I remember being 17, driving home from school my senior year of high school, with my window rolled down and the radio blasting. The sky was blue, the wind was cool, the road unwound before me. I'd just had blonde highlights put in my hair, and I knew it looked good blowing in the breeze. I could go anywhere I wanted to go, on a day like that.

It was a delicious feeling, and it comes back to me any time I'm behind the wheel on a certain kind of sunny day. When the early summer sun shines down and a good song comes on, I just can't help enjoying myself.

However, having a car full of children generally puts a dampening effect on that sunny-day-driving feeling.

If the older girls aren't pinching each other in the back seat, the baby is screaming from her seat. (The baby hates the car. Hates. It. with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns). It's enough to make a woman feel weary of the world, no matter how brightly the sun beams.

However, there is one thing that runs a close second to the sunny-day-driving feeling.

It's the "my kids are all asleep in the car" feeling.

It starts off small. I notice that the middle child has given in to exhaustion and is slumped over to the side. Inwardly, I give a little sigh of relief. At least she can't argue with her older sister when she's asleep.

Then the baby's screams start to wind down. I offer her a pacifier, and instead of getting red in the face and hurling it across the car, she accepts the peace offering, and her eyes flutter shut as well.

Ah, blessed quiet. But my oldest is still bright-eyed in the back seat. Pretty soon she will ask me to tell her a story, or give me a difficult question to answer, or make a startling pronouncement. She will find some way to claim my attention all the way home, that's for sure.

Except wait--what is this? I look in the rearview mirror and see that she has given in as well. Head tipped back, mouth wide open, she is completely dead to the world.

They're all asleep! All three of them are asleep in the car. Slowly, quietly, I turn up the radio. Just enough so that I can hear it--not enough to wake them up. Then just a little notch more.

Before I know it, I'm nodding my head to the beat. I'm noticing what a beautiful day it is. My foot is pressing down on the accelerator just a little bit harder. There's an edge of terror to the "my kids are all asleep in the car" feeling--I know that it could all unravel at any moment, if one of the little people in the back seat returns to consciousness.

I know I'm not 17 anymore. I'm driving a minivan with corn puffs scattered all over the floor, not a Toyota Tercel with a graduation tassel hanging from the rearview mirror. My hair is chopped off short and there are no blonde streaks in it. But that doesn't really matter.

The sun shines down, the music plays on, the road unwinds. The sunny-day-driving feeling lives on.