Passports!!!

So, I had originally planned to have posted a couple of weeks ago. But life gets in the way and there really isn't much you can do. Also, I know at the end of the last post, I said that the luggage was next, oh and believe me I'm excited about it, but I actually got these sooner than planned and wanted to share my excitement!

First of all, getting a passport takes some time and a good dollar (more like 100 good dollars) to get. We wanted to make sure that we would have them in enough time. My mom, the wonderful lady that she is, went down to the Post Office in Moses Lake, and picked up applications for just about everyone she could. I started to fill it out, but had some questions about different little things to fill in and didn't want to make a mistake, since these are official government documents. Ty, the amazing computer genius that HE is, looked it all up online, and what do ya know? You can fill it out online, print it, and take in it when you apply. Hooray!

Now for those who might want to know, you can get your passport pics done at Wal-mart two different ways. You could travel the little more expensive route and get them done in the professional photography center at the front of the store (like I did, for almost $11) and only wait a grand total of about 2 minutes and have them in hand. Or if you want a smaller price (close to $8), go to the Photo Center and wait for an hour whilst they process. When we went to get Ty's done (they don't do it in the Ephrata Wal-mart), the girl at the Photography center said they were out of the paper, but we could (and she wasn't supposed to tell us this) go back to the photo center and get it done for cheeper! Ummm, did I mention that this was the same girl who took my picture!!! Oh well.

Okay, so the actual getting of the passports, apparently not as easy as we thought....at least not in Ephrata! We picked a day I didn't have to work and went to Ephrata. We had lunch and then shot over to the Post Office before Ty's lunch was over to get it done. Wrong, you have to go to the Clerk's Office at the Court House. So, we high-tail on over there. And after the maze of get to the office, we finally found it. We stood there while the lady was BABBELING and asking all kinds of questions about my family in Germany and if we had gone before and all the things she LOVED about the country, to finally have her ask for Ty's Birth Certificate, only then realizing that we didn't have either of ours!!!!!!!!!! I was more than upset. We wasted so much time with her talking that Ty was late getting back from lunch. Luckily, it's not that big of a deal for him and he wasn't horribly late. But we decided to come up with an alternate route. After finding all of our information that we would NEED, we found out that you can go to the Moses Lake Post Office, but only between certain hours, no appointment needed. We got there right before the huge lined began to form, and the time it took for the Clerk's office to get to the point they did with Ty's passport, we had finished both of ours. They said that it would take about three weeks until we got them. However, two weeks later......

We got these!!!!

You can see that I was quite anxious to make mine official and couldn't wait to sign it. Ty is much more leisure than I am. Of course, he's not to excited about the actual travel part. Germany, should be fun, but the flying and airports and what not are going to be more fun for me than him.