I had already been dreading our planned road trip from Seattle to southern Oregon but when our toddler started BARFING on Saturday, I could only assume we were in for the Ultimate Drive From Hell. We packed towels and cleaning products and lots of Wet Wipes and crossed our fingers as we drove away from the house, the lingering smell of the preceding day's horrific post-hork cleanup duty still wafting around in the truck.

I thought Riley would whine the whole time, crabbing about how he wanted to go hoooome like he tends to do once we're five minutes from the driveway. I thought the baby would howl for hours on end from the annoyance of being immobilized. I thought Riley would be bored out of his mind and would watch DVD after DVD, I thought we'd have to stop every hour to change diapers or feed someone or deal with a Turbo Barf, I thought my husband and I might be at each other's throats venting the frustrations we couldn't take out on the kids.

And you know what? None of those things happened. Riley didn't get sick, Dylan was fine and mostly slept, and most shocking of all -- to me, anyway -- Riley stayed entertained in the backseat playing with crayons and toys and books and looking out the windows for cows and we never even turned on our brand-new DVD player ONCE.

Don't get me wrong, it was a very long drive and pretty uncomfortable for whoever was taking their turn sitting in the back with the kids, but overall, not nearly as bad as I was thinking. In retrospect it seems like it was just kind of a waste to be so negative beforehand, you know?

I feel like there's an important lesson to be learned from the whole experience . . . but I'm not entirely sure what it might be, I'm too busy worrying about how much the next several days are going to suck so much ass while my husband's out of town.