Exciting times!

Hello again,

Well, it's been an eventful couple of weeks. Last time we wrote we had just received our "decision made" letter from CIC. And a most welcome decision made too :-)

Since then, the Vancouver Winter Olympics have started and myself and Mrs Can't Shovel Rain have been making it our mission to watch every conceivable minute of coverage! It's been pretty cool for me, as I started to notice that I was rooting for the Canucks (I guess there wasn't too many Brits participating ahahaha!).

We've also been obsessively checking the CIC website to see if anything has changed. It's difficult to keep motivated on the now when we have this super exciting time in our lives to look forward to. So naturally, we're checking twenty times a day.

Well, today we couldn't check as the site was temporarily unavailable. But on the bus home from work, Mrs CSR called from home to say that London was progressing my part of the application!

It's all very exciting although it's a bit nerve-wracking to think that the rest of the application is all about me Basically, now the wife has had authorisation to sponsor me the next stage is to "check me out". It feels weird that we've provided evidence on our lives to someone else to make a decision that's going to change our futures. It's weird to see your life together in an envelope! I just hope we sent them enough; that said, short of having the Visa people move in with us to see that we are a proper married couple, I'm not sure what else we could do!

One day, I think we'll do a little retrospective on the application process, given this blog started after we submitted our paperwork. It was a fun process trying to work out what we needed to do, especialy as me and Mrs CSR are both so thorough we'd look for problems where there isn't any.

But for now, we'll continue to check the status with CIC with trademark obsession!

PS - go Canada! :-)

Dear CIC Agent EC,

Many thanks for your recent letter (received 6th February 2010) indicating that Mrs Can't Shovel Rain is indeed eligible to sponsor Mr Can't Shovel Rain. We gratefully received your commendation for the processing of our application by the Visa office in London and look forward to hearing from your compatriots in the Big Smoke soon.

Love and Hugs,

Mr & Mrs Can't Shovel Rain

How many times should you check the mailbox in one day?

28 January 2010: no record found...

29 January 2010: no record found...

30 January 2010: no record found...

31 January 2010: no record found...

1 February 2010, 3:00pm:
why check again...sigh...we're not going find anything...it's only 11 am in Mississauga, there won't be any updates...okay, okay, let's check one time and then wait till Wednesday (they "officially" update the web system on Tuesdays).

1 Februrary 2010, 3:02pm:
DECISION MADE!!!!!!

So all we officially know right now is a decision has been with regards to Mrs' eligibility to sponsor Mr to Canada and that they have mailed us a letter with more information. But progress is progress and we are excited! We are assuming it was a good decision and that our paperwork (just to recap: containing all our personal details in one convenient A4 sized envelope) is in transit to the Canadian High Commission in London.

Waiting in anticipation for our letter,
Mr & Mrs