Pixons for August

We have had quite the month!  We finally got home Sat. Aug. 9th after 24 days abroad and some 81 hours in the van.  We had a great time and loved spending time with family. 

Here are a few of the things we did on our trip: 

Canoeing and cave exploring at Carter Caves in Kentucky:

On the way to Kansas we stopped at the Gateway Arch, Independance, and Liberty Jail in Missouri.  We almost meet up with the Blasers at the game :)

We had a blast with the Barnards for a few days:

We played at the Yogi Bear campground outside of Colorado Springs for a day.  The boys got to take an archery class and a disc golf course class there from some pro for free:

 

Then we got to hang out in Utah for about 10 days and do tons of fun stuff:  BYU wild life museum and dinosaur museums, the aquarium, we attended "Musisc and the Spoken Word", went camping, toured the Ogden Temple at the open house, etc.etc.  We had a great time with family!!  We also went to the Pixton reunion and had a great time there.

On the way home we stopped at Fort Cody in North Platte, Nebraska:

And Winter Quarters:

We spent two days in Nauvoo, where Bruce celebrated his birthday,  and we even did a handcart pull in the mud one morning after a big rainstorm:

Our last stop was the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

We are happy to be home and see Maddie again.  The kids missed her so much! But we LOVED seeing family and spending time with most of you. 

To our surprise, peaches were ready a few days after we got home.  So today we just finished canning the last of our 200 lbs of peaches.  They are so yummy!  And I am soooo happy to be done!!!!

It's good we still have 2 weeks of summer vacation to finish unpacking and get ready for school.

Again, we loved seeing most of you this summer!  We think you are great!

Love,

The Pixtons

Original Ackermann - Aug 2014

Here we go for the 3rd time.  We have had a busy but fun summer.  Are garden is doing great and we love the food we are getting off it. I will send some random pictures and try to tell you about our summer.  The picture of Tyler kissing the fish he caught at scout camp will not work but it is a great picture, we might get to send it at a latter date.

 Blasers, Mendenhalls and Ackermanns at the Living Planet Aquarium

 The beauties of the canyon

 Grandpa showing how the equipment at his work works

 The Pixtons and the Ackermanns at the Living Planet Aquarium

 Grandpa cooking those wonderful dutch oven rolls for us at camp

 Our little hike around Silver Lake........when the rain stopped for a little while.

 One of the very favorite activities at camp.......2nd only to eating

 Tyler thinks it is important to exercize and srtetch out at camp

 Aurie making bubbles at the family reunion and Dad cooking the turkey breast for the dinner at the reunion

Saldivars August 2014

Hello everyone. These past couple months have been very busy. Jeremy and I are moved into our new apartment and absolutely love it. It is bigger than anything we have ever had and has lots of space, but yet we can't find room for all of our junk. It's weird how that works... Jeremy is registered for all of his classes and starts in just a couple of weeks as a full time student. He is excited for school but doesn't want to start yet.  He is going to be busy studying for the next 3 years. Go Jeremy! I am as stressed as I will ever be with work. I can't wait for school to finally start because then things will start to slow down for me.

We enjoyed having family here visiting. I wish we had more time with both families, but I am glad we at least got a few days. It is always so fun to see everyone and see all the kids twice as big as they were the last time we saw them. Time just flies by. The kids are growing up way to fast.  Jeremy went with some friends to Moab for the weekend at left me here. I didn't want to stay here alone so I invited Tyler to stay with me. It turned out to be pretty fun. We went to the Ward family reunion and the temple for a session. It was real neat to do a session with a good portion of our family and to do our Ward family names. The reunion has got me excited about genealogy and learning more about our ancestors. I am even taking a class on how to use familysearch.org, but I get impatient because they move too slow, I want to be able to do it all right now. It is fun to learn about our ancestors.

Jeremy and I had quite and experience a couple of weeks ago... We both just got home from work and relaxed for a few minutes before bed on our couch in our living room. I went to turn off the lights and just above the couch in the window seal there was an orange snake. It did not look real at all. I thought to myself "Jeremy doesn't like snakes. Why would he buy one just to scare me?" I asked him when he got the snake but he had a blank look on his face. I showed him what I was talking about and he kind of started to freak out. Of course I thought this was all a trick and didn't buy it for a second. He kept telling me that he didn't put that there and asked if I did. It never moved, it just sat there starring at us. Our faces were about a foot away just starring at it pointing out all the ways it didn't look real. Jeremy finally said with a serious voice that he didn't put that there and asked me again if I put it there. It was in that 3 seconds that my heart fell to my stomach, we both flew off the couch and I was terrified! We found a real snake in our house. It was about 2 1/2 feet long. Now that it was real, it looked real. Its scalely shiny skin and black eyes. I can still picture its eyes just starring at us.
We weren't sure what to do or where it came from and how long it had been there. We just got back from camping with Shannon and the family and our tent was lying in our living room to dry out from the rain. Jeremy thought that it got in our tent bag and came home with us. I thought that since we live so close to the mountain that it just a mountain snake that got in our house and maybe this was going to happen all winter. I was trying to think of people to call to come get rid of it because I didn't want to touch it. At this point, Jeremy and I both had a tennis racket in our hands just in case it moved. He told me to grab a stick and I thought that was a horrible idea because it would just fall off and slither under the couch. So we grabbed a box. I held the box with the tennis racket and Jeremy gently pushed its tail. As soon as it started to move its head around, we both freaked out. Now that it finally moved, it became more real. While it was wrapping is head around, we hurried and pushed it into a box and quickly taped it shut. We heard a rattling noise, which was odd because it wasn't a rattlesnake.
We decided that before we just let it go, to see if maybe our neighbors had a pet snake. It was 10:30 at night and I didn't want to go door to door asking people if they had a pet snake. Just then some of our neighbors drove up and sure enough, it was theirs.
To this day I still don't know how long it went missing and how it got in our house, but I sure hope that it does not happen again.

Well, I'm here to report that our Summer break has come to an end. The kids started school this week. Emisha is now a Freshman. I can't believe it. We are all getting used to Early morning seminary. She is the piano player for seminary, young womens and mutual! Abby is in 7th grade. She didn't have to go to school the first day, so we got a special day with just the 2 of us. Matthew joined the ranks of middle school as a 6th grader. He is super excited. Haley is now in 3rd and the only one left in elementary school. Thankfully she still has 3 years there. I'm not ready to be that old. Mornings around here are so different. We get up at 5:30 and the last one leaves at 8:30. 3 hours of making breakfast, coming hair, making lunch and hurrying people along. Sometimes I feel like I've run a marathon by the time I get home from dropping them off. Here are their first day of school photos:

We had 2 birthdays in the last month. Matthew got to celebrate turning 11 with the Pixtons. It was so good to spend a few days with them. Matthew graduated from Cub Scouts! He's now an official Boy Scout. Watch out!  Emisha spent her 14th birthday mini golfing, swimming and lunching with her friends. I can't get over how quickly they grow up.

A few weeks ago, Blake and I participated in a bike ride in a small town called Hudson. They had a 26 and 56 mile ride. We were planning and training for the 26 mile ride. 5 hours and 56 miles later, we crossed the finish line. I couldn't believe what I had just done. (Blake did much better than I did.) It was a very proud moment in our lives. After the ride, the town hosted a fried chicken lunch for all the riders. It was quite tastey!

We are looking forward to a great new school year. With sports, band, orchestra, choir, karate, scouts, young womens, activity days and life, it promises to be a great one!