Travis & Diana - December

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday and are gearing up for Christmas.  Things are going well for all of us here.  No major complaints.  Adjusting more and more to the new house, school, and ward each day.
Aurie just had her Christmas dance recital.  It is always fun to see how much she improves each year, especially since I never get to go to her classes.  They looked really sharp and together, which makes it fun to watch. 
We're grateful for all that we have been blessed with this year and so glad for all of you!

  Have a Merry Christmas.

Moving Day-  All the kids in the moving van

Luke on his 6th birthday

Luke with his Mario Kart cake

Aurie and her Thanksgiving pies

Temple square

Ian and Luke at the Festival of Trees

More crazy elves.  Joshua and Aurie

November 2014

We sure do keep ourselves busy here in Kansas. It's been a great 2 months. Here is a quick run down:
Blake was called as the Young Men's President. He is on Woodbadge staff and is also the Council Advancement chair. He is very busy!
April is accompanying a middle school choir, getting her students ready for their Christmas recital, planning the Children's Interactive room for our community Christmas nativity event, and playing 20 minutes of Christmas music at that event. I'm looking forward to the Holidays.
Emisha finished tennis but is still loving choir and orchestra. High school is keeping her busy. She will begin studying to take the written test to get her driver's permit over Thanksgiving or Christmas. I'm not sure how I feel about it all.
Abby finished volleyball, so we get to see her in the afternoons now. She loves school, loves church, loves everything!
Matthew is on Student Council at school and loves planing events. He just had a solo in the Jazz band concert. He has been learning how to improvise. He did a great job.
Haley is hanging in there. She has had a stomach ache for over a month now. We are trying to rule out different things. If we don't see improvement in about a week, our next step is to go in and take pictures and a tissue sample from her stomach. It's been hard for her to go to school every day in pain. Please keep her in your prayers.
We loved having Grandpa, Grandma and Tyler come and visit. As you can see in Mom's pictures, we had a great time. Mom is now hip because she takes selfies. It was crazy!
Here are some fun family photos:

I love my family!

What a crew! 

Just us girls!

Recital time

 Greek Goddess

 Cutest Bumble bee ever

 Blessing in Disguise

Youtube sesation "Miranda Sings" Look her up, it will change your life.

Ackernanns Nov. 2014

Original Ackermanns,
     We had a wonderful trip to the Baranards.  The drive coming and going was beautiful.  We  bought some special pillows for my back that really helped  with the car ride.  We were able do sessions at the Colorado and Oklahoma temples. We were entertained.......volleyball game,  roadshow and a personal recital.  We ate  good food.....at Barnards, CiCi's and in Yoder.   We celebrated Maize Fall Day.......parade, candy and carnival. We visited, played with the camera and had a lot of fun.  Sending pictures
     Thank you for the decorated pumpkins.  I hung them in the front window so everyone could see our own little pumpkin patch.
     We finally have our cement wall poured along the driveway.

                                                           Tyler's favorite picture

                                                Dart game.........everyone won a animal

                                                               Awesome Family

                                                            My 1st selfie

 Can you see the family resemblance?

                                            We went to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave

                                                                    Pumpkin Patch

                                  Grandpa helping haul the cement for the wall.  He worked so hard

Ackermann----Tyler

I finally got this picture of Tyler at Scout Camp to print.

What a crazy kid!

Pixtons

I wrote this out a few weeks ago and when the computer shut down it erased it all.  It's taken me a few weeks to finally decided to try this again.  Here is a summary of what we have been doing:

We decided to keep Julia home for another year and just let her play and be a kid.  She is my buddy and we are having a great time together.  She turned 5 and had a minion birthday party and Isaac did a magic show and made balloon creatures for everyone.  Patricia is in 1st grade and doing well.  I chaperoned her field trip to an apple orchard.  She turned 7 and had a cup cake party.  She also started piano lessons.  Caleb is in 3rd grade and just earned his wolf and 4 arrow points.  We'll see if he can get a few more before his birthday.  Isaac is in 5th grade and is on the safety patrol helping out before and after school each day with the kiss and ride (car pool people).  He is on the robotics team again this year.  Alex is in 6th grade which is middle school here.  He loves it and is on the robotics team there.  He is playing the clarinet at school this year and really likes it.  He turned 12 and is now a decon and passes the sacrament.  Today he was set apart as the secretary in the decon's quorum.  Rachel is in 8th grade and decided to be in the year book club as well as the JNHS (Junior Nation Honors Society).  As for me, I got a new calling.  Two months ago I was called as the Relief Society secretary but since the primary program was last week, I was doing both callings until today!  I finally got to go to Relief Society today.  Bruce finished building all the shelves in the garage so he could finally park his car in the garage again after our van displaces everything.  He also put in a basketball hoop two weeks ago with the help of the boys.  We have all really enjoyed shooting some hoops!

We had a fun Halloween.  Bruce took the kids out trick or treating while Rachel and I stayed home and made home made donuts and answered the door for the 5 people who came (we don't get many trick or treaters).

Here are a few pictures for fun:

A minion Isaac made to decorate for Julia's party

Digging the hole for our Basketball hoop.

Alex in the hole.

Mixing the cement in our nice little turtle pool.

The final product!!

Patricia picking apples on her fieldtrip

Bruce made room for his car!!  Yeah!

Isaac as safety patrol.

Alex was ordained a decon by his Dad--BRUCE

Julia wanted an Elsa dress for her birthday

"Dr. Nafario" visited Julia's party and showed us how to make jellies  :)

Here are our  "school pictures" that Bruce took for our wall:  (sorry you'll have to turn your head sideways because I don't want to change these all! )

Yes Alex is missing.  He got a bad hair cut and wants to wait until his hair grows back.  :)

That is all for now.

Love to all,

The Pixtons

This last month has been busy. ( I think I say that every month. It must be true.) School is in full swing now. Haley is the last one in elementary school. She is not loving the back to school transition. Thankfully she loves her teacher as is getting used to being in school all day.
Matthew was just accepted onto student council and made it into After School Jazz Band with his trombone. He just earned his purple belt in karate.
Abby has make the volleyball team and is loving it. It's been fun for us to go watch her play.
I think Emisha still lives here, but we never see her. With Early Morning Seminary and after school Tennis practice she is pretty busy. Throw in occasional evening rehearsals for her choir and high school social life, she is crazy busy. Unfortunately she is prone to Migraines. Hopefully we will figure out how to manage those.
Blake and I just run to keep up with everything. Life is good.

Emisha and Blake in a Father Daughter game at High School Sports Night 

 This girl means business!

Haley with the Eagle at sport's night

 Emisha made me a birthday cake

Ready to Bump, Set, Spike

 Here he is with his purple belt

If you look closely, you can see a chipped tooth from karate!