Police lineup

We look like a bunch of criminals, don't we? While Chad was out of town on the weekend, I finally got the kids down to have their passport photos taken (and did one of my own, too). I've been meaning to do this for some time now but had either been (a) forgetting when we had the time to spare or (b) deliberately choosing not to go when I did remember! - not looking forward to the hassle. Liam is never one to willingly smile for the camera anyway, but I thought Mallory would be trouble. How do you get a one year old to sit still, mouth closed, neutral expression, both ears showing, etc. In the end she surprised us all and did really well.

[Chad got around to renewing his expired passport well before I did, having needed it for work - thus his absence from our photo shoot.]

Starting in June, of course, we will all need passports to cross the border into the US. And because we live just 45 minutes away from the border, we are actually there... well, not a lot, but certainly several times a year - trips to the zoo, shopping, sporting events... with Detroit being less than an hour away, it's probably fair to say that we cross the border more than most Canadians do.

Add to that the fact that we have a vacation planned for this year and we had all the incentive we needed to get the passports done. We actually booked a trip to Disney World last summer (!) and it is finally sort of starting to feel like it might someday actually happen. Not til the end of the summer, mind you, but at least it is on the horizon now. The kids know and are starting to get excited about it, although I try not to encourage them to too much; it's still a long ways off. But we have a few brochures and such that they like to look through and pick out the things they want to do and see while we are there - Cinderella's castle of course being the highlight for both of them. One of the brochures has a map of the entire grounds - Magic Kingdom, Epcot, the hotels, you name it - and Liam already knows where our hotel is and where the monorail runs and where Mickey Mouse's house is (somewhere behind Cinderella's castle at the Magic Kingdom I think - though I'm sure he could correct me if I'm wrong). It would be lovely to be going to Florida, like, NOW - to escape the cold and snow - but late summer is low season, so there were deals to be had on both the Disney end and on the flights.

I sort of cringe to mail off all of our ID right now in order to get the passport process started, but I'd rather do that than waste a day going to the office in person with kids in tow - there is no passport office where we live, so we'd be looking at at least an hour in the car each way - and that's not to mention how long it would take once we actually got there. We don't need our ID to cross the border until the end of May, when we have a long weekend planned, so now seems to be a good time to do it. I'm hoping to get the applications completed tonight, have a coworker act as guarantor for me tomorrow, and have it go out with tomorrow's mail. Then we just need to wait six more months... and then we're off to see The Mouse.