Erik, Waylon and I went to Cancun on the Ultimate Field Trip. While this was technically for work, I will happily go somewhere warm in January. When I was invited to work at this event, I agreed as long as the baby could come with, I obviously wasn't going to leave a 2 month old at home for a week.
Hanging with the band.
Headed home!
Extremely long story about getting a passport:
Getting there proved to be one of the most obnoxious and stressful first world experiences! Waylon needed a passport but we obviously could not apply for one until he was born & had proof of his existence. I had been in to apply for my passport earlier this fall and the ladies had told me that newborns didn't need to include a SSN on their app and that we could just put 0s. So, pretty much as soon as we received the letter that his birth certificate was available, we went to pick it up and apply for his passport. Baby passport photos are great! The ladies again told me that no SSN was needed and that occasionally the passport office will send a letter requesting it but it shouldn't affect the processing. Being that my passport was delivered within 3 weeks of me applying, I figured he had plenty of time, so no need to pay extra for rushing (dramatic foreshadowing...). Of course, that same afternoon, his SS card was in our mailbox. I called the county office and asked if she could add it to the application before she sent it in. Nope, it's already been notarized so unless we want to redo and repay for everything, it can't be added. And AGAIN, no big deal they said!!!
Fast forward mid-December we get the letter requesting the SSN. We return it in the next day. As Christmas comes I start to get nervous counting the number of days we will lose for holidays and check out the website. It notes to call if you are leaving within 2 weeks, so the Tuesday after Christmas I call and talk to a nice guy who let me know it started processing December 22nd, so not until they received our letter back!!! Ugh, he said I could pay $20 to have it overnighted but suggested I just wait and call on Friday to see where it was at. So, Friday I called again and talked to a very crabby lady who told me the passport was still processing and that it would be $80 to have it expedited and overnighted. Apparently once it has been received you have to pay for both, when you apply you can choose one and/or both. It pained me greatly to authorize that charge but I didn't want to risk it not coming. I did call AGAIN on Tuesday after New Years to double check and the nice guy gave me a USPS tracking number. WHEW PACK THOSE BAGS!!! I signed up for text alerts and figured even if it didn't hit the mail on Tuesday, we would for sure have it Thursday for our early Friday morning departure.
The tracking information wasn't looking promising, so Thursday morning I stopped by our small town post office to see if he had it. If it wasn't there we would at least have time to rearrange our flights. It wasn't. :( The postmaster put in the tracking number and informed me that it was in fact NOT overnighted, it was sent 2-day priority. I was so angry!!!! I got home and told Erik, while I tried to check my credit card statement to see if I had been charged. While I was freaking out, Erik was being rational and started calling around to get our flights changed. The mailman said his truck comes at 6am ("usually") but I knew that wouldn't do us any good for our 9am international flight and rush hour traffic. I called the Passport people and was basically told that it's "up to their discretion whether or not they expedite and overnight." So, if they didn't charge my credit card, there's nothing I can do. FUMING!!! This would definitely been helpful information to know one of the 3 previous times I had called!
Erik headed out with the kids after lunch to meet Grandpa and I was starting to relax, figuring we just had an extra day to get ready and it would be fine, I was going to make freezer meals for our freezer swap, finish laundry, pack, etc. The postmaster called me to let me know the passport was in St. Paul (I knew this since I was also tracking it!!). Around 2pm Erik said I'd better check in with the event planning group because he hadn't heard back on flight options and also said I should ask the post office if there is any way to intercept the package and he could go pick it up. I called the post office again and he said it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack and that they don't have the technology to do that. So I called the event group and they had emailed the proposed schedule to my email...which is no longer active because I was a temp employee for them...so another phone call to the actual travel group where they tell me that they have to get special approval to switch the flights and it might not be until the next day. Another phone call to the person I was working for, asking if she knew who could get this approved. She said she'd get it straightened out. As I was talking to her, my ANGEL of a post office worker called my cell phone and said, "You are never going to believe this!!!" After I had called him, he called another post office in the next town just to make sure there wasn't a way to stop it that he didn't know of. The person he spoke with told him that a passport had been misrouted that morning to another nearby town and was sent to them to return!!!! He told them not to touch that passport and that I'd be in ASAP to get it. I still can't believe it typing it out. If that phone call wouldn't have happened I am not sure we would have gotten it on Friday if it had gotten sent back to be resorted. I immediately called Jan back to let her know we didn't need to cancel our flights!!!
I called Erik in a complete shock and told him he'd better not monkey around on his way back because we were back on schedule! I picked up the passport and opened it to find NO BIRTH CERTIFICATE had been sent back. Usually, not a big deal, but our insurance had give us a deadline to submit a copy of it, which was that Saturday. So, back to Glencoe to pay for another copy. The kind lady printing it for me reminded me, "oh, they should send that back with the passport." DUH! I refrained from telling her I'm no longer taking advice from their office :) Of course it showed up in the mail likely the next day when we were already gone, but I guess now we have 2 copies.
After all of that frustration, we were finally Cancun bound. Since we were traveling internationally with an infant we got to go through special services and Waylon & I were pre-check approved so security was a breeze. We had time to have breakfast and not much extra time before getting on the plane. The flight wasn't full so we had an empty seat in our row, that was awesome. Waylon scream cried for about 2 minutes right before we left the gate but then fell asleep and slept for a long time. I fed him and he fell asleep again for the rest of the flight. Whew!
By the time we got to the resort and then to our actual room, we were tired. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, compared to getting there. We had to work at our booth during registration on Sunday and Monday, so those were long days. Other than that, we were pretty lame! It was super windy the entire time we were there, making it almost chilly (of course not compared to the -30 we left in MN!). We spent a lot of time in the room and never even broke out the sunscreen! Waylon slept great while we were down there, too!
32 Below played one night on the beach. Waylon & I stayed in. The last night Montgomery Gentry held a private concert for our group. Waylon & I went to the dinner but didn't stick around once the band started - it was really loud!We were ready to come home on Friday and had another smooth flight back (in the very back row of the plane but we again scored an extra seat!)
Even though this was a work trip, we didn't have to work too hard :-)
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