Happy Birthday to our sweet (and sick) baby

Our sweet baby girl is ONE! The last year has been so wonderful! It has been such a big difference raising a child in a two parent household. :-) I feel so blessed (and so spoiled) that we have had Jared home for an entire year.

We have been fighting the good battle here at our house against a very strong cold. The only one of us that did not get sick was Jared, who just happens to be the only of us that got the H1N1 vaccination. It may be a coincidence, or the kids and I may have gotten The Swine. Regardless, Austin, Anna and I still seem to be sluggish and fighting off the last of the bug. Aidan seems to be back to normal. Whatever it was that got us all sick, it was the most stubborn illness I've ever had. We're going on three weeks of someone in this house being sick. We've had fevers, lots of coughing, headaches, body aches, runny noses and congestion. Somehow (knocking on wood here), we have all managed to escape the stomach bug that has been making its way across Meridian.

At the very beginning of our illness, it was only Anna who was sick. She was put on an antibiotic, and on her last few days of the course, she broke out head to toe with a very bad rash. Diagnosis: Allergy to Penicillin

On the day of her birthday, Anna was feeling pretty bad, and Aidan was fighting a battle with Croup. Austin was running a high fever, and I was just beginning to feel sick. But we had a very important birthday to celebrate, and visitors that made a long journey to celebrate with us! So, up went the streamers; balloons were blown up, and a cake was baked. We put Anna in her beautiful birthday dress that her Aunt Emily made for her and did our best to celebrate. You can see from these pictures that we were a pretty rough group, but every baby has to have a first birthday cake picture. :-)