So we’re just over a week out from the start of our once in a lifetime adventure and Murphy has arrived to do what Murphy does best.

It all started with that most glorious of motherhood moments when you’re bucket deep in your own vomit, trying desperately to squeeze some sleep in between the next round and your 14 year old son comes to the bedroom door “Mum I’ve thrown up on my bed”.

Dragging myself out of bed I cleaned up the mess, stopping occasionally to revisit my own bucket, rinsed off the sheets, made up the couch (cleaning the mattress was not something I had the stomach or the energy for – the old ‘remove the soiled sheets and lay down a towel trick’ was all I could manage), found a second bucket for Mr14 and went back to bed.

2.30am and my six year old daughter begins wiggling in bed beside me waking me up. I beg her to stop wiggling so that I can get some sleep “my tummy hurts” uh oh “do you need to be sick?”, “no” (sigh of relief!).

“Yes!!” before I know it, I’ve gone from sleepy mum to supermum with night vision and lightening reflexes, grabbing the bucket beside me and getting it up to the bed in time to catch Miss6’s vomit mid-air in the dark.

Numerous vomiting episodes, clean towels, washing and disinfecting of buckets and very little sleep later, I now have a few more things to add to the ‘to pack for the trip’ list: second bucket, hydralyte for the first aid kit, waterproof mattress protectors.

Just as we all recovered from the drama of our 24-hour bug, the car decided it wanted in on this ‘what else can go wrong?’ game.

No indicators, no reason, just stopped working. It’s all good, I have my mechanic’s home number – a quick weekend phone call, booked in first thing Monday morning and I can rest easy.

Family sing-along while driving in the car…silence. No radio, no clock, again no reason, just stopped working. Second phone call, check of the fuses and it’s one more thing on the fix it list for Monday morning.

Make that Monday and Tuesday morning. This issue proved trickier than first expected. So much so that neither my mechanic in his decades of experience, Toyota or anyone else have any experience of this happening or know how to fix it. Some painstaking hours of research, testing, searching and solid mechanical investigation and all was well with my car again.

Until of course, the next day when I hooked up the camper to the car to take them both for new tyres and I have no lights to the camper. ‘No indicators again??!!’ Couldn’t believe my luck, again.

Leaving my car with the tyre guys, moving the car seat our of the way and doing that general quick tidy of the ‘car with kids’ we all madly do when we realise other people will be getting into our car and there’s stuff EVERYWHERE. ‘Smash!’ there goes one of my towing mirrors all over the carpark… 7 years bad luck?? Decided I make my own luck, left the broken mirror, the car and the camper and got myself to work.

What to do about these camper lights? My trusty mechanic was again on hand for me to bring it down after the tyre fitting was complete and after I finished work to take a look. Another day with my trusty mechanic and all is well in the auto world again – turns out it was only a fuse!

What can go wrong, will go wrong. I’m just glad it’s all going wrong the week before we head off and not in the middle of nowhere. The new theory is that Murphy is a home-body and his law doesn’t apply for the next four months – it’s all smooth sailing from here on in…