Departure (9/10)

[written by Chris - at this point all four of us are reading the posts before they go public, but that might not always be true] 

Note, this blog is serving a dual purpose of sharing our experience with friends and family, but also keeping our own records, so some of the latter things may seem less relevant to you.

• picked Zach up at Calvin to take us to the airport 
• there was no one in the GRR security line, so we were through in about 1 minute 
• girls' first time going through TSA, so it's great that GRR is so easy
• someone accidentally left water in their bag, which of course the TSA caught
• waited at the gate for 2 hours, made some calls, stress level subsiding a little
• 27 minute flight to Chicago  (surprisingly price was about the same to DUB from GRR or ORD, so leaving GRR saved us a lot of headache of getting to Chicago).
• Utah news was streaming on seat back screen of the guy next to me
• had to taxi/wait for 30+ minutes to the gate in ORD, which messed up a lot of connections.  People were panicked.  Despite being in the middle of the plane, we were close to the last ones off because we were in no hurry. 
• left our house at around 4pm, and got off the plane in ORD around 7:30pm EDT, which means that we literally could have driven faster!  
• larger flight to Dublin, which was delayed 30 minutes for incoming plane 
• as we tried to smoothly get on the plane like pros, they told us we forgot to our sign passports, which held up the line a little.  Oops!
• none of us really watched movies or TV on the plane, which is unusual.  I feel when we flew to Kenya, it was 5 straight blockbusters on the screen.  This time I think I was just too stressed/tired.  And because we watch movies a lot, I had seen most.  The 7 hours passed reasonably quickly considering meals and napping.
• was pleased with the dinner on the flight: pot roast was tasty, but the butter chicken looked better in retrospect.  And a free beer! (I wasn't sure if that was still a thing given budgets and economy)  
• sleeping is rough.  You shift into a new comfortable position which seems amazing, and 5 minutes later it is so uncomfortable.  I think my Fitbit said I got 2 hours of sleep.
• breakfast was good too: egg sandwich or cinnamon roll, 
• I watched the 1st episode of Derry Girls - an Irish high school comedy/drama like Freaks and Geeks or maybe Wonder Years.  Sam had been wanting to see it.  Language was a little strong - welcome to Ireland!
• starting to get nervous about driving a stick in Ireland for 2 hours starting in Dublin on 2 hours of sleep. 
• we landed right on time at 10 AM local.