New Passport

We are heading to Canada in a couple of weeks and Tovina needed a new passport before we went. Her last passport has stamps from China, Turkey, Thailand, US, and Canada. What a busy little 2 year old she was. I was sad when I thought we might lose it but lucky for me they just put a big 'ol hole through the center and gave it back.

It was frustrating that her passport expired so quickly but this next one is good for 5 years so I have big hopes for its exotic stamp collection capacity. Getting a minor a new passport is not quite as easy as it is for an adult since both parents need to go with said minor to the appropriate authority with the appropriate paperwork. Given that I am at work for most of the appropriate authority's business hours this is no mean feat. Luckily there are some notary publics at work that helped me out at my end of things.

I'm sure that Michael has big hopes for its longevity as well since he was responsible for what is probably the toughest part of getting a passport ... The Passport Photo!



There are a lot of photo requirements which pretty much made all of the lovely shots above unacceptable though I was really hoping for the one in the middle. The store that printed the shots out for us tried to take a better picture in the hopes of something a little more like the description of what the photo is suppose to look like. In the end though they just went with this one that Michael took.

At least we've got the pigtails in there!

I do have to give some kudos to the travel.state.gov as they fell at the 4 week end of their 4-6 week turn around on-line promise. Even (especially?) after seeing some of the behind the clear Plexiglas window workings of State I find this very very impressive.