Passports are in the house!

I was starting to get worried that our passports weren't going to arrive in time for us to go to Bali but thankfully, they have all finally turned up.

I took the boys shopping on Friday for Mackenzie's 1st birthday present (I can't believe she's one already .. where does the time go?) and we were out for a couple of hours. I checked the post office box on the way home but no passports. I checked the mail box when we got home, at 1:30pm, but still no passports so I curled up on my 'throne' in the front room, right next to the front door, to read a book. Looking up from my book at 6pm, I resolved to ring the passport office first thing Monday morning to find out what was happening.

On Saturday, I checked the mailbox for junk mail and sitting in the bottom all by itself was a parcel collection slip saying that they had tried, and failed, to deliver a registered letter at 2:30pm on Friday (liars!!) so I would now have to go to the post office to collect it. Luckily I read the collection slip properly because it was being held at a different post office to the one I normally use. So on Monday, I went out to the above mentioned post office to collect what I thought was all four passports. Nope, there was only one in the envelope .. mine.

After my initial panicky thoughts of where on earth are the boys' passports, I realised that if they don't have their passports in time, I get a holiday to Bali all.by.myself. The euphoria at such decadent musings was soon deflated by Alex ringing to tell me that a man had come to deliver a letter addressed to Bradley and could he sign for it or did I have to do it.

Biting down the urge to scream at Alex for answering the door while I wasn't home, I politely enquired if the man in question was prepared to accept the signature of a 14 year old boy for a registered mail document. It was at this point that I found out that Alex had not, in fact, opened the door to a complete stranger but had been conducting a rather loud conversation through the front door. Once we ascertained that the man was wearing a postie's uniform, riding a postie's bike and did have a letter addressed to Bradley that he held up to the front window for Alex to see, he signed for it and we were the proud owners of Bradley's passport.

Considering that Bradley's application was put in two weeks later than the others due to a .. ahem .. 'slight error' made by Peter (no honey, I'm not going to let you forget it .. for a while anyway!), I was starting to get rather concerned that we still only had two passports and four people trying to travel. I rang the passport office and, after chatting to the quite personable young man on the other end of the phone, was informed that they didn't have any applications for the other boys, but if I wanted to pay the priority processing fee of 1 million dollars direct to his account, he'd see what he could do for me .. no promises, mind you! Oh and that fee was for each passport required but he would consider reducing it slightly seeing as I sounded so nice.

Thinking to myself that this formerly personable young man was very lucky I didn't know where he lived, I once again enquired as to the progress of the missing passports and was told that they had been dispatched on Friday at the same time as Bradley's.

They turned up this afternoon while I was hanging out washing out the back, so I nearly missed the postie. Thankfully he knew I was waiting for them and called out to me over both back gates just to make sure I had, in his words "every chance possible to avoid going back to the post office."

So to cut a long story short (I know, I know .. too late!!) we finally have all four passports in the house for our trip to Bali in two weeks time. Now all I have to do is organise the suitcases, buy more sunscreen, print out all the paperwork we need to take with us, exchange some money, ensure the children have bathers that fit (not even going there for me!), buy a power point adapter for my CPAP machine, organise someone to look after the dog and about a thousand other things that I can't think of right now and probably won't remember until we're halfway to Bali. But at least it will be relaxing ...