Aubrey ~ Happy 1st Birthday !!

Wow, how time flys. My baby is now 1. She turned 1 on June 15th. I figured my hiatus of over 5 months from blogger should come to an end since this was such a big day for our baby and we wanted to share some pictures with you. Aubrey is such a joy to have as my perfect little baby. We love her so much and life just wouldn't be the same without her.

We had her birthday party on Saturday June 13th before her birthday on Monday June 15th. We had cake and ice cream for her party at my parents home with all of our family from both sides in attendance. That evening my side of the family went out to celebrate my brother Brian's birthday, which is also June 15th. We went to Don Pablo's on the river.

Click on the picture below for more pics.

Aubrey's 1st Birthday

Happy 30th Birthday ~ Jonathan!

THE BIG "30".

Happy 30th Birthday to my Sweetheart Jonathan!

January 28th!

My how time flies. It seems like yesterday that I planned his big surprise 21st Birthday Party and now look, it's already another big milestone. Just for a little while will we be in different decades and then I will join him in a few months.

Dearest Jonathan, Your a great husband and I love sharing life with you. Thanks for all the help you give me and for supporting our family. You're also an awesome Daddy to our children and thanks for taking special time out just for the girls. I love you! Wishing you MANY more Happy Birthdays! Love You Always, Leanna

Happy 3rd Birthday - Lindsey Ann Morgan Pitcher !!

January 22, 2006

12:32 p.m. - Sunday afternoon

7 lbs 8 oz

Dearest Lindsey,

Happy 3rd Birthday to my first born, Lindsey Ann Morgan Pitcher! We LOVE You Sooo Much! Life would never be the same without you and we could have never asked God for a better miracle than YOU! You are the perfect fit for Mommy and Daddy! We didn't know if our home would ever be blessed with the pitter patter of little feet and God saw fit to give us you and we are so very thankful!

Yes, you may give me trial some days with your strong will, but with God's help and our prayers I pray that it will help guide you through life and be used to your benefit to stay strong during the rough times that life throws your way. I pray that you grow up to be a sweet, christian, young lady and love God with all your heart!

You are such a thoughtful little girl and always concerned about the other persons problems. It doesn't matter if it is a little cut or a concern you have heard us voice, you catch it all and come to our rescue to make sure we are ok. And... you remember to check up on the illness the next day or the next day you see the person in question of illness. You are very loving and very quick to give us big hugs and kisses and in great abundance (smackers & bear hugs :)!!

Your were definitely not a big talker at two but I think you are making up for lost time in the last couple of months and now we definitely know your thoughts on pretty much everything and are making up for lost time! I love to hear you talk and you now try to stall bedtime by saying, "One minute" and then you proceed to have a conversation about whatever comes to your mind.

You love your My Little Pony's, Horses (in general), Dora, Strawberry Shortcake, Princesses, & baby dolls. All things girlie!

You are becoming opinionated (verbally) and I was wondering when that would happen. As you say, "I want my hair long"! :) You want to make sure your hair is down and not up and you tell Mommy that it is pretty.

You are a Great Big Sister! (In a Very OVERWHELMING way - and Mommy doesn't think she can handle it one more second at times and then of course Daddy will come home to the rescue or Mamaw will come for a visit and Aubrey lives for another day :) Yes, you love Aubrey dearly, but you are still learning the entire definition of Gentle and "No"!

I read you books and you tell me things that I myself don't even quite have figured out, i.e. when it comes to which house Gingerbread Snap lives in :) You quite amaze me with what you know. I was counting the other night and I stopped at 9 because that's all there was to count and you continued on to say "ten". I about croaked because we certainly hadn't gotten that far in our counting skills or so I thought :).

You love the word "match" and you love to match your sister whether it is in dress or in what you are holding or playing with. Just tonight you picked out your own design of pj's. You decided to keep your long sleeved white undershirt on and you topped it off with a short sleeve flowery shirt and you came to me asking for matching "white" pants, which by the way don't even exist, so we decided on pink and thankfully that was fine. No you don't know ALL your colors but your getting a pretty good handle on quite a few of them.

You are learning to pray and to also come up with your own prayers, which include asking "Mommy no spank me, Daddy no spank me, Amen". When you did this I about cracked up. I then instructed you to ask Jesus to help you be a good girl and obey Mommy and Daddy and then your prayers would be answered

I wish you the best year ahead as you race into your 4th year. Happy 3rd Birthday to a Big Girl that we Love So Much!

Love,

Mommy & Daddy

Happy New Year - Welcome 2009!

I have tons of pictures to share, but for now, I wanted to stop by my blog for a quick minute to wish all of my family and friends a Happy New Year! We wish all of you health and happiness in the year ahead - Welcome to 2009!
Here are a few pictures of our family on Christmas Eve on a quick trip to Bass Pro Shops to get the annual Santa picture. We have always gone to the mall, but were informed of this really neat set up of an entire little Santa Village at Bass Pro, which included a free picture with Santa Claus and you could also take your own picture. It was a really and had some great decorations as well.

Click on the pic below for more pics. http://picasaweb.google.com/jlpitcher1/122408VisitToSantaClauseBassPro?feat=embedwebsite

My Baby ~ Aubrey ~ is 6 Months Old

My how time does fly by. It seems like yesterday that I was worrying about my pregnancy, and then bringing home a baby not quite weighing 6 lbs. And now... She is a 6 months old and weighing near the 18 lb mark, but I will have all the specifics of the stats on Wednesday after I have her to the doctor for her checkup. She is a lovable, squeezable, bundle of 100% pure joy. She is "THE BEST" baby. Lindsey was a "good" baby, but Aubrey is nigh unto perfect and very un-demanding. She never cries, she's a great sleeper, eater, and she would much rather smile than not. She is very tolerable of the mountains of love that Lindsey dumps upon her in her 2 yr child like ways. I love her bunches and life is just that much better with having her around. I love having my two girls.

Happy 6 month Birthday, Aubrey!

From November 2008

We went Monday evening, December 15th, on her 6 month birthday and had her picture taken for her 6 month photo op along with her dedication picture, Christmas picture and family picture. It was a big event, but it went well and all the pics turned out great with no hassles. Can't wait to share, but it will probably be a few days before I have the files to do so.

Thanksgiving Day 2008

Here are the pics that were taken on Thanksgiving Day. My cousins from Indiana, David, Martha, Cameron, Sarah Brook, & Ashley Going, came to my parents for a couple of days and we so enjoyed getting to spend Thanksgiving with them. My brother, Bradley's family, also was at my parents for the day, but unfortunately we were missing Brian's family. We had a nice relaxing day. The food was awesome and in my opinion the best thing to eat was the noodles and gravy with potatoes - love'm :) Nothing better than noodles in my opinion. We did have tons of food though. My mother fixed both a turkey breast and ham. It was hilarious, there was so much food that the ham did not even get uncovered for the main dinner, but we ate some of it later. If Brian had been there then you can bet on it having been uncovered, he's the ham eater :) The full menu to the best of my memory, since I am blogging about it so late is: Turkey, Ham, Ham Gravy, Noodles in Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Corn, Broccoli & Cheese, Dressing, Rolls, Broccoli Salad, Cranberry Salad, Angel Salad, Pumpkin Pie, Pumpkin Roll, Black Bottom Pecan Cheesecake Pie (the best), Carmel & Apples, & Cherry Delight. Do you think we had enough? lol. Some things just didn't even get eaten with that much food to be had. We all enjoyed a second round of it later that evening. It was a fun day that ended too soon. I love spending relaxing time with family.

From Thanksgiving Day 2008

From Thanksgiving Day 2008

Click on the pic below for more pics.

Thanksgiving Day 2008

November 2008 Kodak Moments

Here are some pics taken last month up until Thanksgiving which are still to come.  I will try and put some details on the pics, but this is mostly a wordless posting in regards to the pics.  There is too much for me to do between now and Friday evening when we plan to leave for Indiana to be with Jonathan's family.

I have not mentioned it here on my blog yet, but please pray for my niece, Lizzi, who has been in the hospital since Dec 3.  This is Jonathan's sister's little girl.  She has CF, cystic fibrosis, and for the most part has been pretty healthy, with only a few bouts of major illness that has put in her the hospital.  Since coming home from the hospital at birth this is only her 3rd time being admitted and she is almost 4 1/2.  She is an amazing, beautiful, lovable girl.  They were hoping for a quick in and out admittance to get the pic line in and then send her home to continue the treatment.  She has been sick for about 12 weeks and couldn't get rid of the infection with prescription antibiotics.  But, she just recently came down with a mild case of pneumonia and it is not getting any better.  They may even end up having to do a special procedure on Friday to help clear her lungs.  I know it is becoming quite tiresome on Belinda, her Mom, and they have been in the hospital for 10 days now.  When you remember, please pray for Lizzi and the rest of her family.

Click on the pic below for more pics.

November 2008

My debut of using and sharing on YouTube :)

Well, I love the new Picasa3 update that is now available, which is the program I use on my computer to view all my pictures and to share my pics in web albums for my blog.  It has so many more options and one of them is being able to make movies, create different video clips, take part of previously made videos and change the size to be shorter or take out certain parts..... and to upload them to YouTube.  I have never used YouTube, so I created my account and....here we go.  It's not much, but I hope you enjoy.  I know some certain people in Indiana who will enjoy it at least :).

Let me know if you can not view it so I can work the kinks out since this is my first time.

Aubrey Lynn's Dedication 11-2-08

We had Aubrey dedicated at church on November 2, 2008. Jonathan's family was able to join us for this occasion as well. Afterwards we all ate dinner at my parent's house - all 19 of us. The dedication ceremony went really well and Aubrey did great. She had her eyes glued on Bro. Hooker the entire time. We had the song "A Mothers and Fathers Prayer" sung. Here are a few pics from the days events.

From Aubrey Lynn's Dedication 11/2/08

From Aubrey Lynn's Dedication 11/2/08

Click on the pic below for more pics.

Aubrey Lynn's Dedication 11/2/08

October Pictures

What an interesting title for this post :) lol - I am going to try and break down my most recent pictures into a few different posts, since it has been a couple of months. This posting will be all the pics from October events and happenings. I am not going to document all the pictures, so hopefully they are somewhat explanatory. Hope you enjoy. I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving as I know we sure did.

Click on the pic below for more pics.

The pictures are in chronological order for the month of October 2008.

October 2008

I VOTED TODAY!!!!!!

Hot Dog Roast and other happenings

Last Friday evening we had company over. Our friends Jennifer, Paul, Katrin, & Kallie Eckert are moving away and we wanted to get together with them one last time. We are very sad they are moving and Lindsey will definitely miss her playmate (in love and war :). We also had our friends Scott, Suzanne, & Jackson Capplinger over as well. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed the great October weather together in our backyard with the newly built fire pit.

I am posting some pictures of this event as well as some other miscellaneous pics of the girls.

October Events

From October Events

September Happenings & Update

Can you tell my life is busier? :) lol :) I hardly ever post, but since I know everyone prefers the pictures, here's quite a few for you to enjoy!

For a small update in my life as a mother of 2 - I am loving it! Yes, I am busy constantly, but it's completely worth it.
Aubrey is over 14 lbs now at 3 1/2 months and is completely out of 0-3 clothes and the 3-6 month is none too big. She belly laughed out loud for the first time on Sep 16th, two weeks ago at Lindsey. It was so cute. She loves to stand on her two legs just like Lindsey did at this age. She is holding onto small toys and chewing on whatever she can get a hold of. She is nosey and if your holding her you better not lean her back in any way or she will let you know - immediately. Sit her up straight and she's as happy as a lark. She is lovin' life and we are lovin' her. She is a ball of cuddly love and has stolen all of our hearts.
Lindsey is "finally" well on her way to being potty trained at 2 yrs 8 months. We are still working on one major half of it (if you know what I mean) but, I am very pleased with the progress WE are making, because it definitely takes a lot of effort on my part as well. She is a great sister to Aubrey and dotes on her and loves her very much. She is talking a lot more and is increasing practically daily. This includes, "I don't want to", so now we have to start shaping and molding the vocabulary, if you know what I mean :)

In my last posting I was a bit frustrated with the changes in the Picasa online program, but it seems the glitches have been fixed and I can now just post the album picture link instead of having to do an actual slide show on my blog. So, back to the old ritual of - Click on the actual picture listed below and it will link you to the Picasa Album for more pictures. I am posting three separate albums below. Enjoy and have a great fall!

Random pics from Sep 2008

Church Fall Picnic - 9/27/08

Bro. & Sis. Thompson's 40th year of service celebration at Bethel Holiness - Columbus, IN

p.s. Shout out to all of you bloggers, I just joined up with the Blogger "Following" and it is really neat to be able to see who is following your blog. So, the more of you that join the more fun and interesting it will be. Research it and take a look. I think it will just add more fun to this whole blogging thing in addition to already using Google Reader, which I am a very big fan of.

Playing blog catch up and picture overload - - -

Wow, I have been a bad blog poster lately. Time is way to consumed with taking care of the two girls and reading all of your blogs :) I have hardly posted any pics since Aubrey has been born except for the studio pics. To make up for all of that I am sharing with you a little over 200 pics from the past 2 1/2 months. If you like pics - enjoy, otherwise you can make your exit quietly :) Aubrey has grown by leaps and bounds and has officially doubled her weight and is now around 13 lbs. She is still an excellent baby and I am learning her personality, wants, needs, and we are getting along just great. When Lindsey got sick for that horrible 10 days, that was the breaking point for her doting all over her and wanting to kiss Aubrey. She still loves, touches, and kisses her, but not in such an overwhelming way. She knew she wasn't allowed to when she was sick and ever since it has just been a lot better. Thank goodness :) Now I am having to deal with her wanting to "pick her up" literally and hold her, but that doesn't happen a lot. I will put comments on some of the pictures, but they are in the order of oldest to newest. Enjoy!


Below is a small slide show of the pics, but if you double click on the pictures below, it will take you to the Picasa Web Album website and you can look at the pictures in a bigger size.
Picasa has changed their website around and I'm not sure how to link to the pictures like I used too. If anyone out there knows how to still do it the way that I used to, please let me know.

New JCP Portrait Pictures

I had Aubrey's 2 month and Lindsey's 2 year and 7 month pictures taken as well as their picture taken together at JC Penney's on August 20, last Wednesday.

They turned out excellent and it was very hard to pick.













Most of the pictures have already been posted above, but there are a few more in the web album listed below.

Click on the picture below for more pics.

JCP Portraits - 8/20/2008

Much Improved

I am happy to report in that Lindsey is for sure improving. She is definitely not 100%, but she has improved so much over the last 48 hours. Saturday was good, but Sunday was even better. She has begun eating some foods, but still thinks everything is going to hurt her and I have to convince her and tell her that no, it doesn't hurt and then she'll usually try it. I am trying to come up with good ideas for her still sensitive mouth. Tonight she had some scrambled eggs that were cooled off and she did really well with eating those. (Not to mention the many Reece Cups that she has eaten - ha ha) She looks better in her eyes, but her face still looks bad, but they are starting to scab over and not near as much drooling. She is also getting back onto a more regular sleeping schedule with just 1 nap during the day. I hope to see her 100% very soon. Going into public places would be a really nice convenience :) Sunday night marked 10 days of this so seeing the end in sight is really great news.

p.s. So far I have been able to keep Aubrey healthy and I hope it continues, but it may be a spell before I really know for sure since the incubation period for this virus is 7 days.

FOOD

It has been 8 days ago that Lindsey got sick and 8 days of no eating except for a
little on last Friday night 7 days ago. But alas.... she just ate 2 1/2 pieces of cheese at 3:25 a.m. I know, a very weird time. For over a week now there has been NO schedule and no regular sleeping or nap time. I have let her sleep as much as possible, which has been quite a bit. No way am I going to stop a girl as sick as she is from sleeping any time of day or night. She is up right now and yes EATING ( a little ). She still crys over just merely taking a drink, but has been able to drink some chocolate milk shake for a couple of days, but not without crying. She's definitely not all better, but we're on the upward climb. I never want to see her this sick again. I took her to the doctor again on Friday just to follow up before we head into the weekend. They said she is not dehydrated. I was concerned about her ears or possible glands swollen because she is complaining of her ear / jaw area hurting. Good news, it's just swollen glands and not infections. There was nothing more they could do for her, but they gave me another prescription of Tylenol Codeine, which I have been mixing with her apple juice. She won't even touch a Popsicle, etc. She won't even open her mouth to let me look. After I took her to the doctor on Friday, we went and walked around a little pond with a water fountain that had a sidewalk around it. It's really bad, because I can't take her anywhere public for her to enjoy because she is so contagious and those walls at home are getting quite depressing. It was nice for a change in scenery and then when we got home Daddy arrived shortly thereafter to help rescue me. Two kids are a lot of work, but no comparison to a very sick 2 1/2 yr old and a 1 1/2 month old. Well, there's an update. I'll let y'all know in blog land when it's all over, but now we're still just improving.

Lindsey is VERY SICK

The last 6 days have been horrible and I still don't know where the end of it is. Lindsey came down with a fever late last Thursday night / early Friday morning 8/1. I was "hoping" it was nothing, but it was still very high on Friday morning so I took her to the doctor thinking it was probably an ear infection since she never complains of any pain when she has them. No ear infections, but when they examined her mouth, there they were. I felt pretty dumb for not having seen them myself, but they must have popped up over night. There were two horrible blisters on her tongue, which quickly gave us the correct diagnosis of the virus, hand foot and mouth disease. Not a fun thing to have, but it usually runs its course and life goes on or so I thought - aaahhhh! Instead of getting better after about 5 days, it was still getting worse. I am writing this early Thursday morning and it has been 6 days since Lindsey has eaten, except for 1 piece of cheese and a piece of turkey last Friday evening. She has been able to drink enough fluids to not become dehydrated, but it has not been easy for her. She will cry for apple juice and then chuck the sippy cup when I hand it to her and start crying, grabbing her mouth and saying hurt, hurt. It is horrible to see her go through this. It makes my heart break. I was dealing with all of it, so so, with help from a Great Daddy that Lindsey has and my parents, but it all melted on Tuesday night. She became inconsolable, crying constantly, and in horrifying pain. We hurried to Children's Hospital and arrived a little before midnight. After taking her, waiting, and all the drama of the ordeal they concluded that she was not dehydrated and that there was no iv medicines to help with her pain. So, they said there was nothing they could do for her that I didn't already have, which was the Tylenol Codeine that the doctor had called in for her on Sunday. But, she won't take the oral meds and I was ready to scream - thinking they were going to send her home and having done nothing to help relieve her pain. After having seen 1 nurse, 1 resident doctor, 1 doctor and no help another nurse came in to try and give her the oral med. She was definitely a more experienced nurse (19 years to be exact) and saw how horrible of pain she was in and that it was going to be a futile attempt to give her the meds. She went ahead and tried at the doctors request, but blood, medicine and saliva started flying everywhere, with the blisters being so horrible in her mouth. Her mouth is completely full of them, including her cheeks, tongue, lips and probably her throat as well as about 8 sores on the outside of her mouth. She looks absolutely horrible and completely miserable. She will not swallow so I have tried to keep a bib on her to keep her shirt and chest from being completely soaked. After the futile attempt of giving her orals the doctor finally agreed to give her some morphine by iv and while they were at it to give her some fluids by iv as well. She also had a temp of 104 and then it dropped to 101.8 after we were there for a while. They started the iv around 2:30 a.m. or so. It definitely helped calm and relax her so she was not writhing in pain and crying constantly. The sad part is there is no medicine to help make it get better. By the time we were discharged around 5 a.m. she was already crying in pain again, but not quite as bad. Since her hospital visit she has still been bad, but never getting as bad as she was prior to going to the hospital. Hopefully we are on the upswing of things and daylight is peaking through the end of the tunnel, but I'm not yet quite convinced. She did end up drinking most of a kids size chocolate shake on Wednesday evening, but not without many tears involved. I am posting a few pictures of her and her hospital visit. The pics of her in the brown outfit are from this past Saturday evening 2 days into her sickness. She definitely got way worse after this and I thought she was bad when I took these pics. The reason I had her all fixed up even though she was sick, I was hoping that getting her out of the house would help as long as I kept her in the stroller and kept her germs contained. After this she obviously got a whole lot worse as you can see in the pictures at the hospital. The only place I have taken her since then is to my parents just so I could see more than the 4 walls of my living room, which can get quite claustrophobic after 6 days. Well this was way too many details, but here they are none the less. Please pray for her as we are still waiting for an end to this and praying that Aubrey will not get it as well. We are keeping the hand sanitizer close, but that can only do so much.

Click on the pic below for more pics.

Lindsey - sick August 2008

Aubrey's 1 Month Portraits

Here are Aubrey's 1 month portraits that I had done at JCPenney's on July 15. I apologize for having been such a horrible blogger since Aubrey was born. My intentions are to still try and catch up on some blogging and to share a lot of pictures that we have taken at home so far in the last 40 days. The time since she was born has absolutely flown by and I am way more than occupied - I've got my hands full :) Lindsey is still overloading Aubrey with tons of lovin' and kisses. Aubrey is still such a great baby and only cries for the necessities in life - a.k.a. eating. I am so proud to be a mother to two wonderful girls. Life is great.

I took Aubrey for her 1 month checkup a little late on July 23. She weighed 9 lbs 5 oz and in the 39%. She was 21 1/4 inches also in the 39%. She has grown so much, so fast and I'm already wishing time would slow way down. She is perfectly healthy and the checkup went great. She even did OK with her 1 shot. She just cried a brief moment and that was it.

This 9 pic portrait collection above was taken and put together to keep up with a tradition I started with Lindsey. I have one very similar for Lindsey in a 10x13 at exactly 1 month as well, so I also wanted one for Aubrey.

(above) - Daddy's hands :)


Here is a link to the rest of the pics from JCP's.

Click on the pic below for more pics.

7/15/2008 JCP portraits - Aubrey 1 month