My husband and I decided it was time to renew our passports after our last trip to Mexico a couple weeks ago. We don’t plan on any trips out of the country for the next few months.

We do have plans to visit California, our friends in Santa Barbara — and hopefully our kids will be joining us. You don’t need passports to visit California, regardless if it seems like a different country or not.

My son didn’t join us on our last trip to Mexico although our DIL did. He didn’t get his passport renewed in time. He did schedule an appointment. The soonest appointment was a month out.

After looking online and printing out paperwork, my goodness! What a complicated bunch of words in tiny print. It gave me a headache looking at it. Or, maybe it was because I had an eye exam earlier and my eyes were dilated.

In any case, they tell you if you have your passport, it isn’t expired, and want to renew it, you don’t go to a passport office or post office. You mail in paperwork. I’m not sure if we mail in the old passports or not. That’s a little concerning. We do need to get new passport photos and staple them exactly a certain way to the paperwork.

Our passports don’t expire until February, but we’ve heard the turn-around time is three to four months, so we’re tackling this chore this week. Reading the US Passport website, it said when renewing your should start NINE MONTHS IN ADVANCE! Yikes, we’re already a month behind.

Do you have any tips for passport renewals? Do you need to mail in your old passports or do we get to use them until the new ones come in?