Our Christmas vacation was almost a bust. It turns out that our IDs that were issued upon arrival aren’t just for show — UAE actually requires us to have them to leave and return to this country. I thought I had left them in a particular spot for safekeeping and then they weren’t in that particular spot on Monday morning when Calvin needed ID for something. I told him to use his military ID since that always works and why I’ve put these government issued ones off to the side.
Then I called Josh to ask if he knew where they were and casually said, “well we can still go to Germany and get them replaced when we get back, right?” And he promptly left work and we unsuccessfully tore the house apart for the next 4 hours. I guess I had misunderstood or misheard because he swears he told me all these stories about people who had trips cancelled because they didn’t have this particular card, but I’m not remembering it that way. Let’s just say he was about as mad at me as he was when I let the movers pack the registration to our car right before we moved overseas. He didn’t find my “alternative options” helpful or amusing, like coming back in as if we were tourists and then getting the embassy to fix it later. #illegal
Josh went over to the embassy to talk to the department that handles this type of thing. We both had our cards and were missing the kids’, BUT I have digital copies of them. Surely we could work something out, right? They said: “You need the original cards. You can not leave the country without them. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. The End.” Oops. #Mybad
Our only option was to find them. The alternative, which really wasn’t one, was to submit a request for new cards and hope they came back in 2 days (Since the original ones took a month, that had a less than 1% chance of being successful). The problem with submitting for new ones is that would effectively cancel the old ones so even if we did find our IDs in the house between now and Sunday, they would be invalid and then we still couldn’t go. But do we sit around and wait for them to show up sometime in the next 4 days when we’ve already combed every inch of the house? (Yes, I was even up on the 3rd floor, digging through camping equipment and stored linens. Nada.)
Josh said we had 90 more minutes to search while he went to a meeting and then he would fill out the paperwork to get the cards replaced and hope this hail Mary move and lots of prayers might get them processed in 2 days.
After lots of prayer, a few tears, and with only about 30 minutes to spare, I found them. They were right where I had left them, though the bag that I had left them in had been tucked in a storage crate under the stairs instead of on the coat rack where it normally lives. (I think our cleaning fairy was straightening up and she always tries to streamline and consolidate items. God bless her, at least this time it was no harm and no foul . . . just a lot of stress.)
