Passport day

The three North Carolina Hyder’s have been procrastinating in getting passports for our spring trip (10-21 Mar) to Scotland and Ireland. I had planned to go the week of Dec 27-31, but we got snowed in for two days while in Tennessee for Christmas and had to drive back another. I went into a regular school week the week of 3-7 January because Jeff had to work.  Apparently, the rules for children’s passport are pretty strict these days. Both parents have to be present or one parent has to give a notarized copy of approval or the passport cannot be approved. I guess too many kids were being shuffled out of the country by one parent while the other one had no idea.  Then, a snow/ice storm hit North Carolina a kept us inside from 10-12 Jan. So this was the first date I said, “If I don’t complete anything else except passports today I’ll be happy.”  (Jeff was off work.)

I made an appointment yesterday for JD and I to get ours done today at noon and I made an appointment for Jeff on 18 January after work. But last night I said, “I’ll go in tomorrow during walk-in hours and you and JD can take the noon slot.” So that’s what we did.

While I was in getting my passport Jeff and JD went to Wal-Greens for Jeff‘s passport photos. JD was being so sweet to Jeff that Jeff decided to take JD to the BX tomorrow. When I finished getting my passport I turned back around to pick up the boys and came back for the noon appointment. JD was surprised that they made us raise our right hands and swear that the information on the passport applications was true.

The process was actually pretty easy. I thought ahead and saved $375 in cash for just this purpose. Can you believe they did not accept cash? I had to run over to the post office side of the house and buy three money orders.

Whatever, we’re done with THAT task and now we’re just waiting for the passport people to get us our passports. What in the world is taking them so long?

I also had to clean for 2 ½ hours today. Whew…I’m tired.