In Training

Missed my blog birthday... AGAIN!

Apparently, it's tradition!  I always seem to forget...

I have been blogging here since November 8th, 2005.  FIVE YEARS! 

I think a little trip down memory lane is in order --

My very first post. It seems so long ago now! I've really grown. I started blogging because Royal was with the Marines and out of contact for the very first time since we'd met.

How we met. Almost six years ago...

Learning to understand his English + Bootneck speak. I've heard communication is important in a relationship!

Inspiring day at the gun store.  I used to work at a gun shop (yes really) and this is about one incredible day. 

A Royal Marines Commando training story by my Royal. 

I'm no longer Royal's girlfriend. We're engaged!

My very first Conmando post: Watch out for the 'Conmando'.  There would be many, many more to come on this S.O.B. (including more than one in 2010).  Probably one of the first times I was linked by the Mudville Gazette!

How to handle a drunken chav. Excellent story.

You are not welcome here (Part I).  A Walkabout bar in England refused a drink to two Royal Marines in uniform that had come in after a funeral. This was even linked by Grim at Blackfive!

We got hitched in Tucson, Arizona (my hometown)!

We moved in together!  In Britain!

A weekend away in Glasgow; OR the big ol' protest we ran into.

The banking saga. Royal was getting ready to deploy and the British banks wouldn't have me!

The first round of deployment troubles.

Is there not enough jobs in America?  Working in Britain.

Padres, doctors, hospital visits.  Pretty much all while Royal was deployed.

The Faslane Peace Camp. A photo essay. Someone went so you wouldn't have to!

Oh yeah, I had mono and wasn't told.  Found out after returning Stateside (unfortunately without Royal) and visiting my U.S. doctor.

Finally letting everyone in on what Royal's job was in the Marines.

Go Home British Soldiers, Go Home. Royal Marines (including Royal) mistreated by Scottish yobs.

The joys of the bi-continental military marriage!

More fun, this time with Sky.

Two long years working on U.S. Immigration for Royal. (Best to scroll down & start at the beginning!)

A dear friend and Marine lost. We remember.

Also worth a look: Royal in America - funny incidents Royal has with people here thanks to his Britishness.  My photo posts - phots that are important to me.

Thank you to everyone that's stopped by these past five years!  Especially to Pat at Past Imperfect and the wonderful guys at Right Hand of God!

My little golden helper

He's a yellow lab, but I always call him my golden boy (aka Rio). 

This is how our golden helper helped us move into our new home...


Played with extra cardboard


Watched us get paper cuts, misplace screws, tools, documents and our minds...


Yeah.


Best of all, his happy handsome face ALWAYS makes us smile!  He loves his new home... and barking at cows.

House Hunting: Part II

I was going to write a long detailed post about how much it sucks to fight underwriters on your possible home loan.  But we all know that, right?  I'm sure most of your stories far surpass mine in horror. 

So.

WE GOT IT!  We got it and have now moved into our very first home!

Here are a few photos, though of course we haven't even begun to decorate!


The back of the house - lovely red brick with a porch!


Our backyard and beyond!  We've seen squirrels, cows, robins and cardinals so far.


A not-so-great phot of part of the kitchen. Yes, my Royal can eat a box of cereal in one sitting.  You can't tell, but the kitchen is actually a pretty red color that we would have never picked ourselves, but just LOVE.


Our pretty things in the big kitchen cabinet.  That red is pretty much the red on the other kitchen walls.


One wall of the living room.  Brand new telly was my husband's favorite part of moving...


Part of the office

Just a few phots for now.  More when we're settled in!

YAY.

House Hunting: Part I.

House Hunting: Part 1

To start this saga, I'll have to go back a bit.  As you may remember, upon entering the U.S., Royal wasn't allowed to work until he received a work permit -- that ended up being almost six months.  We knew about this beforehand, so that plus a few other similar things kept us from purchasing a home right away.

So we began the process of saving money for a down payment on a house of our very own.  A couple months ago, we reached our goal!  We'd been keeping an eye on the market for some time and even attended some open houses to get a better idea of what to expect.  It's the first house purchasing experience for both of us. 

We contacted a local realtor, Nessa - she sold my parents their house 16 years ago! - and described what we were looking for: a brick 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with a garage and fenced back yard (if possible.).  She gave us about 20 sheets with houses & info and told us to put them in the order we wanted to see them.  It was... a long process!  But we finally picked our top fifteen and went from there.  Our #1 choice was far and away our favorite!  No other was even close.

We met up with Nessa for our very first house viewing aaannnnddd... our top choice was in negotiations with another buyer!  I was disappointed, but Royal was crushed.  Even without seeing the inside, I think he'd already moved in!  We went on to look at 10 houses and all of them were far from what we were looking for.  I mean really, if you're trying to sell your house at least move the huge reptile terrariums - yes, plural - out first!  Luckily, everyone had told us not to get discouraged our first time out so we were prepared for the wave of emotions: the freak-out and then minor depression. 

Nessa widened the search and we made another house hunting appointment.  When she handed us our 'to-do' packet on the day our top choice was first up!  We were over the moon!  The negotiations had fallen through and it was ours for the taking.  We knew it was perfect for us the second we walked through the door.  Even the darn paint colors were perfect!  A gorgeous sage green in the bathrooms, a dark red in the kitchen and a lovely desert shade for the rest of the house.  Two car garage in a nice neighborhood, even nice landscaping.  Privacy fenced in the back on two sides and the best part --- NOTHING behind the house but trees!

After trying to take a serious look at the house, we stood in front of Nessa and my Dad with glistening, wide eyes and said we'd take it!

Next up: the godforsaken process that is: applying for a home loan.

House Hunting: Part II.

U.S. Immigration Interview : Part III

Begin with Part 1.

Yikes, so I forgot something that should have been in Part II!  How embarrassing, right?!  As soon as we walked into the Immigration lady's office she'd asked us to be seated.  Then she asked us why we didn't have an attorney present.  We explained the quickness of the interview date.  She allowed us to step forward and sign a waiver saying we were aware our attorney wasn't present and that were prepared to deal with whatever came of the whole thing by ourselves.  What a way to start one of the most important interviews of our lives!  Then came the phone call about the doctor:

Then she got on the phone and started speaking to someone about the doctor Royal went to for his mandatory medical exam. She asked the person on the phone when they stopped accepting exams from said doc. She asked the person to send her that email.
I remember thinking, oh hell no. No you don't. See, they give you a list of doctors that they will accept sealed medical exams from. Royal had to travel an hour to see this guy, and it was ages ago!
Surely, they weren't going to reject us because they didn't have an adequate medical exam...

U.S. Immigration Interview : Part II

Part I here.

We are there.  We are in the building.  This is it.

It's a big building with lots of windows.  It's very tall and the second floor is open to the rest of it.  There weren't many people around.  We walked through security and were told by a very nice security guy that interviews are upstairs.  We walked by a big open room where several people were waiting in lines of chairs.  Everything was really neat and clean.  We went up the stairs and were immediately greeted by an extremely chipper lady.  I mean, really GREETED!  The building was so quiet, we didn't expect a big "Hi, how are you?!"  She took our name and in return gave us one of those light up vibrating pagers (the first photo) like you find in restaurants.  We laughed about it.  Why wouldn't they use them?

U.S. Immigration Interview : Part I

Our U.S. Immigration tales from the beginning found here.

The last stage in the permanent resident process (aka Green Card) is the interview.  The big scary interview, which as it turns out, is not that big and scary if you haven't done anything wrong!  At any rate, we received our (SECOND for goodness sake) interview date through last month in a letter.  Our interview date was 10 days from the day we received the letter.  Thankfully, we'd both alerted our employers to things like this before we took the jobs, so that was immediately and easily taken care of.

We called our attorney to make sure she got notice - she didn't.*  See, your immigration attorney is supposed to go with you to your interview.  It's part of their job.  Because of the short notice - usually they give 30 - 45 days notice - our attorney said she couldn't make it and would we like to reschedule our interview?  HELL NO.  We would go without her and take whatever came our way.

We hurried to Staples to make all the copies that our letter told us we needed.  Spent about $10.00 on copies.  We had two folders, one of copies and one of originals -- just in case.  We put them in the order they were listed in the letter.  We checked them.  Twice.  Okay, maybe more like four times.  We picked out which outfits we were going to wear - dressy, but conservative.  We are going to exude honesty.  We put the address in the sat nav.  We Mapquested as well -- just in case.

Day of, we got moving on time and arrived at the large, but nice looking, government building early.  Do we wait in the truck for a while or go in right away?  Maybe they can see us early if we show up early.  Deep breath. 
If Royal doesn't get approved for permanent residency in the United States then the last TWO years of stress and money and time and paperwork and stress and personal information and the attorney (and more money!) are for nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Not only that, but I guess I am moving back to Britain - leaving my family again, neither of us will have jobs, no place to live, not going back to school... Another deep breath. 

We walk inside. 
 

* I can't tell you how many times our attorney has received paperwork we haven't and vice versa.  We are both supposed to receive copies of everything.  Freakin' government agencies. 

Green Card, Green Card, Just Need the One Green Card

Just the one. I know it's been a fairly short time - at least in immigration time - but by golly I'm ready to get my husband's permanent residency! I believed we started filing through this most recent channel last June (2008). So that means it's been seven -almost- eight months.

See, this is where it gets fun. The last step, the one we are waiting on, is the interview. We both show up at the appointed time in the appointed place and they ask questions relating to our relationship and how it came to be. Our attorney attends with us to help. Not long after (hopefully!) we receive Royal's permanent residency - green card.

Well, we received an email from our attorney in late October saying that we had an interview date in November - BUT it was set up for the wrong district (just a few hours away) and we couldn't go. THE WRONG FREAKIN' DISTRICT. We were totally prepared to drive as far and wide as we had to (What? You want we should drive to Maine? Okay!!) but it doesn't work that way. Our attorney immediately got in touch and had it sent to the correct district.

That's not all, try this: The accidental district (as I sometimes refer to it) we were sent to processes applications and receives appointments much faster than the district we've been sent to now - the correct one. So, from the fingerprinting stage of the process it was 2 1/2 months before we heard about our (fake) interview appointment. Since the mistake and the resend it's been about three months already.

Somebody in the government let the ball drop and we are having to pay. Yuck. I've said before that it's not such a big deal waiting now. At least we're together now, right? But the waiting is starting to wear. There's just more to it than that now.
The faster he becomes a permanent resident, the faster we can file for U.S. Citizenship/Naturalization. We have to wait 3 years from the date he becomes a permanent resident (even then, it takes anywhere from six to 18 months to get that taken care of). This is a big deal not only because Royal wants to be a United States Citizen, but because the careers that he has been looking forward to (policeman, various security positions, etc.) all require it. I want it to be over for him.

Past immigration posts.

Immigration permits falling from the sky

Oh sometimes I wish.

Good news! Royal's work and travel permits came through the mail about a week ago! Travel first, then two days later the work permits.
They arrived just about 75 days after we filed the first paperwork (not our first ever immigration paperwork, that we filed from Britain in September of '07, we've been navigating a different course since July-ish of this year).

The travel papers - we recieved two original copies - mean that Royal can now leave the U.S.A. and go back home and probably get back into the U.S.A. when he returns. However, it's not guaranteed they'll let him back in. There are about three different warnings on the paper about that... but it's better than nothing and it certainly means something to have them.

Royal practically threw the travel papers aside, nothing was going to mean anything until those work papers showed up! It's been a good 4 1/2-almost-5 months of sitting at home all day and all night. Not able to contribute to the household, not knowing what kind of job would be waiting for him... He's a good man and as soon as we let some people know the permit came through he had two very nice job offers!

He spent a weekend thinking things over and accepted a job with a landscaping company - good pay, great benefits, great hours and most of all, he gets to be in the great outdoors AND they are willing to work around him going to university (eventually!).

We are so blessed! Now we wait for a phone call with a date for an interview. No one knows how long that might be, but we're not bothered 'cause we're together.

Previous Immigration Posts:

Still Alive
Wonderful World of Immigration
Immigration: Fingerprinting Stage

Immigration: Fingerprinting Stage

Hip Hip Hooray! Our attorney called and informed us that we have a fingerprinting appointment next month!

This is great news as we've been waiting for a while now (though, not as long as the step before thank goodness). What's even better is that it should only be about another 2-3 months before Royal's work permit comes through! The man cannot wait to get to work, which I admire greatly.

For those that are new: I am American and my husband (aka Royal) is newly out of the Royal Marine Commandos - he served as a sniper. We are currently working on permanent residency (or green card). It's a branch of the immigration through a family member tree.

I tell you, we are going to be expert by the time we're through!

Other immigration posts:
Still Alive
Wonderful World of Immigration
Immigration permits falling from the sky