I had to go through this myself although I did not think to remove the clips and re-attach down below the dash. That is a good idea. these are great pictures too.
Yeah working on different cars, each manufacturer has their own stupid things you have to deal with. This is a good example of typical GM nonsense lol. All in all I prefer GM's particular flavor of nonsense to other cars. Ford is the worst imho. Everything is designed with assembly in mind, even at the expense of disassembly ease (been my experience anyway).