Passports

Every five years or so, it seems that Corey likes to make sure all the kids have current passports "just in case..." Yeah right. If there's one thing I know, it's that when Corey starts thinking about doing something, he's probably going to do it. And if there's another thing I know, it's that I'll probably go along with it. And Corey's thinking about us going to Brazil. Thus, I spent most of the day trying to fill out passport applications for everyone with Natalie underfoot ~ not an easy task. She doesn't like to let me sit at a desk and do anything (hence the reason why I'm standing as I type this - can't sit or she'll crawl on my lap or on top of the desk or start hitting computer keys...) On top of the challenge of writing and filling out forms, was the challenge of keeping important certificates and cards safely away from her. I didn't finish before lunch, but had to pause my task and hurry to Costco to get photos taken for the little girls. I finished filling them out at 2:00, just in time to go get the kids out of school for our passport family outing. I recognize that filling out 9 applications should take a small chunk of time, but seems like it shouldn't have taken me all morning and afternoon, but it did. Oh these hard first world problems!

So I left at 2:15 to start getting the kids out of 2 schools on my side of the valley, Corey got the Jr. High crowd, and off we both went to the county building to turn in our applications. The other 6 kids got their photos taken there at the county office, and now we almost look like the Brady Bunch~

So there are no travel plans, so we didn't to do a last minute expedite rush order like we have in years past. Cause like I said we have nothing nailed down at the moment. Corey's just "thinking" about it. After they got their pictures taken, I went out to the car with the kids and Corey stayed and waited to sign. Outside Joseph had a flashback - "I remember when we were here last time, we were eating Dunford Doughnuts..." Unfortunately, that was back before I blogged regularly (hence the May - August gap in entries in 2010). And I just looked back through the July 9, 2010 digital photos (I know that was the date when we got our passports last time cause I filled it out in the "previous passport issue date" box 7 times today) but unfortunately I didn't take pictures either, so we'll just have to go with fuzzy memories of the chocolate doughnuts. Here's a fresh memory of muffins...

The kids and I killed time, Corey worked over things with the nice lady who was the unfortunate employee who got to help us with our 9 passport applications.

Some ground crew employees came along and asked us if we had seen the eclipse. What?!?! Where have I been? My astronomy radar was way off and I wasn't even aware!! Ahh! So it was so cool that they were so thoughtful and stopped to mention it to us. They even shared their solar glasses, thank you, cool people! After 20 minutes, Corey called and summoned me up to sign. He had to call me via Joseph's cell phone 'cause mine got busted last night when Lily knocked it off the kitchen counter - the screen cracked in half. Touch screen still works on the top half, but not on the bottom half, like where you have to push "answer" to phone calls or "back" or "return to menu"... so yeah, it's worthless now. Doh. So he called Joseph's phone, I headed up and was soon signing that "to the best of my knowledge" these kids are mine and that everything I filled out was true, but we confessed as we signed that we really don't know their eye color, even when we're looking at them. So we just faked it with a bunch of "hazel" answers for everyone but Sophi (dark brown) and Abi ~ those are definitely "blue!",

Here Corey, my turn to sign. This is one view of what "you've got your hands full" looks like.

Last check of everything, making sure photos are stapled to right names... and that was that!

Corey made the comment "First we came for our marriage certificate... now... 15 years and 9 kids later..." that clock up on the wall just keeps tickin'.