Immigration Update

I mailed our applications for a Family Class - Spousal Sponsorship application to Citizenship and Immigration Canada on August 18, 2011. It was received and entered into the system on August 25, 2011. The processing guidelines on the CIC website indicated that the processing time for the sponsorship portion (my part) of the application could take up to 70 days (it is now currently 55 days). On November 2, 2011 I received a letter from CIC stating that my sponsorship request had been approved (YAY!) and that our application for permanent residence would be forwarded to the Canadian Consulate in Colombia to be processed. The processing guidelines given for the second portion of the application is listed as 17 months.
17 months is a LONG time to wait for my husband to come to Canada, but there is nothing we can do to speed it up, so we just have to wait. I  check the "Client Application Status" website every Wednesday (it's updated every Tuesday) in hopes that by some miracle, our application has been processed unusually fast...and normally I am disappointed. On March 1, 2012 our status on the website changed! We are now "In Process" rather than just "Application Received". It blows my mind that it took them 4 months to ever START processing it...but it is good news I guess. Now we just have to wait and see how much longer we have to wait. Keeping my fingers Crossed that it's not tooo much longer.