We left for our trip to Ireland a day early before the actual start of spring break. This required us to take our kids out of school for a day. When the kids told their teachers, all of them said they weren't doing anything on that day since so many other kids would be gone. This gave us the best itinerary and gave us a better price on our tickets.
The day before we were to leave, we had to change our return flight. We purchased our tickets through American and were planning on flying to and from Logan in Boston as our lay over. The flight between Boston and Dublin was being flown by Aer Lingus. They apparently pushed back our return flight which meant we would miss our connecting flight in Boston. They moved us to a new flight that had a layover in Philadelphia and had similar times, so it all worked out. The only down side is that we were no longer sitting together on the return flight. We were in groups of two around the plane. They could sit us all together if we paid almost $200 additional since the aisle seats are considered preferred seats and cost extra. We declined and they recommended that we talk to the gate agent when we checked in on our return flight.
Before we left, we spent a lot of time thinking about what to pack for the trip and what would be helpful on a flight. Things we purchased were:
1) neck pillows for everyone from Target (good purchase)
2) eye masks for everyone from Target (good purchase since it's so bright on the plane!)
3) carry on suitcases from Amazon (great purchase!)
4) Olley Kids Melatonin (waste of money)
5) headphones (good purchase, not needed but the kids loved having new pairs to wear)
6) water bottle holders (good purchase)
7) voltage converter (good purchase - needed at the VRBO's, but not at the hotels)
Things that we already owned that were very helpful to have:
1) waterproof shoes/boots
2) rain jackets
3) small umbrellas
4) Dramamine
5) audio books from the library
6) MP3 players
7) digital cameras
8) waterproof backpacks
Our flight didn't leave until 12:30 pm, so we were lucky that we had the morning to finish packing up anything we used overnight. We all brought a backpack and a roller carry-on bag. We also brought a large suitcase and a small car booster seat that we had checked. Emmalyn did not like having to carry her backpack, which meant that mom tended to carry it. Luckily, she could set it on her roller bag.
After we arrived at the airport, we parked and made our way through to the American Airlines counter to print our boarding passes and check our two items. Getting through security was fairly easy although mom forgot to take her pack of gum out of her pocket so we had to wait for them to run it through the machine again.
We arrived with plenty of time at our gate since the Columbus airport is relatively small. We filled up our water bottles, went to the bathroom, read our books, worked on stickers books, and chatted until it was finally time to board the first plane. On our plane there were only 4 seats across, so we were able to sit in one entire row and one row behind. This gave us 3 window seats. The flight to Boston was relatively short between them handing out snacks and the kids staring out of the windows. They were not a fan of their ears popping on the way up and down. I am not sure why, but this flight they were especially painful for all of us. They must have my ears because it feels like someone is stabbing them ad they adjust to the pressure on a plane on take-off and landing.
Soon enough, it was time to board the plane. The Airbus had 6 seats across, so we had two rows on the same side of the plane. The kids were all VERY excited to have their own screens on the back of the seat in front of them. They watched movies and played games on them until after dinner. It was fairly bumpy so it took a while for them to get dinner ready which was chicken curry or lasagna pasta. After dinner, we only had about 2 hours left of the flight. I had given the kids melatonin before dinner hoping it would help them to sleep for a bit on the flight. We all got out our neck pillows and our eye masks. Only Nathaniel and Emmalyn were able to sleep for about 90 minutes before we started getting ready to land.
It was now 3:30 am Ireland time and the beginning of our second day.
