Cinco de Mayo Party - a little bleary eyed...

I give you fair warning, when we went to the Cinco de Mayo party put on by our ward, we accidentally brought the super lens for Brian's camera. This is the lens that really demands a tripod, otherwise it's hard to hold the camera steady and you end up with blurry pictures like this:



Or this:



But it was just about IMPOSSIBLE to get all three kids to put their faces in these cutouts at once, so blurry or not, this was as good as this shot was going to get.

Aside from the camera mishap, the one negative of the evening was Ben's cough. It started shortly before we left and was pretty mild. By the time we were sitting down for the opening prayer, he was coughing over and over again. I took him to the private bathroom off the foyer to get a drink, etc, and his coughing just would not stop. It got to the point where he was coughing on every single exhalation. It was pretty concerning. Eventually we got it to settle down some and he was able to eat a tiny bit, but for the most part he was miserable:




Other than that, it was a good party. We tend not to go to a lot of the ward social functions, but I forget that this ward really knows how to put on a party. In addition to the great decorations and picture opportunities, they had delicious food, entertainment, and a ton of crafts for the kids to do.

Here's a pic of John decorating his sombrero:

Here's John in his poncho (you can see the string for his sombrero around his neck). He and Ben are shaking their maracas. This was the one thing Ben felt like making.

Even though this pic is blurry and his eyes are closed, I can't leave out Christopher:

I suppose I should confess what ultimately made us to go to the party. Nylene called the night before (or was it early that day? I can't remember now)... anyway she called to see if I would help in the kitchen. I checked with Brian to make sure it was okay that I committed us to go, and he said he would work in the kitchen instead. I tried a little to tell him he didn't have to, but I didn't try that hard. The kitchen is really Brian's arena more than mine. And I think he was a lot more helpful than I would have been. He really knows how to handle lots of food like that, especially when it seems things are running low. So yeah, we went because I bailed out of helping out. How's that for brownie points for getting into heaven? LOL.

As for Ben's cough, this was not the first time we had to deal with him coughing, though it had never been this bad. He's always had issues with coughing off and on, but as soon as I decide to take him to the doctor about it, it goes away for several months. Well, about two weeks prior to this party, he was coughing so bad at night that it took forever to get it to stop. Then when he finally stopped he was wheezing. That was a first. I got him into the doctor right away. I'm not going to mess around with wheezing. Well, long story short he had a bad sinus infection and all the draining etc, which will bring on coughing. We couldn't hear him wheezing anymore, but the doctor could hear it with his stethoscope. So he gave him antibiotics for the infection and another medicine to use as needed to open up his chest.

When we got home from the party this night, he was all done with the antibiotics, but I gave him that chest decongestant. Not even two minutes later he was crashed out on the couch. Poor little guy. I took him into the doctor the following Tuesday. We already planned to test him for asthma once the infection cleared and I was sure that would be it. But no, Ben does NOT have asthma. Thank goodness! The doctor thinks he may just have sensitive airways (as many people do in the Valley these days) and I think he may be right. I've noticed on really windy days (like yesterday) he'll end up coughing for awhile (like he did last night). I ended up giving him more of that chest decongestant last night (something we don't want to have to do more than twice a week, or he'll end up on daily medication) but it didn't seem to work as well or as fast. That makes me wonder if something else is going on. Or if he just needs different medication. Sigh. He seems so little for all this. Poor kid.