our last baby passport

Thursday afternoon I met Matt at the U.S. consulate to renew Luke's passport - our last baby renewal :)

In the past 12 months we have done renewals for the girls (they are both on passport #3), then Matt, and now Luke.  And when we get Luke's new one in a few weeks all SEVEN of us will be passport valid until fall 2018 (when Isaac and John Paul renew again)!  That's a really long time! 

In the world of child passports (only valid for 5 years.... but really it's more like 4 1/2 years because you can't do much with only a few months of validity) and lots of children born in very quick succession..... well, for the past decade we've been dealing with child passport issues regularly - applying, renewing, obtaining certificates of birth abroad, etc.  

So this feels like a big deal - 2.5 years of no renewing passports or any child passport paperwork of any kind!  Of course, we still have visa issues to deal with :)  But those tend to happen in big chunks, and all of us go through a similar process at the same time.  Our current visas are valid until May 29th, and we booked flights leaving on May 28th :)  

In a few weeks we will go back to the consulate to pick up the new passport for Luke (and yes! we are so grateful we now live in a city with a consulate!) and then we'll be all set until the summer when we work on getting visas again!