I Missed My 1st Flight Ever

So, for the first time ever I missed my first flight and Mady got to miss her flight for the first time ever too. I'm so glad I can provide my daughter with these important firsts. We flew home from Southern California on Monday and due to a series of unfortunate events we missed our flight. This was my second time flying with Mady alone and first where she had her own ticket. We left 15 minutes later then we should have and from there everything that should have been easy was hard. Traffic was awful and every line to check baggage was ridiculous. It took about 20 minutes to get the luggage checked and with 27 minutes to go we got that annoying "Bing" your luggage is later at the automatic luggage check. Then we got in the 30-45 minute security line which I have never seen even close to being that long before at this airport. I asked before we got in it if there was any way we could get through because our flight was in 20 minutes and she told me to wait in line and hope for the best. Okay fine that's fair but then someone came around asking if anyone was going to Sacramento and I told her that we weren't but our flight was in 10 minutes and she asked me why we didn't go let them know at the front. Ugh! So we got through security but of course that wasn't simple and a couple of our bags went through 3 times. I'd pretty much given up and decided we would just have a fun day in the airport. But, we still made the effort to hurry and when we got there the gate was of course shut. Oh well and out of curiosity I asked him how much we missed it by and he said 1 to 2 minutes at the most. Oh joy! But, he offered to get us on a flight to a different local airport immediately or to our original destination airport in 2 hours. I went for the original airport since that's where our stuff was going. So, that's where this story should end but no not even close. So about 1o minutes before our second flight should be boarding they announce that it hasn't even left Phoenix. Well okay it will be about 45 minutes until boarding or so... Then an hour or so later the plane arrives and we are all ready to board and lined up and they come over the speaker. "All of you at gate 8 headed to SFO can go ahead and take a seat." UGH! "The captain is not comfortable flying this airplane because of ice build up and has requested a different plane" Ha now this was all becoming laughable. Mady was a perfect angel during all of this! Playing quietly with other kids and playing with her toys and watching Elmo. So after a couple gate changes we finally boarded the plane almost 3 hours later. So there was a 5 hour difference from our original flight to the flight we actually got to take. Mady slept for most of it but woke up with a very painful ear and did the crying scream for the first time ever on a plane. I think it popped as soon as we landed. But, she was super happy to be home after all that. Yep, so we will be super early for our next flight.