The long and short of it....: Ireland

Unfortunately day one doesn't actually include ANYTHING from or about Ireland, but it was indeed part of the trip and a couple of funny things happen, so I will share them here.

The day started off with my VT packing up her FOUR kids and taking Bryce and I to the Ontario Airport (she's the best VT ever!)

Since we needed our passports to check in, we just kept them out for going through security. Now I must back up, months ago when I first saw Bryce's passport, I laughed and told him it didn't look anything like him. He insisted that it did. I told him that only since I knew it was him and I knew what he looked like almost 10 years ago did I think it looked remotely like him. (His passport was from before he went on his mission, so 9 years and probably over 30 lbs ago.) Anyway, back to the airport, we're going through security and the TSA guy looks at Bryce's passport and looks at Bryce, then back at his passport and says (I'm NOT joking) "Are you sure that's you?" He didn't stop us or anything, but I felt secretly validated in my previous comment on the matter and we went on our way.

Here we are waiting for our plane at Ontario

After that, not much, all was well and good, we caught our plane to Atlanta. Coming into Atlanta we caught some bad weather and actually had to sit in the plane on the runway for about 30 minutes before being "brought in" because the ground crews weren't allowed out due to lightening. The lady sitting next to me tapped my shoulder and pointed out the window to a HUGE pile of luggage sitting out just getting down-poured upon. We both kind of did one of those giggles while thinking "sucks to be them" and then next thing I knew we were being told we could get off the plane. (I know this was mean of me, just keep this in mind for Day 2.)

Anyway, everyone was freaking about missing their connections, but we knew we had 1.5-2 hours so we took our time finding our next gate. By the time we'd gotten there our flight had been delayed an hour, then a hour and a half, then 2 hours. The time in the airport provided time to shop, eat and read (I read over 60 pages of Anna Karinina before we left the country.) We finally left Atlanta at 11:30pm and started the 8 hour trip to Dublin.