Yes, it’s true. After two months of drought, I’m blogging again. Don’t expect a deluge, however. Things are pretty busy these days.

So in the last two months we’ve moved into our new house (photos here – click on the rooms to see them) and have been having a great old time furnishing it. We’ve also found that owning a house zaps a lot of time. It’s quite something, really. We had a lovely little housewarming party on September 25 thanks to the amazing generosity of our great realtor Linda.

Also my sister Erin got married on October 2. It was a freezing cold day for an outdoor wedding, but at least it was sunny and the reception was in a cozy, closed-in shelter house complete with a fire in the fireplace. The bride was glowing all day. It was a great celebration!

And we continue to pull together all the last-minute details for our own wedding celebration on October 22. I’m really looking forward to it, but I’m also looking forward to it being done and our lives finally slowing down a bit. It’s amazing what a hectic, busy month September was! We’ll be honeymooning in northern Michigan (Bellaire, Charlevoix, Petoskey, Mackinac, etc.) – a location neither of us has been to. Should be a good time and beautiful that time of year. And even if it rains all week, it will be a whole six days together with nothing else to do!

In the meantime, James is improving his computer programming skills and looking for work – full time or freelance. If you need a web developer and have any leads, please get in touch with him. He’s set up a portfolio (with all his contact info) over here.

That’s a summary of the news from the last two months. I’ll post after our October 22 event if not before!

p.s. No word on James’ green card yet. The vigil continues…

James just got an email notifying him that his Employment Authorization has been approved! That went really fast. The timeline was as follows:

• June 16 – Mailed application
• July 10 – Received notification of receipt (which stated they had received the application on June 29 – or July 8 if you believe the website instead) which stated that processing would take 30-90 days
• August 6 – Received notice of approval (via email)

Ironically, the USCIS website states that they are currently processing EAD applications received on February 1. Which renders the USCIS processing times table pretty much useless.

Oh well. We’re pretty excited! And have renewed faith in the timeliness of the USCIS.

Last weekend James and I traveled to Des Moines, Iowa to visit my sister and her fiance. We enjoyed our time with them and seeing where they live and work and go to church. On Saturday we made the 45 minute drive to Pella, the town where I grew up. I lived there from age 6 to 16 although it’s now been nearly 15 years since we moved away.

Going back to Pella is always a rather surreal experience. I’ve been back 6 or 7 times since we moved; the last time was 4 or 5 years ago. So many things have changed, and yet there is always plenty that remains exactly the same. The latest additions since I was last there are the Vermeer windmill at the Historical Village and the Molengracht plaza. (We got to have lunch with dear friends who live in one of the condos above the Molengracht. Beautiful place!) Various parts of Pella – especially the two schools that I attended – are still frequent settings of my dreams, something that made going back and seeing the actual locations yet more surreal.

Another factor this time exacerbating the surreality even further was the Harley-Davidson convention that had taken over much of downtown. It seemed that Sturgis up and moved to Pella. Weird.

In any case, it was great fun showing James around the town where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. And of course getting to indulge in the joy that is Jaarsma Bakery. Ah those Dutch letters…

There is a lot of confusing information out there about whether or not someone who is in the U.S. on a fiance visa can get a Social Security Number. The bottom line is that you can.

James blogs about his adventures getting an SSN here.

…the more confusing they are!

As the USCIS keeps changing the process for securing employment authorization and getting permanent residency, we weren’t quite sure what to expect when we mailed in James’ applications on June 16. When we sent in our fiance visa application on December 17, 2003, we had a notice of receipt within five days. Twenty-three days after mailing the I-485: Application To Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status and the I-765: Application for Employment Authorization we still hadn’t gotten anything notifying us that our application had been received. What’s more the checks we had sent with the applications – $315 and $175 respectively – hadn’t shown up in our account.

Needless to say, we were rather relieved when we arrived home Saturday evening from a trip to Chicago to discover two envelopes in the mail from the USCIS (actually, I think the stationery they print everything on still says “Department of Justice” and “Immigration and Naturalization Services”): one receipt for the I-485 and one for the I-765. We think the hold-up was the new procedure which requires the Detroit field office (to which we mailed our applications) to forward everything on to the National Benefits Center rather than processing the applications themselves. Anyway, we now have a case number which we can use to track the status of our applications.

According to the USCIS website, the employment authorization process is currently taking 30-90 days and the permanent residency process is taking 120-180 days. While we wish those numbers were smaller, it’s still less time than we were told it could take.

Of course, everything could change again within the next sixth months. Or tomorrow, for that matter. With bureaucracy you just never know.

It’s something, huh?

James and I are in the midst of all the joy and stress of buying our first house. I’ve lived in rental properties (four different ones) since graduating from Calvin and never really even considered buying. It made sense to do so now, a major reason being that if we do eventually decide to buy a house in England we want to have some equity built up as housing costs there are astronomical – at least compared to West Michigan.

So about a month ago we contacted Linda – a friend of my aunt and uncle who is a realtor and has helped a few other members of my extended family find houses. She faxed me a list of about 34 properties in the general area that we had specified (in short, within about 10 minutes walk of central Eastown). We selected a few to look at and were at first a little discouraged about what we were finding in our price range. But then a couple came along that we were more optimistic about and could see ourselves in. We started taking second looks, and then we found it: The House.

I fell in love with it immediately upon entering and just got more excited as we walked around. The listed price was toward the top of our price range but it was in such great condition. There was nothing that needed doing immediately; the floors, paint, appliances, roof, yard – all in great shape! James was excited about it but didn’t have the immediate emotional reaction that I did – which is okay because he’s a guy. 🙂

Next comes the securing of a mortgage lender which ended up being a pretty easy process for us. One of my co-workers highly recommended her and her husband’s mortgage guy, and after meeting with him and finding out that this was actually going to cost us a lot less per month than we were expecting, we were ready to move forward. [Side note: my conversations lately have been peppered with all kinds of terms that I hadn’t had a clue about a month ago like PMI, ARM, disclosure statements, etc.]

The day that we made the offer I had to work, but James and Linda spent a good two hours in the house looking around and writing up the offer – after which James was really excited about the house too. They came over to my office around 1:00 that afternoon so I could sign the offer papers too. Linda faxed them to the listing agent shortly after. And we waited. And waited. And waited… The offer expired at 10:00 p.m. Linda called us at 10:30 to say she still hadn’t heard anything. At midnight we finally went to bed. Thankfully I managed to sleep despite the suspense. Linda called at 7:30 a.m. to let us know that there had been a counter-offer. We decided to accept it. Later that evening Linda called us to let us know that she had heard from the listing agent and we were all set. Pending inspection and all that, the house would be ours.

WOOOO!!!

The tentative plan is to close sometime after July 23 and take possession the last weekend in August. I think it’s going to be a little frustrating not to be able to move in earlier, but it will all work out. We’ve been doing some furniture shopping now that we know what sort of space we have to put the furniture in. It’s a lot more fun that way!

It’s kind of strange that I’m so excited about having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I kinda think this is worth it though.

James here. I’m commandeering Kari’s blog as she’s away for a few days and would, I suspect, appreciate the link to our initial set of wedding photos appearing here more quickly than that may allow.

For those following the various immigration intricacies, I’ve posted something on the experience of finding a doctor over at my blog.

Several people have asked me if I’m Kari Stewart now. The answer is, “Not yet.” Although I’m wearing my wedding ring, I’m not going to change my name until after our October 22 celebration. After that I will officially be Kari Lynn Stewart.

Really, we just wanted to confuse the heck out of as many people as possible. 😉

Well, we managed to go ahead and get ourselves hitched last weekend.

James’ mum and brother Matthew arrived on time in Chicago on Friday evening. (Unfortunately due to heavy Chicago traffic, we did not. Oh well – we weren’t too terribly late.) Although they managed to make their connection in Raleigh with only a 45 minute layover – pretty tight when customs and immigration are involved – their luggage did not, so they had to wait until the following morning to have it delivered to the airport in Grand Rapids. Thankfully they didn’t have to go the whole weekend without it!

On Saturday James and I took his mum and brother and my mom to a number of places around Grand Rapids – Calvin College, Church of the Servant, the Comfort Inn where our guests will be staying in October, Target so they could buy Oreos for James’ sister Susan, Schuler Books and Music, Art of the Table (which is owned by friends of ours), and finally Martha’s Vineyard – a neighborhood specialty beverage and grocery store. Then back to our apartment to do a little decorating and pick up my brother Jeff before heading out for a lovely dinner at the Bluewater Grill. My dad joined us back at the apartment after dinner as he had had to work that day.

We went back and forth a few times on whether to do the wedding ceremony inside or outside on the deck. The day had been overcast and it had rained a bit off and on. It was still sprinkling a little when we finally decided at the last minute to go ahead and do the ceremony on the deck (which we had decorated with white lights and flowers and plants – pictures coming soon). Thankfully, the rain stopped just as we got started. And despite the weather, we had a lovely little ceremony on the deck with the seven of us. The liturgy was based on the Church of England’s wedding service with a few tweaks to make it suit us better and involve the participation all of those present.

After the ceremony we went back inside and signed the marriage certificate, then celebrated with wine, cheeses, chocolates, fruit and a few other delectables. In all, it was quite a lovely evening.

My parents and Jeff took Mum and Matthew back to Chicago on Sunday night where they joined up with my sister Dana for pizza at Giordano’s. Matthew and Mum flew back home on Monday morning so it was a really quick trip for them, but it was so wonderful that they could be there at all. Our families really enjoyed meeting each other too.

James and I headed up to Traverse City on Sunday for a few days honeymoon. We stayed at the Park Place Hotel that night, wandered around the Old Mission and Leelenau Peninsulas on Monday stopping at a few wineries including Chateau Chantal, Bowers Harbor, and Chateau Grand Traverse. We attempted to camp on Monday night but due to rain and a deflating air mattress that turned into a bit of a disaster. We managed to survive it.

So we’re really truly married. We have a marriage certificate and everything. Now to get James a greencard…

My baby is home!

James flew into Chicago yesterday. Immigration and customs all went very smoothly. Our I-129f is now on the way to Detroit to await our AOS application. Alas, James’ Air India flight was an hour and a half late and very slow in deplaning and as a result we didn’t beat the thunderstorm but rather ended up in the middle of it. 🙁 So there we were in torrential rain and lots of lightning with flood and tornado watches being broadcast on the radio. It would have been a lovely storm if we hadn’t been trying to drive in it! I don’t do at all well driving in bad weather, so we got off the highway in Portage, Indiana and stayed at the Days Inn. The weather was much better this morning.

So now James is unpacking and trying to find places to put his stuff in my little one-bedroom apartment. Hopefully it’s only for a few months since we’re in the process of looking for a house to buy. We’re doing our first looking for real this Wednesday night!

We also got word yesterday (via text message) and this morning (via email) that James’ brother Matthew is going to be coming this weekend too. Very happy news! So now we get to look forward to having both James’ mum and brother here for a few days.

Several times yesterday James made comments like, “You don’t have to take me back to the airport,” and “I live here now.”

The “rest of our lives” starts now.