April Fools.

We have no big announcement.

But we do have highlights to share from this past week!

Jake finished his second quarter and is now 2/15th of the way through his PhD program!! He was on Spring Break last week. Cindy jokes that Jake shouldn’t get any breaks because he ends up filling all his free time with MORE side projects. She’ll leave for work in the morning and come home to Jake and his ideas for a book to write or another non-profit to start up. Cindy’s given Jake a “Realistic Meter” and Jake has to rate his ideas on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being “yeah cool, do-able” and 10 being “omg please stop, not do-able”), so she can know how seriously to take him.

Jake did go out on Monday with a few guys from our bible study and ate dinner and talked with some of the homeless people who live around our neighborhood. He had been wanting to do this for a long time. He was able to start a quality conversation about Christ and faith with two men he met.

We ended Jake’s Spring Break with a family vacation (with Cindy’s parents and her uncle) to Las Vegas. It was good quality time not only with each other but also with Cindy’s family. Jake had never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before, so we booked tickets to go see KA at the MGM Grand. We sat in the very first row, which Cindy didn’t like. She thinks seeing every detail up close really takes away from the awe and wonder of the acts and performances. Jake, on the other hand, really enjoyed the experience and thought it was all pretty amazing.

Cindy’s favorite part of Las Vegas is the Midway at Circus Circus. Instead of a gambling budget, she has an arcade budget. Jake’s favorite part of Las Vegas is the Game King machine (which has nickel black jack and 5-card poker). But our most memorable experience from this Vegas trip was our Lyft ride in a self-driving car!! Lyft partnered up with Aptiv to provide rides in self-driving cars. The cars operate completely on their own using two on-board super computers and a fleet of radar and li-dar sesnors. It is pretty amazing to see the car change lanes and navigate through busy traffic conditions without any human help.

And that was our week!