California - Day 1 - A Bust

• Flight scheduled to takeoff at 7:40am
• We left our house at 5:30
• got to the airport by 6:15
• checked our baggage then got in the security line. The insanely LONG security line!!

As you can see we followed standard protocol. We got the the airport over an hour in advance. That's what the airport recommends for commercial flights. And honestly, we weren't even worried about the possibility of missing our flight even after we found the end of the line. We just waited patiently. Before we knew it 40 minutes had passed and we were maybe halfway through the line. Still not too worried. We've never missed a flight before. We aren't those last-minute types of people. We always got to our gate TOO early. Well, after waiting in line at terminal "C" for 40 minutes an airport employee came around and basically informed us that we still had an hour wait if we stayed in the line we were in. If we wanted to we could run over to terminal "B's" security line, which was only 20 minutes long. At this point, we realized we had no choice but to high-tail it to terminal "B". The 3 women behind us also went. There was a super short "family" line at terminal "B" that we immediately hopped into, thinking it was our lucky day. Turns out the other line moved quicker - we saw those 3 women that were behind us pass through security before we even got our shoes off. Oh well - nothing we could do at that point. We rushed through security (as much as anyone can rush through it) and speed-walked to our gate. The door was shut. "You plane has departed. Please see customer service". It was 7:46am.

Customer Service gave us 2 options. We could either wait around and hope to get on the next flight as stand-by, or we could just come back the next morning and get on the 7:40am flight that was scheduled to depart Tuesday. Kevin, being the quick thinker that he is, asked if we could do both. The customer service representative booked us on the next mornings flight and also gave us stand-by tickets for the 1:30 flight that same day. Now all we could do was wait. Trent was surprisingly wonderful the entire morning (and we woke the poor boy up at 5am). From about 8am-11am the 3 of us went from empty gate to empty gate so that Trent could "play" without disturbing other people, and also so he could have space to play. I hated the thought of Trent crawling around on the nasty airport carpet, but I also knew we had no other option if we were going to be stuck in the airport for that long. So, Kevin being the trooper he is, got right on the floor with him. They played and played (and don't get me wrong, i played too, just not nearly as much or as physically). At one point we spotted a service dog coming our way. His owner was in uniform so I right away I assumed the dog was a drug sniffing dog. Turned out to be an explosive-sniffing dog (which made way more sense! DUH Barbie). The owner heard us saying "look Trent, see the dog? See the Doggy, Trent?" and he was kind enough to come over so Trent could get a better look. I assumed Trent wouldn't be allowed to touch the dog, but once again, I was wrong. The man basically let Trent hang all over the dog. We learned that the dog was very used to children, as his owner has 3 little ones of his own. Trent loved it! It really was so kind of them to stop. He was, BY FAR, the nicest employee at the Philadelphia Airport that we encountered. (Everyone else was just miserable!!!).

Finally it got be 11am and we were getting hungry so we headed over to Chickie and Pete's. We figured if we went to a sit-down restaurant we would kill a good chunk of time. Trent fell asleep (for the first time all day) during the walk over to the restaurant and slept through lunch entirely - right on Kevin's lap. It was precious.
After lunch we headed over to the gate where we were on stand-by. They started boarding the plane well before the posted boarding time, and if you weren't at the gate when they announced "final call" you lost your seat. There ended up being close to 20 people in our same situation. Waiting. Hoping. In the end 2 stand-by people got to board. Not us.

It was right about that time when Trent started getting restless/cranky. Who am I kidding, all 3 of us were.

At this point we had to go back to customer service to get our new boarding passes printed for the following day. We got pretty lucky, i guess you could say - the seats we were assigned were 2 aisle seats next to each other. Not what we would have chosen, but definitely better than having people or rows between us. Since our luggage was already on it's way to San Diego, all that was left for us to do was to call Kevin's dad to come back up to the airport to pick us up and take us home (he was the one who dropped us off that morning, by the way).

By the time we got home we were all exhausted. Trent and I both went to bed somewhere around 8pm. Kevin stayed awake a few hours longer.