The weekend went fine last week. I think all of the kids had a good time at their respective destinations. Like they say in the small town newspapers, "A good time was had by all."
By all accounts, our trick or treating was a success. The kids had a lot of fun and they got to spend time with the neighbors and see lots of their friends.
I was going to post that they felt no ill effects from the flu shots that they took earlier in the week but Katie woke up sick this morning. She complained about her ears hurting last night but we didn't think that much about it. However, she woke up with a high fever this morning and is at home today. She also had a bad bruise on her harm from the shot. You can make it out on her arm in this picture.
We received Coy's passport in the mail a week or two ago. That may not seem like such a big deal but it has been a really big ordeal for us. I won't go into all of the details here but I will try to give the condensed version. When we got back from Ukraine, we were kind of clueless as to what paperwork we needed to do to get Coy a social security number. Instead of asking others that had adopted what to do, I thought I could figure it out on my own. From reading on-line, it appeared that we had the paperwork to either apply for a passport ($82) or a Certificate of Citizenship ($210 or something like that). Easy decision for a cheap skate right?? So we applied for a Passport on a Friday at the first of June. The part that made me the most nervous was sending some very irreplaceable paperwork to the Department of Homeland Security. After mailing the application on a Friday, Coy received a Certificate of Citizenship just a few days later. Apparently we had applied for one while at the Embassy in Kyiv. Who knew?? Now the rest of his paperwork that we needed to get his Social Security number was on its way to get a passport. No problem we thought, we will get him a passport and he will have it if he needs it. A couple of months went by without hearing from the Passport so I decided to call and check on it. When I called, they claimed that they had never received his information. Instant Panic insued. Incredible panic. I called Stacey and just by happen stance (maybe or maybe not, you tell me) we had received that very day a letter from the Passport Agency in New Orleans a request for additional information regarding Coy's Citizenship. They had his name spelled wrong and his birthday wrong and since he did not have a SS#, they had no other way to track him. So he was in the system. With some limited relief, we mailed his Certificate of Citizenship out within a few days. We thought we were just a couple of weeks away from a Passport for him. In a couple of weeks we did hear from the Passport office but it was not good news. They sent us a letter saying that his application had been denied, that we would need to reapply because we had not responded within the required 90 day window. The worst part was that his information came back with some of his paperwork missing. Some of his very irreplaceable paperwork missing. I called immediately to discuss. It had not even been 90 days since we had applied, and we had just sent them his Certificate of Citizenship within the last couple of weeks (which was in the packet that was returned to us). Stacey and I both called the Passport Customer Service office number but they can not really comment on the specifics of each case. They can give you a status of your application and can send messages for you to the Passport office, but you can not speak to someone that is handling your case. THAT IS FRUSTRATING. Everyone we spoke to agreed that the Passport Agency was in error and that it needed to corrected. We asked what we could do and they suggested writing letters (how old fashioned). But that is what we did. I wrote letters (and sent them via signature confirmation) to both the Passport Agency in New Orleans and the Complaint Department in Washington DC. No response. A couple of weeks later we did get the rest of his paperwork back (some slightly damaged but got it back anyway). We took that paperwork and got his SS# and had almost resigned ourselves to not getting his passport. But we were out $82 plus all of the postage used sending them additional information and writing letters. (The first letter we wrote was lost by the Post Office). So one letter that I sent indicated that my next course of action was to either contact the local media or my elected official. When another month went by and we had not heard from them, I decided to call our US Representative's Office. I called and spoke with them on a Thursday and faxed them some information regarding Coy's situation. By the following Thursday, someone from the Passport agency had called and given me specific instructions on what to do. I sent of that information (again priority mail with signature confirmation) on a Friday morning and by Wednesday of the next week, we received Coy's passport via FedEx. Ok, so I went on a little longer than I had to, but it is important to me to get the details in there.
Katie is officially a Daisy Scout now. It will be interesting to see how this goes. They meet after school a couple of times a month. So far, the reports back from the Daisy Scout meetings have been favorable. There are several other girls that are Katie's friends that are in the group that makes it a good group.
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