Landing experience in Vancouver

I hope this is helpful to anyone who is planning to land in Canada.
We flew to Vancouver International Airport from SFO to complete our landing formalities. The immigration officer asked for our landing documents, passports, goods to follow list, accompanying goods list, amount of $ that we were carrying. We told the officer that we were there to complete our landing formalities and were planning to go back to the US in 4 days.. and that we were planning to move permanently to Canada in 6-7 months time. The immigration officer did not ask any more questions and was very friendly. She just asked us to redo the goods to follow list as it wasn't very detailed. The whole landing process took about 20-25mins. So the overall experience was very welcoming and smooth.

Our experience on the US side wasn't very pleasant. US immigration is completed at Vancouver International Airport before you board the flight. Usually US immigration is done at US airports. We were quite surprised by this. So my husband and I are on AOS pending status. My husband was planning to use AVR (Automatic Visa Revalidation) since we were in Canada for only 4 days (if you are in Canada for less than 30days, you can use AVR to re-enter US - this is applicable to H and L visas ) and I was planning to use Advance Parole to re-enter US.
My husband presented his H1 renewal papers to the immigration officer and told the officer that he would prefer to use AVR since we were in Canada for only 4 days. I presented my AP paper. At that point, the immigration officer in an extremely rude tone asked my husband why had he not presented his AP papers. My husband replied that he wanted to use AVR and not his AP to re-enter. The officer then said "your situation is about to change big time". He was trying his best to scare us. Anyway, so we were taken to the secondary immigration room. We spent 1 1/2 hr in the room. Finally our papers were stamped - husband was allowed to use AVR and I was allowed to use AP. This whole episode took a long time and we missed our flight.There were another 10-15 people in the room. Everyone in that room missed their fight that day.
Since the next flight was on the next day we had to spend the night at the airport. Next morning we had to go through the entire US immigration process again. The officer was worse than the one from the previous evening. He told my husband that he was using a loophole to get inside the US and that it was not right. My husband responded by saying that AVR is a rule applicable to H and L visa status. And that even our lawyer said we could use it to re-enter. The officer still continued with the loophope statement .. anyway, there was no point arguing with him. We were sent back to the secondary immigration room. The officer inside was level headed and was ready to listen. When we told him about AVR he wasn't sure.. but he checked and said that we were right and that my husband could use AVR since he was on H1. He quickly re-entered some information into the system and we were allowed to proceed to the gate.

Please feel free to drop in any questions. I hope you guys do complete your landing. Don't give up.. you've spent enough time and money on it.
Make sure you do land. Good luck!