Ended up booking late April through early May and got them for $1000 each which I though was good considering the $1600 tag back in November.
No Envoy upgrades now for either flight... US said to check back every week by calling support to see if they became available. If nothing is available by 2/28/2013 the Envoy certs will expire and my certs for 2013 will be used instead (assuming there are seats that open up). Hopefully that does not happen because I had plans for a fall Rome trip and those upgrade certs were slotted for that trip.
There has gotta be an easier way to manage something like this.