We pulled into the airport at 9:20 am to check in for our 11:20 flight. Everything seemed fine as we were right on time. But wait, when we went to check in, the boys passports were not accepted! It turns out that their passports, which expire on September 16th, were not valid for travel to Italy. There’s a new rule where they cannot expire within 6 months of your travel dates. Now we had no clue about this, the airlines never told us and were shocked. After managing to change our flights to today, we were off to gather all the needed forms, pictures, social security numbers and birth certificates needed to try to get them new passports in 4 hours. Thankfully James, who was driving our car after dropping us off, wasn’t too far from the airport when Lori called him.
After a few phone calls, we managed to get an appointment across town at noon. Initially they told us they had no appointments left today but I hung up, called back and got another agent who squeezed us in. First though we had to gather the aforementioned documents. Just about everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Construction on the roads, birth certificates in Vail and more. Not to be deterred, I was more determined to get this done with every roadblock. The first step was getting all the needed stuff and making it to the passport agency (there’s only 1 in Denver) by noon. We actually made it by about 11:30 and then the wait began. Apparently we were not the first ones this had happened to. The agents were sympathetic and helped us as fast as they could but we still sat until 2:20 until they were ready. There were a few hiccups in the 3 hours but it’d take too long to explain. Jag kept asking if for sure now we were going to Italy and I told him, “not until I have your new passports in my hand will I feel good about it”. Once they handed them over it was off to my Mom’s. We arrived there 30 minutes later and I threw in a load of laundry. I think a pair of white Polo boxer shorts are still stuck to the inside of her washing machine!
We were going to stay at her house and our friends who are flying tomorrow to meet us in Italy also offered us to stay at their house, but in the end, through a connection Lori has, we checked into the ultra chic, brand new, Westin that is connected directly to the airport terminal. In fact, I’m writing this right now from my room while the kids are on the 11th floor at the pool. Our flight was at 11:20 out of Denver again but since we lost 1st Class from Denver to Dulles, we moved up to the 8:05am flight with our friends Jeff and Tina. We’ll then hang out in D.C. for 3 hours until our 5:30pm flight to Rome. Thankfully, somehow, they still have us in 1st Class to Rome. It would have been hell to fly 8 and 1/2 hours in coach.
So that’s it, Uncle Tom made us some good food and brought it up to Grandma’s. I’m checking emails, the kids are swimming and the sun is setting over the Rocky Mountains to the west. Next time you read this, we’ll hopefully be writing from Italy. Take care and God Bless.