Dread. That's the only way I could describe my feeling at having to go to the US Embassy in London today to renew several of my family's passports. Previous visits have been long, drawn-out time consuming affairs. The good news is, things have gotten much easier.

Today's trip was a family affair. That's because it wasn't just my wife and I that needed to renew our passports. One of our sons needed his passport renewed, as well. Renewing a child's passport requires taking that child to the embassy, as you'll find covered in the instructions here.

The purpose seems to be to prevent child abductions, where one parent gets a passport for their kid and then takes off with them out of whatever country they are in. Your young child gets asked what they call you and your spouse. If the answers are Daddy and Mommy, that's a good thing. If the answers are something different, red flags might start to go up. But don't panic too much. One of my son's once called us both by our first names, trying to be all serious. The examiner asked him again, and all was good. Today, a small girl next to me went all shy and wouldn't say anything about her parent. Patience won in the end, and they got identified by her.

The intent is good, but it is a hassle. In the US, there are thousands of places you can take your child to do this verification -- post offices, city clerk offices and libraries to name just a few. In the UK, there are only four places to go: London, Cardiff, Edinburgh or Belfast. For us, London is a two-hour trip each way. That effectively wipes out a day, to renew a child's passport. You've got to head in, and so does your child. And hey -- small children love nothing more than to be bored in a sterile embassy waiting room. Pack some toys.

Last time, I'm pretty sure both my wife and I had to go. One parent wasn't sufficient, if I recall correctly. Today, you can get away with one parent if you jump through some of the hoops listed here. That chiefly means getting a form notarized. Of course, you don't find a notary and your local Kinko's in the UK, as you can in the US. In fact, I've never seen a British notary anywhere. Apparently, the embassy says they're plentiful in solicitors' offices. OK, I've got that filed away for future reference.

So off we went to London today, two parent and two kids -- cause even though only one needed their passport renewed, it's not like we're going to leave the other one at home!  You can (and must) book an appointment. That appointment time was a chief part of my dread.

Two years ago, we renewed our other son's passport. Our appointment was around 9:00am, but that had no relation to when we actually got inside the embassy. Instead, we waited outside for about 45 minutes among chaos.

Keep in mind that the US Embassy in London kind of resembles a prison these days. It was never the most welcoming of buildings. But now there are all these concrete revetments that keep you well back from the embassy itself. You line up literally along the edge of the road, waiting to go through security. This makes the building more secure, but at the time, it made the large numbers of us queued up to be easy targets. I mean, if you wanted to find a lot of Americans in one place, all you had to do was drive right past them on the edge of the road at the embassy. In contrast, if the queue were in the long concrete area removed from the road and the embassy, in front of Grosvenor Square, at least the people would be a little more secure.

Fortunately, today's visit was much better. The line to get in was extremely short, orderly and the Brit running it all had plenty of good humor. We stood outside for no more than five minutes or so before leaving the roadside and going through security -- which involved dumping our liquids, as I've covered separately.

Once inside, it was again a very short line to a window where we deposited our documents, renewals for all three of us. My wife and I could have done ours by mail, but I figured it was easy enough to take everything in and ensure it was all OK. I'd called ahead and was told this was fine. Then it was only a matter of paying $212 (ouch -- but the passports do last 10 years for the adults) and waiting to be processed.

The waiting took about an hour. Several people who seemed to be doing child renewals went faster than us, so I think adding in the adult passports slowed things down. Thanks to the miracle of the Nintendo DS Lite, the kids remained mellow. Heck, my youngest even got into helping me build a zoo using Zoo Tycoon.

Finally, we got called up and did the parent-identification thing. And now we wait -- new passports in about 15 days. That's a disappointment. I'm pretty sure last time I went, we got them the same day. Now I think they all have to go to the US for processing. I could be wrong on that, of course.

I've posted separately about how 48 Page Passports are no longer being issued, which was another disappointment. But all in all, it was one of the easier visits back to the embassy. Plus, my oldest son got a kick out of me telling him how technically we were in America without having to do the long plane flight to get there. Ready to go back to Britain, I asked him? We walked through the gate and suffered no jet lag.

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