When Passports Expire...

It begins with my husband deciding that instead of us going to Lawrence to spend the night and then taking a short trip to the Kansas City airport on Tuesday morning for our 6am flight (i.e. have to get there by 4:30) we should just plan to leave Wichita at 1am to drive to KC. So early Tuesday morning we all load into the car and my husband notices, while we are still sitting in our garage, that my oldest (8yo) daughter's passport expired in October 2007. Knowing my husband I figured he was just trying to freak me out - Ha ha funny - Unfortunately, he was being truthful. Question is: Make the 3 1/2 hour trip to KC or just go back to bed and weep?

We decide to head to KC and make phone calls on the way. I called Priceline, called the airline, called friends (yes, even though it was just after 2am). Nobody really had good news. You can't get to Mexico without a passport no matter how old you are. Ihssan pulled into the El Dorado Exit, 45 minutes from home, and again we discussed just turning around and going home. But we were determined. We called airlines again to see if we could go to Florida instead or anywhere in the US that was sunny. They said it could be done, but we would have to wait until the Reservations Customer Service opened at 6am (the time we were supposed to be boarding our plane for Mexico).

Again we pushed ahead to KC. We got to the check-in counter and tried to slyly do a self check-in, but the computer knows all. However, the lady behind the desk said that we could take a later flight if we could get my daughter's birth certificate. So Ihssan headed back out to the car to drive back to Wichita to get Amina's birth certificate that was at hand in my filing cabinet. Before he even got off airport grounds the lady from the counter called me on my cell phone (no idea how she got my number) and said that she was wrong. A birth certificate isn't good enough anymore. Must have passport!
I called Ihssan and he parked again and came in to strategize. Luckily the KC airport has free internet in their gift shops so I looked up the US passport website to see what could be done and found out even expedited passports take three weeks. I called the phone number anyway just to see if there was any possible way. This must happen to other stupid people right?? The guy I spoke with said I would have to make it to Chicago or Houston and provide a birth certificate and proof of travel we could probably (no guarantee) get a passport same day. However, Houston and Chicago are both seriously long distances to drive.

Then Ihssan has a brain storm - we are supposed to fly through Houston on our way back so why can't we on the way there. We'll get a later flight, spend the night in Houston and go to the passport office the next morning and then board a flight from Houston to Cancun. Bless the counter lady with Northwest who actually hooked us up with all the appropriate flight changes and didn't even charge us extra. I'll love her until my dying day. So we headed back to Wichita because we still needed the birth certificate for the passport office. We get to Wichita and go to Walgreens to get the passport photos and their passport picture printer is broken (no kidding). We get to our house and get the birth cert and then head to Fedex, which did have a working printer, and hopped in the car to head back to KC (and no we couldn't have driven to Cancun within the 10 hours it took us just to get to and back and back to the airport, I did the math).

So with about 20 different pieces of documentation, in case the passport office needed anything else, we boarded a plane to Houston. We got to Houston and Ihssan started calling people to get online to find us a hotel to stay at that was near the passport office. Finally found a real dump, but it was less than $100 so we booked it, bought tickets on a shuttle to get to it, found out that kids don't ride free even though the first lady told us they did, got a refund for the shuttle, booked a hotel closer to the airport, found out that a taxi was much cheaper than the shuttle and so we rebooked with the hotel and headed out. We made it to the hotel and tried to chill out which was next to impossible considering that the government could be a little picky and red-tapey so we had no idea if they would give us a passport the next day.

They did! We got it! A big kudos goes out to the passport office in Houston. We get to the passport office the next day and give all our documents to the lady behind the glass and Ihssan asks if we will be able to get the passport the same day. The lady says "no". AHHHHH - But then Ihssan mentions that we have a flight out that afternoon and she asks if we have tickets to prove it, which we do and she re-stamps all the paperwork and tells us to wait for an hour for the passport to print. NO PROBLEM!

So we get the passport, go back to the hotel and get our bags, take a taxi back to the airport and get on our plane to Cancun.

- Got to Cancun hotel - not the same one as our relatives
- Switch hotel - no extra charge because it's the same chain
- Get a room on a different floor from relatives - get it changed the next day
- Get a call from the first hotel - we were supposed to be charged extra for the kids
- Ignore that call - never ended up paying extra for the kids
- Had a great time in the pool, at the bar, on the beach, in the restaurants - All inclusive is the only way to go
- My Hubby breaks his tibia - everybody laughs at him and says to stop whining about a sprained ankle (we didn't know it was broken and he was walking on it)
- Keep having a great time in the pool, at the bar, on the beach, in the restaurants - Even limpy/gimpy Hubby
- Head back to Wichita and all goes well - Decide to stop by immediate care on the way home to check out the "sprain"
- Find out he's been walking on a broken leg - I felt kinda bad for making fun of him, kinda
- I go shopping and buy the absolute crappiest food for the kids - Canned Raviolo, Spaghettios, Cans of soup, Ramen noodles, etc.
- I leave for Germany the next day - I felt kinda bad for leaving gimpy to take care of the kids while on crutches, kinda
- I have a great time in Germany without any hitches - well except brother being sick before we got there so I couldn't actually see his fini-flight
- I get home - Hubby was laying on the couch - the girls were loving the crap food I'd purchased for them - All was well