13 more weeks till Sandwich Antiques Market

I thought by counting the days until the opening of the 2009 Sandwich Antiques Market that it would give me the mental boost that I needed today. Truth be told it is 94 days away and that is a little too long for me.

This has been a very long and emotional weekend/week. Snow days and cold weather are abundant in Sugar Grove, so when our first snow day started last week it started with what can only be described as a nightmare.

We awoke on Thursday morning to -30 temps and knew we were not going anywhere for a while. School closed and we hunkered down with blankets,games and some good movies. Following that we had scheduled days off on Friday and Monday. We were in for a lot of family time and only hoped we would see our friends who braved the bitter, icy cold.

Friday morning arrived and the heat wasn't kicking in and the house was starting to get darn right chilly. Thanks to our dear friend Frances, Mac and Hannah were wisked away to a warm kid haven. My youngest son Shea wasn't feeling like himself after breakfast and did not want to leave me. Little did I know what was about to happen, losing heat was nothing in comparisson to the hives that took over Shea's whole body.

Before:


Benedryl became my best friend but it did not control the growth and spread of the disgusting hives. With each passing hour Shea broke out with more hives and the swelling changed his looks completely.

We consulted with the doctors and started him on a steroid treatment with the addition of more Bendryl which seemed to produce big changes in him starting on Monday morning. We have not been able to identify the cause of this outbreak. We only know of one allergy and that is to penicillen.

Shea's diet largely consists of cereal, more cereal and the occasional addition of limited fruits and veggies. There was no change in his diet and no change in any environmental products used in our home. The only thing that lingers in my mind is milk and the possibility of antibiotics used to treat the cows.

We normally use only organic milk but because of the cold snap we lost our delivery of the mild to broken and frozen bottles. Local brand milk was all that we had and you know we can not be without our cereal in the morning.

As of today, things are looking better and the hives are definately much smaller, and few and far between. The poor kid hasn't had milk or a bowl of cereal in 3 days and it just dying for some. I don't know what will happen from here, but only pray that we can find the source of the problem and figure out how to get back to our normal routine. I will keep you posted.