Sunday, January 31, 2010

All wrapped up in you...

I had been knitting a blanket for Luke for months now, and I finally finished it just before I left :)  I was very happy - I really wanted him to have it while I was away.  It meant a lot for me to have him be able to wrap himself up in something I made especially for him, so he can feel like it's me hugging him too :)

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Package #1

I took a photo of our I-130 package...it's pretty thick :)  Once we got it all organized in order to send it, it was even thicker...once we added all of our cover letters and things like that....

So here it is:

Friday, January 29, 2010

A beautiful January afternoon....

Luke and I went to visit with Larz, Wendy,  Roman and Gianna last week, to say goodbye before I leave.  I've been babysitting for Roman and Gianna, on and off, for the past year and a half or so.  They're family by marriage (Luke is their cousin), but they are most definitely my family!  I love them :)  I'm sure going to be sad not to see them for 8-10 months - kids grow a lot in that period of time!  But I'm going to try and stay in touch as best as I can.

 

After our visit with the kids, we stopped in at Kendrick Lake Park, out near Jewell Ave & Kipling in Lakewood.  It's a great park!  There's a 1 mile paved loop around the lake, which is great in the summer...but we just walked a little ways to a small bridge overlooking the lake.  I had been wanting to get some nice shots of Luke and I before I go.  I'm talking planned shots, not arms length shots...drag out the tripod and be creative in some way! :)  Here's some of my favourites:  

 


And a shot of the lake:  


All in all, it was a wonderful day!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Adventures on Loveland Pass

Luke had an overnight field trip up to Arapahoe Basin to take a group skiing - they were providing a hotel room for him and everything!  So I decided to drive up later in the day and meet him!  It's almost like a paid vacation ;)  He only had to drive the kids a little bit, so we had most of the day together, which was great.  Arapahoe Basin is along Loveland Pass, Hwy 6, near Frisco, Colorado.

Luke's computer was being delivered on Thursday, so I arranged with our neighbour to pick up our packages.  But according to UPS and Fedex, they left them on the porch!  So I had to deal with the packages before I left,  which meant I got up to Frisco kind of late....which meant I had to drive over the mountains in the dark, which I was not too excited about!  But I made it just fine...and the car did great, I was impressed :)

We stayed at the Holiday Inn in Frisco, CO, which was a fairly short drive from where the kids were skiing.  We headed out in the morning on Friday and took a drive up Loveland Pass, stopping everywhere we could to take photos (Luke is so patient with me and my need to stop all the time!) .  We stopped at Arapahoe Basin and took some shots of the people skiing, and then once we got to the summit, we took  photos of each other at the Continental Divide sign.  It started snowing shortly after we got through the pass, so I decided to head home a little earlier than planned.  But it was a wonderful time!  It was great to be with Luke - I didn't want to spend the night away from him when I'm going to be away for so long already.  



This was the view outside our hotel room - it was gorgeous!

Luke needed to put chains on his bus for the drive back up the mountain later that day, so I took advantage of the opportunity to take his picture doing it :) 


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Changes

We're going to be seeing some changes in our lives in the next few weeks. We've been trying to figure out all the logistics of it for a month or so now, and we finally have a solid plan.

As some of you know, Luke is American (born and raised in Colorado) and I am Canadian (Victoria-born, Sooke-raised). The original plan when we got married was for Luke to immigrate to Canada with me, since we both loved it up there. God obviously had different plans for us, as everytime we got close to being able to send the paperwork, or complete the paperwork, there was a barrier standing in our way. We delt with major health issues, major financial issues...you name it, we faced it. It's an expensive proposition, and it seemed like everytime we came up with the money to do it, something majorly pressing took it all away. Anyway, long story short, we have come to love our lives here in Colorado, and want to stay in the US. The plan is now to have me immigrate to the US and live here permanently. We love the house that Luke bought, and we want to stay there a long time. And plus, Luke is starting school to get his Bachelors and Masters in Accounting...so we have a lot to stay here for. We've talked about moving to the west coast someday - possibly Washington State or Oregon, so we can be much closer to my family. This is especially important if/when we have children someday.

Anyway, so with me immigrating to the states, I have to go back to Canada while my paperwork is being filed. I could come and visit if we choose, like always, but when Luke files the paperwork to begin with, I have to be out of the country. So I have a plane ticket back home to Victoria on Feb. 1st. Sadly, that's only a couple of weeks away. The whole process could take 8-10 months it's looking like, so I will likely not be able to move to the US until maybe Sept/Oct...possibly later. So we're looking at a long time being apart, which really stinks.

We're really hoping that we can arrange it so that we don't go more than a couple months between visits. At the moment it's looking like Luke will hopefully be able to come up to Victoria during his Spring Break from school. So that would be wonderful! And then he has the summer off for the most part, so we're hoping that he can spend a great deal of it in Canada with me! And then who knows what stage we'll be in the paperwork at that point in time...we'll have to go with the flow until then.

It's going to be extremely difficult, and very lonely, especially for Luke. Thankfully I will have my family, as always, so that will be really nice. Sadly, he will only have the cats to keep him company...but I'm hoping that with the constant phone calls and IM's we'll do okay. So I would love it if you all could keep us in your thoughts and prayers....pray that our case gets complete and we get an interview ASAP!! Apparently Montreal is a very very slow consulate, so we're hoping and praying that they find a way to change that this year and get rid of the backlog! ASAP!!! :)

So, that's just an update on what's happening with us....I'm planning on keeping this blog very updated so that everyone can see our progress, and Luke can keep up on my day to day life in Victoria :)