Lots of info to update you all on today. First they finally sent my husband's passport back according to Fed Ex!!! My husband emailed them today to find out what was happening so not sure if that's what got them to send back or if it's just a fluke. He should have it next Wednesday!
The second and more interesting for all of you is I got my second set of notes today. I ordered them about a week before we got the passport request but they were run the day after the passport request. At that point it still said that security and criminality were not started

So they are requesting passports before they are finished everything. In our case it was requested as soon as eligibility was passed. I'm kinda thinking this is a new process and why they are coming so fast. It might also be why some people in Nairobi are waiting a really long time to get their passports back. Based on our case and skwan's it must be possible to get the security and criminality checks done quickly but some countries may take longer as I believe it depends where they are checking. Therefore I don't know if you can be sure of a quick turnaround time once they request your passport as still depends on how quickly the background checks are done.
Also the notes showed our eligibility passed the day after they added the additional relationship proof to the file that I had sent so that could have helped with the eligibility passing or at least made them look at the file at that time. So I would say it's worth sending in more proof if you have it. In my case it was just boarding passes and photos from my last trip. I didn't include any communication proof as we sent a ton of that originally.