Valentine's Day 2013: A Nice Ending to a LONG Week!

 Happy Valentine's Day from the Shacks!  It has been a rough week in the Shack household but things are looking up now and we were able to celebrate together tonight.  On Saturday night Lena started getting a splotchy rash which quickly worsened and landed us in the ER (again) very late Sunday night / Monday morning.  It seems she was having an allergic reaction to one of the medicines she was on for pneumonia, likely amoxacillian.  She looked awful and the poor girl was itching like mad thrusting her legs wildly and tugging madly at her hair and ears.  It was so heart wrenching to watch.  This is a shot of her in the ER with me:

When the doctor came into our room he asked if I had tried to give her any Benadryl.  I just looked at him and said, "We have some but the bottle says not to give it to children under two years old."  He chuckled and implied that was merely a suggestion when I replied somewhat sarcastically, "Sorry...I'm a first time mom...I follow the rules."  It was kind of a funny exchange.  They gave her an oral steroid and some Benadryl and Lena's rash was gone a few hours later.  To my surprise 18 hours later the rash was back and worse than ever.  Apparently, the steroid had worn off and we just had to keep her comfortable with Benadryl and tepid baths until the medicine that cause the rash worked its way out of her system. 

We broke out some new toys for our long rash baths!

By Valentine's Day the rash had left her face and was just splotchy on her body so we put on a cute outfit after wearing pjs for almost two weeks straight and posed for some VDay pics.

When Daddy finally came home from work we had some artisan cheese, a Shack family tradition, and then headed out to a local family owned restaurant for a VDay special I had seen advertised.  It turns out that Lena LOVES white fish!  I will be making that for dinner often in the near future!

VDAY 2013 Cheese - Aged Gouda (Ned), Humbolt Fog (CA), Dubliner (IRE), Manchango (SP)

Fish and chips for Lena and I / Steak and Lobster Tail for Dan

Years ago we vowed never to eat out on VDay ever again after a bad experience with crowds at The Spaghetti Factory.  But today's experience was so pleasant, delicious,  not crowded (no wait), and affordable (our total bill was under $20) that I think we just might come back next year!  When we got home we had some dark chocolate cover strawberries I had made earlier in the day and settled in for the evening.  It was fun to spend Valentine's Day evening as a family.  I am so thankful for the blessing of Dan and Lena.