Stupid Government Documents

We are in the process of planning our Spring Break!  Our plan is to drive to DC and spend a few days with our good friends, Bill & Alissa (and family).  Then we'll drive from there to London, ON, to spend a few days with our good friends, Kevin & Amy (and family).  We'll stop at Niagara Falls on the trip between DC and London.  As many of you probably know, in the past few years, the law has changed, so now adults are required to have passports to travel to Canada.  Actually, that's not true.  I discovered that Jonathan and I can both go to Canada with just our birth certificates.  But the U.S. won't let us back in without passports.  Our kids, being under 16, can still travel to AND from Canada (by land) with just a birth certificate. 

Anyway, we don't have passports.  Well, not valid ones, anyway.  Jonathan had one that expired so long ago that he had to apply for a brand new one.  Mine had expired recently enough that I just had to renew mine.  We'd been meaning to apply for new passports ever since Kevin & Amy moved to Ontario, but kept putting it off.  With our spring break trip in the works, we decided it was time.  We had previously picked up the forms we'd need from the post office, so on Saturday, we took our filled-out forms, the required proof of ID and citizenship, and headed to the post office, kids in tow.  That was our first mistake.  Maybe once upon a time we thought we were going to get passport cards for the kids.  I don't remember, but for some reason, we decided to do this process together.  The line for passports was about 10 people deep, and didn't move quickly.  We stood in line for over an hour.  To help the line move a little faster, one employee was collecting our driver's licenses (once we were almost to the front) to make copies.  When she asked if Jonathan had his original birth certificate, we started to worry.  I read the form again.  Here's what it says:

1.  PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP
APPLICANTS BORN IN THE UNITED STATES: Submit a previous U.S. passport or certified birth certificate.  Passports that are limited in validity will need to be supplemented by other evidence.  A birth certificate must include your name, date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.... (it goes on about birth certificates).

We had Jonathan's previous passport.  I had also looked for Jonathan's birth certificate very briefly before we left.  I was confident we wouldn't need it, but thought just to be safe, let's bring those too.  I couldn't find the original, so I'd taken a copy.  But we also had his previous passport, which according to the above paragraph, was enough, right? 

Nope.  Here's the problem.  Jonathan was 6 months away from turning 16 when he'd gotten his previous passport.  That made him a minor.  Apparently that's one of the things that "limits the validity of the passport."  I don't have a problem with the rule.  I just wish it had been clearer on the form, so that we didn't have to stand in line for over an hour with 3 squirrely kids for naught. 

I guess it wasn't all for naught.  I was able to get mine renewed, which was slightly complicated by the fact that my name has changed since my previous passport was issued.  So I had to send in our original marriage license documenting the name change.  And when we got home I went through Jonathan's file again and DID locate his original (or at least certified) birth certificate.  So now Jonathan can go (alone) to get his taken care of. 

Unrelated excitement: I'm going to California in 4 days!  More on that later...