Here we go again

Three hour layover in Houston before my flight to Managua to see my husband for the first time in 91 days = longest three hours OF MY LIFE! And it's really only been two hours so far. On the plus side, I've walked all over terminal E in the airport and I've gotten lots of steps. :)

Davie went today and got his birth certificate in Managua. With the things I'm taking him, he should have everything he needs for his follow up appointment next Friday. Now to wait until next week and see what they want when he gets there. I'm trying very, very, very, very hard not to let myself dream of miracles, but it's been harder than I would have anticipated. When his last appointment didn't go how I expected, a part of me keeps hoping we'll end up with an end to this situation sooner than we had thought. Seeing how there would be absolutely no legal basis that I'm aware of for things to go differently than we thought they would, I really don't think anything amazing will happen. But there's still hope. Because I just can't help it. :) Hope is better than despair though! There's been enough of that during this process. 

I'll let y'all know how the trip goes! I'll be back in Tulsa Monday night late, but I'll be in the US earlier than that. I'm back on the itinerary that stranded me in Dallas last time, but I learned. I'll have just a carry on coming home, no checked baggage. So at least if I get stuck in Miami or Dallas I'll have all of my things!! :)

I hope everyone has a good holiday weekend!

Island Vacation

Well, we're still waiting to hear what the verdict is from Davie's appointment last Thursday.  While I expected it to be pretty cut and dry, turns out nothing is ever what you expect.  I should have learned that by now with this process!  :)  They asked for more documents - a birth certificate for Davie from Managua, another police record from Ocotal (the town near where Davie is now) and proof that Davie and I are really married, including pictures, letters, copies of my itineraries where I've visited him, copies of the receipts where I've sent him money since he's been there, etc.  I don't really know what they want those things for, since they really don't have any bearing on what the appointment was supposed to be about, but I guess we'll see when Davie goes back.  He's trying to get a second appointment scheduled for September 3rd, right after I leave, since he'll be in Managua anyway.  I should know something today about whether or not he was able to get the second appointment scheduled.  It's all just so weird!

But, I'm very, very excited about my trip in November as Davie and I decided to go to Corn Island for two and a half days during my visit.  I've been wanting to go to Corn Island since last year, when I first read about it in a book.  It sounds amazing!  We'll take a little charter flight from Managua to the island, then spend the next few days snorkeling, playing in the sea and getting sun.  Pretty nice for November!  I can't wait!  I've got our hotel for while we're on the island as well as our hotel for the first and last nights I'm in Managua (we'll be at the Best Western across from the airport again).  It will be a busy, quick trip, but I can't wait! 

I'll keep y'all posted as I find out more about the next appointment!

It's a big day!

Davie will soon be on his way to the embassy in Managua for his appointment!!! He traveled to Managua Tuesday and had the required physical yesterday. Poor guy hates needles and they drew blood and have him three shots since he didn't have immunization records. He was there four hours! But he handled it like a champ and got a clean bill of health. 

We're hoping today's appointment doesn't take too long so he can head back to his moms house afterwards and not have to spend another night in Managua. Even though we know what answer we'll get today, a part of me can't help hoping for something different. How wonderful if would be if Davie could come home with me in two weeks!!!!! But even though that's really not a possibility, it is nice to know we are on the downhill side of this thing. 

I'm working on getting everything together for our next application and I have an appointment with the lawyer at 10 this morning to drop off the first round of support. My hope is that we can send in the application pretty quickly after I get back from Nicaragua September 2nd. Then we just have to wait! 

But hopefully we won't have to wait too long. :)

Finally an update and....progress!

I've totally been neglecting the blog.  I'm sorry. Things have been way crazy around here lately!!  I had started a blog post a few weeks ago, bemoaning the fact that there wasn't any news, but then I had to scrap that when we got news!! 

We finally got notice of Davie's appointment!!!  He goes August 15th to the embassy in Nicaragua.  We are beyond excited.  I was jumping up and down when we got the news.  Not only are we excited because he has the appointment, but we are really excited that the appointment date was less than a month out from when we got the date.  The lawyer had cautioned us that it could potentially be a month and a half to two months from the date we got the appointment until the actual appointment, so having it be less than a month away was a good sign.  It's nice to have something going our way for a change!  I also learned a valuable lesson - the visa center told us to give them 20 business days to set the appointment date.  I started emailing / calling the lawyer 60ish days or so after I expected the paperwork to have been received by the visa center.  A week after the lawyer called the visa center, we had our appointment date.  So, lesson learned - don't wait to have the lawyer call the visa center to check on our application status!  I'm wondering if she had called 30 days after the paperwork was submitted if we would have gotten our date a month ago!  My new goal for when we submit the final round of paperwork is to give the visa center 20 days (or however long they ask for) and then start calling / having the lawyer call every week until we get an answer.  :)  Persistence pays off, right?  :)

I have a new job!  It happened kind of suddenly.  I wasn't looking to leave, I was really liking my old job, but I got an offer I couldn't refuse.  I started the new job last Monday and so far I'm loving it.  My new title is Controller / Financial Reporting Manager and my new company is AAON.  I'm working with a friend of mine, Rebecca, who I worked with at GT.  She's the one who approached me with the job and said she wanted me to fill the open position.  It's kind of nice to work with someone I know / am friends with.  And it's very nice to feel wanted since she kept after me until I finally caved and said I would take the job.  :)  I did feel really bad leaving the old job though, especially since I wasn't there very long!  But the new job is a much better opportunity, plus more money and not a lot more hours.  It's kind of a dream!

It's 31 days until my next trip to Nicaragua.  I'm so ready to see Davie!!!  It's been way too long - I won't go this long again in between visits, if I can help it.  Although, hopefully we won't have too many visits left to go before he's back home!!  If all goes well, he and Eduardo could potentially be home at New Years.  I'm really, really, really, really hoping that happens!  I would love to have my husband back home!  I feel like he's missed so much already the past 7 months.  I don't want him to have to miss much more!

I feel like I should have more updates than this, but I guess less has been going on that I thought.  Although the things that have been going on have been big!  :)  Davie and Eduardo are doing well.  Davie's English is coming along amazingly!  I tell him all the time how proud of him I am of how hard he is working to learn as much as he can before he is home.  He's doing a great job and I can't wait for him to get a chance to talk to all of you! 

Love you guys!

What does the future hold?

I was friended this week on Facebook by a guy I knew in high school. He dated a girl forever in high school and college and they got married a few years after college, I believe. As far as I could tell back then, they were the epitome of forever. I had no doubts that they would be together until the end. Had someone asked me to bet on it, I would have. But I would have lost. He's now married to someone else and it looks like he divorced the other girl around 2010 or so. 

A friend of mine in high school had an older brother. Most of her friends had crushed on him at one point or another, myself included. Randomly years after high school he ended up running into one of her best friends from high school and they got married. Hearing them talk about each other and seeing the pictures and considering they were both Catholic, I was sure it was forever. It didn't last three years and now they are divorced. Last I heard, he was dating someone else. 

I had to get Davie's signature on a form last week. I emailed it to him and he was able to print it out and email it back. He told me afterwards that he had wanted to read it to make sure I wasn't sending him divorce papers and not telling him. He was joking....mostly. 

My current favorite daydream is Davie and I following behind a real estate agent and Eduardo as we go room to room in a big, beautiful home, trying to decide if it's the right one for us. Eduardo is happy and running and laughing. I've got a hand on my pregnant belly and the other is holding Davie's hand. We're all happy and together. 

I don't know what the future will bring. No one knows. I hope, and Davie hopes, it's my vision that will come true. We've been working towards that vision now since we decided to take this journey almost four years ago. Every day I love him more and I feel like he feels the same way. It makes me sad that so many people that I know / counted as friends had relationships that didn't work out like that. While there are no guarantees in life, Davie and I promised each other on our first wedding anniversary that we would do whatever it took to try to make this marriage work. So I'm holding out hope. I have hope that we'll get through this process soon. I have hope that we'll come out the other side stronger than ever. And I have hope that our future will be at least close to my vision. Because if we are lucky enough to have that - and we are soooo close to being there since we already have the love and laughter, all we need is the together part - then we'll be the luckiest people in the world and life will be so good. 

We're halfway to my next visit. It can't come soon enough. 

Taking a collection

I'm in the airport waiting to go back to Tulsa after a very fun trip to California for July 4th, and I see this kid with a roller bag with a scooter attached to it! I instantly think that Eduardo would love it and I go up and ask the parents where they got it. Turns out there's only one distributor in the US, and, of course, they aren't cheap. So I'm taking a collection, because how much would Eduardo love to use this thing on his way from Nicaragua to Tulsa?? :)

Optimism Tempered With Realism

I've stopped wishing on the clock when the numbers are all the same. I know it was a silly habit anyway and I know that my wishes wouldn't really do anything to bring my husband back to me faster, but it still feels like a small part of my optimism dies every time I look at 11:11 or 4:44, etc and don't make a wish. It's time to be realistic though. And it's hard to wish for a speedy conclusion when we are already 6 months into the separation and not much closer to an end than we were when this all started. 

Technically I guess you could say we are actually 3 years into this process since we started not long after we got married. And we have made some progress since then, so I shouldn't be all pessimistic about it....

Maybe I just need a new wish. I know, I'll start wishing for each step to come quickly instead of trying to skip all the way to the end. I do tend to get ahead of myself quite often. :)

So, from now on, my wish is that we hear from the visa center soon, soon, soon. And once we hear, I'll decide what my wish after that needs to be. Because as much as I don't like it and wish we could just skip to the end, we have to go through the process to get there. So, if all of y'all could wish/pray/send happy thoughts that we hear from the visa center with Davie's appointment soon, soon, soon, we would really appreciate it. Our patience is wearing thin and we still have a long way to go. Any help we can get at this point, even if it's silly superstitious help, we'll take it! :)

Update on timing: We turned in some additional paperwork when I got back from Nicaragua in March. At that point the visa center had said it would take 20 business days for them to review everything and get back to us with a date for Davie's appointment. We're obviously waaaaaaaaaaay past the 20 days. So I'm really hoping we hear something soon. I'm going to email the lawyer tomorrow and see if they've gotten any word. At this point, I would even just like confirmation that the visa center got the additional information! I would hate for us to have been waiting all this time just to find out they hadn't gotten the paperwork! Although that would probably be our luck at this point. :) 

I'll keep y'all posted if / when I hear something! I potentially have other news that I'll share next weekend if it pans out. I'll let you know, but keep your fingers crossed that this week goes well please. I think I'll need it! 

Love you all!