A Whirlwind Spring and News

It's been a busy spring! We've done a bunch of things: For example, Kyra and Luca went to the House on the Rock with Nick and LP:







Luca liked the carousel quite a bit. It sounded like a good way to wear him out!

Bucky Badger came to Luca's school one day. I won't post photos of it because there are other kids in the photo, and I don't want to post other kids here without their parents' permission. Here's Luca on a bike instead:



I got to hear Neil deGrasse Tyson, a famous astrophysicist and speaker, give a speech at the University:



The speech was awesome. His speech was similar to the one he gave before the Senate regarding science and transportation. This video about the most astounding thing he knows is also quite awesome.

We've also gone to Olbrich a few times:







Kyra is so beautiful. I think those were taken on Mother's Day.

We also went to Devil's Lake for Kyra's birthday and Memorial Day weekend. Kyra told Luca about the story behind the lake's name, where two giants had a fight and threw rocks at each other. I tried to teach him that the glaciers dropped the rocks when they melted, but that's not quite as good a story, so it hasn't stuck as well. Kyra and I also got to go out to a concert for our anniversary and dancing for her birthday. It was a great weekend.

We also have some big news on three other fronts: First, I've decided to take a new job with a local marketing firm, as a Data Scientist. This is a pretty cool opportunity in a relatively new field of data analysis, using some of the same technologies behind IBM's Watson computer, the computer that bested two top-rank Jeopardy winners. I'll be learning the programming languages Python and R, and I'm really excited to put these skills to commercial and research use.

Second, we've completed the foster care process, and we can start accepting children just about any time. We've decided, for the moment, to start in August, which will give us a bit more time to prepare. Further, our plan is to eventually adopt, but that may not be an option with the first or subsequent children. It may take some time to get to that point.

Just so everyone is aware, we cannot explicitly tell anyone anything about the new child in our care (other than the child's name, of course), not even that the child is a foster child. All we can say is, "This child is in our care." Further, we cannot post photos of or information about the child online, so we may not be able to post any photos with people since the child may be included, and we won't be able to post many details about what we're up to.

I still plan on updating our site with as much (and as little detail about the child) as we can, but it may be even more difficult in the future. So bear with us as we go through this next transition. We would also appreciate everyone's patience and support, including going along with the restrictions about posting photos and information online.

Third, we've decided to try to find a new place to live. We put our condo up for sale, and we hope to find a larger place to accommodate our expanding family. It would also be nice to find a place where Kyra could do childcare in the home, if she decides to do that some day.

There are a lot of exciting new things in store for our family! Stay tuned!

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