Amazingly hubby's visa has been processed and approved in 2 days. It's actually far faster than we'd ever hoped for, far faster than we need or can prepare for. We'd asked for a travel date of the 12 Feb, as that gives him a target time to sort out his affairs before emigrating. (And I kinda need to clean house a bit too, lol.)
Now for the bit that I've been waiting for, seems like for such a long time. We chatted it over last night and decided that we'd wait another couple of weeks until my next holiday from work. So, I booked my plane ticket to fly out for the last week of February, then we're going to fly back to the UK together in mid March, actually a month later than we'd originally requested.
The extra two weeks apart will be worth it. I turn 40 right in the middle of Mardi Gras celebrations, a BIG party season in Louisiana. I get a helluva birthday party, we get to celebrate being back together again, and then we get to fly together for the very first time. No more going solo. I had to book our tickets separately, but I still managed to get seats together on our flight back. This is the one arrival in the UK when I won't be anxiously waiting on the other side of immigration to see if they've let him in, I'll be by his side.