The Passport Process

The rain cooperated and paused long enough for us to make our appointment for the kids passport renewal. I don't know why they call it a renewal because you the application, cost and required documentation is the same whether you are applying for the first time or renewing--at least for kids under 16.

We had all of our documents in order so the process was fairly easy--about 30 minutes in the post office. The pain in the butt was the fact that we showed up at the wrong post office and had to hightail to the correct one so we didn't miss our appointment.

The one bit of advice that may prove helpful to you has to do with the passport pictures. Most places will charge from 8-15 dollars for two pictures. I found a coupon for CVS for 5.99 ea. I thought I had a pretty good deal until the woman behind the counter pulled out a digital camera, took the pictures, and then used the self service kiosk to print the pictures using the passport choice. After asking she said "technically" I could have done it myself and yes it would have been less than a dollar! I imagine most of the self service kiosks have a passport mode for printing the correct size picture.