people. When I first started saying the petition had been approved, it was understandably confusing to some. I got comments on Facebook about how they thought that meant Chris would actually be coming here and it was sad that wasn’t the case. Personally I took that as a bit of raining on my parade. Unless you’ve been in this situation, where you’ve been waiting for four very long months just to get word of whether or not your vision of the future has a possibility of happening…well, you just can’t understand the excitement of moving to the next step in that scenario. No, Chris can’t come right now. Yes, we still have a few months ahead of us. But the important thing is it’s moving forward! And we will have more concrete dates to work with now, rather than guessing when something may happen.

All in all, Chris and I couldn’t be happier! We figured late May would be the latest the petition would get approved so we are a month ahead of schedule. We should be able to keep our wedding date (September 23rd) now, and hopefully be able to stick to the plan of having him come out in August.



*Disclaimer: “knock on wood” about this entire blog post and it’s statements regarding dates when things should happen.