How do you appease the travel gods?

So I was thinking the whole trip to New York was just a strange mishap. But, now I am wondering what we have done to upset the travel gods. Yesterday we drove the about 1 1/2 hours to Montpellier to pick up my husbands sister to visit and see the sites in DC(another about 1 1/2 hrs. away). She flew in the day before from Vancouver, WA from a Constitutional Connects symposium. We figured she was close enough and we would at least get some quality time and a good meal out of the trip. Well that was not to be the case. For those of you who have never been to Montpellier, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is a beautiful estate, but as my husband said, both Jefferson and Washington had better views. And Washington was closer to DC, and Jefferson closer to Charlottsville. Anyhow, my husband made a wrong turn leaving and added an extra hour onto the trip. But that was not the worst part. We had picked the kids up early and they had been doing homework in the car and the two older ones said they werent feeling well. Logically we thought they must be car sick as they had been looking down and we were on a pretty curvy road. Now mind you we have always traveled a lot in the car and they have never been carsick before. Well, we were wrong. They spent the rest of the evening puking. But they didnt start until we were on our way to DC, so my poor sister in law was stuck. Then we modified our siteseeing for them and their younger sister got sick. So here we are in the middle of DC, with three kids puking. There goes the nice dinner. So, it was crazy. Of course the batteries in my digital camera died and I couldnt find anyplace open to replace them. I had told my sister in law I would burn her a disc on the drive back. Well with the camera dead, I said I will just use what I already have on the computer. Of course there will be no cherry blossoms, but I will do my best. Well the darn computer was refusing the disc. So, no pictures either. I will burn it and send it to her later. So, what do I need to do to make our trips less faterul in the future? TTFN, miki