On our way to California

This week we have winter break! Whoo-hoo! That means that not only are all the kids off from school, but I'm off from work. It won't be so nice when payday comes around, but it's nice now!

So I got to thinking that maybe we should try to get a visit in to California. Keith won't be able to go with us this time because he needs to work, but the rest of us are going. We plan to fly out on Wednesday morning and come back Saturday.

Keith told me that this will be the first time we'll all qualify for first class seats since Konner is now eight! Not that they'll be available for all of us, but the thought makes me happy! It's been A LONG TIME since I've seen first class!

We plan to visit the family and any friends that may be interested in getting together. My grandma celebrated her 91st birthday just last month. My brother and his wife just had their first baby. And of course the kids are going to want to visit with all of the other cousins, too.

Kylie wanted to know if we could go to the beach. She really wants to go swim, but I told her that it would definitely be too cold. "Then, could we just go and play in the sand? I want to collect shells!"

We finally got passports for Keri Lynn and Kristofer for their trips to Mexico and Japan. Hopefully we'll get them back in time, especially for the Japan trip, as our music pastor is trying to get good prices on airplane tickets.

The passport hunt was an adventure all by itself.

We decided to meet Keith at the post office at the airport. He needed to sign Kristofer's passport application since Kristofer is under 16. The post office was supposedly on the north side of the airport, so we got directions to a little office there, waited about 30 minutes and then finally talked to someone who told us that they were actually an expediting office. For a mere $230 a person, they could expedite the passports and we'd have them in 14 business days. We then found out that there was a post office on the south side of the airport if we wanted to check there, but that they'd charge a fee for any expediting, too.

So, off we went to the airport post office. It was completely empty except for the employee behind the counter who told us that their office only did passports by appointment only and since Monday was a holiday, they could schedule an appointment for Tuesday. I looked around the vacant room and back to him again. "Um, the on-line information said that no appointments were necessary." He was unmoved, but he did finally deign to give us directions to a post office near the airport that took passport walk-ins.

We met Keith at his work and followed him in his truck to the next post office where we found a huge line waiting for us. At the Newnan post office, there's a separate line for passports, so we went to the door marked "Passport Office" and knocked. The lady told us that we needed to get ourselves back into the Full Service Line to get to the Passport Office. Keith then told us that he was going back to work and to give us a call when we got to the end of the line. Good grief!

We did eventually get to the end of the line and we did eventually get the passport pictures done, and passport fees made for half of the expedited fee price. "I'm supposed to tell you that it will take 4-6 weeks for the passports to come back, but most everyone tells us that they're getting their's back in about two weeks," said the postal worker. That sounded a lot better to me than the supposed expedited 14 business days and at more than half the price, too!

It was worth the wait to finally get it done, but as we walked out of the post office, the kids were talking about how hard it must be to work at a post office. I asked them if they'd ever heard the phrase "going postal", and they hadn't, so I got to explain that phrase. They understood!