Cruising! Passport Fiasco

We're cruising! Not without eleventh hour stress though. Somehow, in the two weeks since I'd completed our on-line registration with Norwegian, our passports managed to disappear. Not the kids', just Matt's and mine.

We were really doing great with packing on Saturday- it was 7pm & I had all our clothes packed, dinner was finished & the kids were ready for bed. We were trying to gather all the rest of the stuff- sunscreen, cameras, walkie talkies, and all. I asked Matt to get the passports out of the fire safe & he only came back with the kids'. I then assumed ours were on my desk, because I figured they were with the rest of the cruise info. Nope!

We started searching. And searching, and searching. Matt put the kids to bed while I continued to look. They knew something was going on, and kept coming downstairs. William thought he'd seen them on my desk that afternoon, and that maybe Jason had walked off with them. Well- try getting an answer out of a three year old :) He had lots to tell us, most of it conflicting. Honestly, I don't remember the last time I'd seen them, and have no idea what happened to them.

Matt looked online to see if we were totally hosed or not, and was not encouraged. I called my dad, who's cruising with us, to let him know we were hunting - he checked online too & it looked like we would be ok only with our birth certificates and licenses. Of course at 10pm on a Saturday night, there is no one to call. With sick feelings in our stomachs, we got our paperwork together (thank God they weren't locked up in a bank!), finished packing and went to bed at midnight. We had to leave our house at 6am.

We called Norwegian Sunday morning while on our way to NYC. They confirmed we could board, but that because we'd registered with passports, that might be a hitch at check-in. Also, if anything happened while abroad, we would be unable to fly back into the United States- which is the very reason we'd spent the money on passports for the kids in the first place- go figure.

Feeling slightly better, we finished the drive & got to the port right at 11am, the earliest we could check in. No lines! And no problems. Nobody even blinked. By 1pm, we were on board, and we set sail from New York at 4!



The kids are amazed- Evie said at breakfast Monday morning that she really needed this vacation- and I am finally relaxed and enjoying not having to cook or clean up :) Now just pray that we don't have to make an emergency trip home by air :)

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